COMING SOON

Introduction

Active listening is not a new concept. Unfortunately, it is one of those areas that is much harder to put into practice than it appears to be on the surface. First, you will have the opportunity to evaluate your own listening skills, you will then learn how to improve those skills, and finally you will put your skills to work in several listening skills practice sessions. Sometimes there are barriers that get in the way of our ability to listen actively. Sometimes it’s also our habits that get in the way. We will examine what some of the barriers and habits may be that cause us to not listen as well as we should. The average person speaks at about 500 words a minute, but can listen to 135-175 words a minute. The difference between listening speed and speaking speed is a listening gap. It’s during the listening gap that we have a tendency to exercise poor listening habits!

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Evaluate your current listening skills
• Identify and provide examples of barriers to listening
• Identify common habits that promote inactive listening
• Practice listening skills

Length:

1/2 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

Do you avoid conflict? • Do you fear making others angry? • Do you find yourself upset or frustrated with your peers, but doing nothing about it? • Do you have difficulty putting conflict to rest? • Do you often discuss work problems at home, without resolving them? • Are you uncertain whether you want to address work conflicts or not? In this workshop, you will learn why we react negatively to conflict, the reasons for conflicts, how to resolve conflicts and responsibly and ways to prevent conflicts.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Work effectively with others
• Learn new techniques
• Learn how conflict can be positive
• Reduce your stress

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

Professional Business Writing (PBW) is an interactive, customized program that is designed for the needs of today’s business world. Today’s business people want to read quickly; they want to understand readily, and they get bored easily with too many details. PBW helps you meet the needs of these demanding readers. By practicing various types of writing for various audiences, you will see the importance of writing with a strong sense of purpose. Participating in PBW will help you improve the readability, organization, and persuasiveness of your business writing.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Write clearly and succinctly
• Aim your writing to the audience.
• Improve the organization of your business writing.
• Persuade others through your writing.
• Write professional memos, letters, reports, and evaluations.

Length:

1 Day

Introduction

Making presentations is critical to organizational effectiveness and is an important part of many jobs. Presentations can provide information, persuade and can energize an audience to take action. This workshop provides participants with the skills they need to make an effective presentation and to sell ideas in a persuasive, well-documented manner to management, employees and customers and to present their ideas clearly and convincingly. A key component of the workshop is the videotaping of a presentation with individual feedback. 
Throughout the workshop, participants give each other verbal and written feedback on their presentation skills. The facilitator will also provide feedback, and will model for participants how to give honest constructive and positive feedback. After the workshop, participants will be instructed as to how to work with a peer coach to receive feedback on a real-time presentation they deliver.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Evaluate your current listening skills
• Identify and provide examples of barriers to listening
• Identify common habits that promote inactive listening
• Practice listening skills

Length:

1/2 Day

Introduction

When information in documents such as manuals and user guides is poorly written or doesn't meet the audience's need, performance suffers. This intensive workshop teaches a proven methodology for capturing and documenting technical and procedural information in a way that is guaranteed to improve end-user performance. Participants learn to structure complex information in a way that makes it accessible, modular, easy to read, and task-based. Participants create documents that enable readers to perform.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Improve comprehension
• Reduce reader errors
• Increase reader compliance
• Reduce access time to critical information
• Increase the readability of documents

Outline:

• Mastering the Architecture of Professional Documents.
• Getting to the point with any document, no matter how complex or how long.
• Creating a writing plan that will save you time!
• Designing one document that meets the needs of all your readers.
• Applying Templates and Patterns for memos, email, reports, and many other documents.
• Applying techniques for quick formatting and easier reading

Length:

1 Day

Introduction

Customer Protocols is an intensive immersion in the skills needed to work effectively with customers. The course is a fast-paced skill-building workshop involving the use of videotaping and individualized feedback and evaluation by customer interaction specialists. Completing an assessment is required prior to attendance, and follow up via a development strategies tool book and management feedback is required as reinforcement. Participating in this workshop will dramatically improve your customer interaction skills.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Follow a professional communication process
• Plan for effective communication
• Establish rapport with customers
• Probe for further understanding, and to avoid miscommunication
• Communicate professionally with their customers
• Practice active listening skills and interpreting body language
• Ensure accountability for communication
• Avoid technical jargon and unnecessary detail
• Use the appropriate mode of communication (e-mail, voice mail, face-to-face, conference call), given the situation
• Ensure quality communication in all situations (written and email as well as face-to-face)

=Diffuse customer anger

Length:

1 Day

Introduction

As a professional employee, you may already have effective telephone techniques. This program is designed to enhance your existing telephone SERVICE skills. Whether calls are internal or external, all callers should be handled in a way that spells S-E-R-V- I-C-E.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• When you complete this training, you will be able to:
• Successfully answering incoming calls and placing outgoing calls
• Efficiently gathering information and taking messages
• Responsibly handling the occasional difficult call
• Voluntarily leaving and answering voice mail messages
• Improving the use of holds and transfers
• Carefully concluding calls
• Effectively providing call coverage

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Describe the business rationale for leveraging diversity within the organization.
• Describe the current organizational context with regard to diversity.
• Identify the cultural makeup of the organization today.
• Identify the potential practices that hinder the organization from leveraging diversity.
• Identify the actions/behaviors that can be taken to overcome the practices that hinder the organization from leveraging diversity.
• Identify the cultural norms with regard to job performance of associates from diverse cultures.
• Use the appropriate behaviors/actions when assessing the performance of associates from diverse cultures.
• Use the appropriate behaviors/actions when conducting a performance appraisal/feedback discussion with associates from diverse cultures.

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Explain what is meant by diversity.
• Leverage the diversity of employees in order to obtain increased business results.</>
• Invite new ideas, information, and diverse perspectives.
• Explain diversity business rationale.
• Explain diversity business strategy.
• Explain the four planks of diversity.
• Follow the guiding principles of respect for individuals.

Length:

1/2 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

COMING SOON

Introduction

Our Compensation course provides the details for establishing, maintaining, and evaluating an effective Compensation Program. This comprehensive course covers everything from the factors that influence compensation plan design to the various types of compensation plans available, and even includes special sections on analyzing and evaluating jobs, performing market surveys, writing job descriptions, and communicating and evaluating your plan.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Recognize factors that influence a compensation plan
• Cite the various compensation methods and uses (Executive Compensation, Sales Compensation, Incentive Pay, Bonuses, etc.)
• Establish an effective compensation philosophy
• Conduct job evaluations
• Collect survey data and perform market analysis
• Create job descriptions
• Develop salary ranges and grades
• Effectively communicate your compensation program
• Understand the basic ongoing tasks necessary to administer a compensation program
• Evaluate your compensation plan
• Define the laws affecting compensation

Length:

2 Days

Recommended Audience:

HR Employees

COMING SOON

Introduction

Working together is the key way to help your teams, your organization, and yourself become more successful. Becoming an effective supervisor is predicated on alignment, building partnerships and empowering teams. An effective supervisor knows how to resolve conflicts, develop teams, and provide feedback on a continuous basis. Working Together Works! provides supervisors with the techniques, tactics and skills needed to develop each of these key skills and more.

Approach:

Working Together Works! enables participants to practice the specific skills necessary to help supervisors grow and develop their teams. Through a pre-course assignment, interactive exercises, movie clips, and role-plays, participants are immersed in the various skills necessary to become proficient in their important role. The workshop causes participants to embrace the importance of their job, thereby helping to create increased job satisfaction, motivation and productivity.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Align associates to the goals of the division/department and the corporation.
• Build partnerships within the team and between your team and other teams.
• Empower teams by encouraging participation and decision-making, as appropriate.
• Resolve team conflicts.
• Develop teams by identifying strengths and weaknesses, and building on strengths while reducing weaknesses.

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

Forget the Golden Rule. In today’s competitive environment, you must treat customers as THEY want to be treated! In this workshop, you will learn about four different styles, how to recognize each style, and how to communicate with customers flexing to THEIR style. You’ll learn your own style and the style of some of your colleagues (and your manager). Use your knowledge of social styles to give you a competitive advantage!

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Define four different social styles.
• Identify these styles in others.
• Apply techniques for increasing your effectiveness when communicating with all types of customers.
• Identify your own social style and be able to flex as appropriate.

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

In the Developing and Instilling Trust workshop, participants will experience the consequences of win/lose in teams and between teams through experiential exercises, role-plays and simulations. Participants learn through self-discovery and application of techniques. This workshop makes the intangible tangible by focusing on the skills required to build trust. Participants learn the components of trust through the trust model; these components are: win/win, openness, honesty and consistency. Participants explore how to move from a win/lose position to a win/win position in the workplace through using trust as a strategic tool.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Identify the impact of lack of trust on work relationships and on departmental success.
• Apply and reinforce the main elements of the trust model: win/win, openness, honesty and consistency.
• Implement trust-building skills throughout the organization.
• Determine how to build trust with specific individuals.

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

This follow-up session is intended to help participants continue to imbed trust throughout their organization. This session should be used as a follow-up to the workshop Developing and Instilling Trust. Ideally, this follow-up session should be held 3 to 6 months after attending the training. Preferably, all the participants from the original training will attend. Talk is cheap with regard to trust. We don’t build trust by telling people trust me. We do not build trust by talking about the importance of trust. We do not build trust through talk, but through our actions. We build trust through win/win actions, through openness, honesty and consistency. We build trust by fulfilling our promises and acting in a consistent and predictable manner. We build trust by showing concern for others, particularly when they are in need of our support. According to Robert Bruce Shaw, author of Trust in the Balance, Trust is the organizational glue that is going to replace loyalty as the bond employees have with the company. As we know, there is no longer an implicit bond an employee has with the company when he or she is hired. Rather, that loyalty is constantly in question when it comes time for layoffs, downsizing or re-engineering. Employees do not feel that they need to be loyal to a company that is not loyal to them. In this workshop, participants learn to imbed trust throughout the organization by practicing specific skills and techniques and putting these to work everyday on the job.

Length:

1/2 Day

Recommended Audience:

All Employees

Introduction

Conservative, technically-oriented organizations have long relied on conservative, traditional ways of learning. In today’s environment, learners are searching for ways to stretch beyond “tried and true” methods in order to ensure that the learning is truly understood and can be immediately applied.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Assimilate information faster
• Truly understand the subject matter
• Retain the material over time

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

All employees in a training organization

COMING SOON

Introduction

Are you tasked with designing job aids to leverage training in a variety of environments and for a range of needs? You will review the characteristics of seven types of job aids and their expanding role in the workplace. Explore examples and participate in design exercises to clarify the characteristics of different job aid formats. And, you’ll have the opportunity to apply the design process to your own job-related projects!

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Determine when to use job aids.
• Select a job aid format.
• Select media.
• Select the appropriate job aid formats:
  • Step
  • Worksheet
  • Look-up table
  • Decision table
  • Flow chart
  • Checklist
  • Combination

Length:

1 Day

Recommended Audience:

Trainers, course developers and project managers involved in development, editing or testing of training programs

Introduction

Everyone knows that being a "learning organization" can improve a business' competitiveness. Yet for most companies, training is only an added cost of doing business. Even if you can't track every dollar, you know that training cuts into production time, is often uneven in quality, and that timing is a big headache.

Objectives:

When you complete this training, you will be able to:

• Enables employees to design the training they need when they need it
• Provides training and re-training "just in time"
• Translates into higher productivity and reductions in errors and waste
• Helps new employees quickly climb the learning curve to full productivity
• Maximizes learning achieved in formal classrooms training as well as one-on-one coaching and group problem solving
• Trains a wide range of employees to be better trainers and learners

Length:

2 Days

Recommended Audience:

Trainers