Leading for Excellence Series: Lunch & Learns and Breakfast Forums

Organizations are increasingly recognizing that coaching skills are a critical leadership competency; effective coaching skills help leaders to build bench strength, enhance employee motivation and develop true followership.

During this 90-minute workshop, you will

• Consider various perspectives on coaching (what it is and what it is not)
• Learn a simple yet powerful model for coaching
• Practice inquiry and listening, two of the foundational skills for effective coaching

To supplement your learning, you will receive a Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) guidebook–Three Keys to Development: Defining and Meeting Your Leadership Challenges–and additional coaching resources, including a roadmap for implementing a formal coaching process with your direct reports.

While opportunities to negotiate exist every day, women frequently avoid them.  As a consequence, creative solutions to problems may remain unexplored, and important needs may continue to be unfulfilled.  The Leadership, Negotiation & Gender workshop examines many of the special challenges and constraints that women experience in initiating personal or professional negotiations.  Participants will learn new tactics, backed by years of research, which will help them to maximize bargaining power. By viewing negotiation from a mindset of confidence rather than of fear, women can be far more successful in communicating concerns and achieving appropriate, satisfying results.

  In this workshop, you will

• Learn a proven 5-step model for Principled Negotiation
• Explore gender-based obstacles to productive outcomes
• Gather tool and tips to become your own best advocate
• Discover how to create new possibilities in all aspects of your life

Featuring the Conflict Dynamics Profile-Individual (CDP-I)

This workshop features the Conflict Dynamics Profile-Individual (CDP-I), an assessment instrument that enables participants to understand how they behave when faced with conflict in the workplace. The CDP-I measures both constructive and destructive responses to conflict. The CDP-I also examines “hot buttons,” which are behaviors in others that can irritate or frustrate an individual and lead to conflict.

In this workshop, you will

• Receive feedback from the CDP-I on how you behave during conflicts
• Learn how to maximize the opportunities and minimize the harmful effects of conflict
• Discuss the costs and benefits (yes, benefits!) of conflict in your organization
• Discover the link between effective leadership and productive conflict management

Participants will also receive the developmental guide, Managing Conflict Dynamics: A Practical Approach, which provides tips for both improving behavioral responses to conflict as well as cooling down hot buttons so they become less likely to trigger conflict.

Featuring the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI)

In this workshop, you will explore basic differences in approach to problem solving, creativity and decision-making, three key issues in managing change in an organization. Using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, you will learn to identify your own problem-solving style and assess the styles of others. The resulting awareness will enable you to recognize sources of conflict, value diversity of contributions, increase productivity and enhance team collaboration.

In this workshop, you will

• Receive feedback about your preferred style of problem-solving and decision-making
• Understand how style differences may impact effective teamwork
• Learn to enhance performance through the appreciation and appropriate utilization of differences
• Recognize that all people are original and creative

For more information, contact Megan Watson Kramer at 800.753.0444 or watsonma@eckerd.edu.

Featuring the Baron Emotional Quotient Inventory

Emotional Intelligence has become a very popular and powerful concept in leadership training.  This workshop reviews research demonstrating the critical connection between emotional intelligence and high performance. After identifying the key components of emotional intelligence, you will discover your own strengths through feedback from a self-report assessment instrument, the BarOn EQi.  Because these crucial skills can be developed and enhanced over time, you will learn practical tips for significantly increasing your leadership impact.

In this workshop, you will

• Discover the hidden driver of superior performance
• Learn the key elements of emotional intelligence
• Assess your own emotional intelligence through the BarOn EQi
• Discuss steps for building essential leadership skills