Leaders are the keepers of organizational values and perpetuators of standards of excellence. They don’t make great service happen by themselves, but they play a vital role in creating the conditions and providing the support that enables others to serve to the best of their ability every day. This fast paced, highly interactive workshop leaves participants with exciting new insights into the skills necessary for effective service leadership and relevant tools ready to be implemented when they return to their office.

This seminar is based on the skills and principles that are taught in the best-selling book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High. Al Switzler, one of the book's coauthors, will first discuss what crucial conversations are and how they impact every aspect of our work and home lives. Participants will then learn how the best communicators are able to handle these intense conversations and get results while building relationships.

We all face change every day. This seminar will help us better understand dramatic change and, more importantly, learn how to use that understanding to gain a competitive advantage. This practical and stimulating session will highlight opportunities for substantial productivity improvement even when faced with dwindling resources. Attendees will learn how to introduce change with minimal resistance, anticipate dramatic shifts, and discover the powerful role of leadership and vision during turbulent times.

Effective leaders empower people in a way that prompts them to take ownership for their role and responsibility for their actions. Leaders also know what they need to do to get people to respond to them. What do successful organizations do to create in their people the ability to take ownership? How do leaders move from managing to leading so that people will follow? This session will not only give an insight into what successful organizations do, but will give practical tips on how to achieve it.

Through fascinating examples from history, including the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and the tragedy on Mount Everest, this workshop will explore the following: the five myths of executive decision making; how to foster open debate; how to achieve "diversity in counsel, unity in command"; how to move to closure: overcoming the inability to decide; avoiding "analysis paralysis" and other pitfalls; how to gain the whole-hearted commitment to act; and how to address hidden doubts that could undermine your final decision.

Recent research suggests that criticism is perhaps the most powerful and neglected business skill, that it causes more conflicts at work than disputes over power, pay, and promotion, and that most of us are inept at giving and taking criticism productively. This intense program will focus on how to transform the necessary exchange of criticism from a taboo act and a destructive and demoralizing encounter into a positive, motivating, mutually beneficial experience that encourages trust, heightens self-esteem, and boosts productivity.

The objectives of this dynamic, interactive session are to help participants: (1) develop a clear picture of the Work-Life Balance they would like to achieve; (2) identify obstacles that stand in the way of achieving their desired balance; (3) develop a repertoire of action strategies and tools for overcoming current obstacles and any that may arise in the future; and (4) develop their own personal action plan which is concrete, practical and achievable.