The Seven Most Common Mistakes Leaders Make
Purpose
This foundational workshop helps leaders recognize seven behaviors that commonly interfere with trust, engagement, accountability, and performance. It defines effective leadership as engaging others to deliver desired results and introduces the need to balance accountability for results with inspiration of people.
Process
Participants examine each mistake, identify where it may appear in their own leadership, and discuss practical ways to respond differently. Reflection centers on feedback, respect under pressure, leadership values, the transition from doing the work to leading others, and the role of humility.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Parallel Lines illustrates the transition from individual contributor to leader and the need to build leadership expertise alongside technical expertise.
- Box of Life reminds leaders that people interpret situations through different life experiences, so leaders need to lead with curiosity and listen before responding or judging.
- Integrity Circles helps leaders compare the values they want to demonstrate with the actions others actually experience.
- Positive Feedback offers practical guidance for giving timely and specific recognition.
- Schedule Leadership prompts leaders to reserve time for the work of leading instead of defaulting to their individual task list.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Identify personal habits that may create confusion, frustration, or disengagement.
- Balance clear accountability with encouragement, support, and respect.
- Approach daily leadership situations with greater intention and humility.
Be a Great Coach
Purpose
This workshop introduces coaching as a practical leadership communication style for developing people and raising performance. Coaching is defined as using dialogue to shape, guide, and grow another person's performance.
Process
Participants explore coaching for growth and coaching for improvement, then concentrate on conversations that build capability and future potential. They practice a six-step process: welcome the person, set the stage, state relevant background, ask a key question, ask and listen, and gain agreement on actions and follow-up.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Eight Key Principles for Great Coaching emphasize two-way conversation, questions, listening, future potential, clear agreements, and continual coaching.
- Coaching for Growth Planner provides a repeatable structure for preparing and conducting a development conversation.
- Let Them Hold the Ball helps the leader transfer ownership of the conversation and solution to the other person.
- Peel the Onion and the Conversation Box provide follow-up questions for understanding perspectives, exploring options, and clarifying next steps.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Conduct balanced coaching conversations instead of supplying every answer.
- Help team members think through situations, options, and next steps.
- Create clear agreements, timelines, and follow-up while building capability and ownership.
Communicate By Design
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders address situations in which conduct, attendance, or performance falls short of expectations. The focus is a firm, clear, and respectful coaching conversation that helps the person understand the concern and get back on track.
Process
Participants examine common pitfalls in improvement conversations and practice a six-step Coaching for Improvement process. They prepare factual observations, clarify the expected behavior, ask for the other person's perspective, discuss impact and options, and reach a specific agreement about actions, timing, and follow-up.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Nine Pitfalls in Coaching for Improvement identifies habits such as making assumptions, reacting emotionally, or doing most of the talking.
- Three Categories of Expectations organize expectations related to conduct, attendance, and performance.
- How to State the Facts helps leaders separate observable behavior from judgment and clearly describe the expectation.
- Coaching for Improvement Planner guides preparation for the full conversation.
- Conversation Box questions help leaders listen, test understanding, explore options, and gain agreement.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Prepare for and conduct difficult performance conversations with greater confidence.
- Address concerns directly while remaining factual, respectful, and open to the other person's perspective.
- Establish clear expectations, actions, timelines, and accountability.
Understand Your Leadership Style
Purpose
This workshop builds awareness of how a leader's natural interpersonal style influences communication and working relationships. Leaders learn that effective communication requires adapting beyond their own preferred approach.
Process
Participants take a DISC TTI Interpersonal Style Report to understand their tendencies and apply the results to workplace situations. They explore how pace, directness, task focus, and relationship focus shape the four styles, then practice recognizing and adapting to the needs of others.
Key Tools and Concepts
- DISC Model organizes interpersonal behavior along active or direct and inactive or indirect tendencies, as well as task and relationship orientation.
- Four Styles describe Dominant Drivers, Influencing Expressives, Steady Amiables, and Compliant Analyticals.
- Styles in Review summarizes the strengths, needs, and possible challenges associated with each style.
- Tips for Adapting to Others provides specific communication adjustments for working more effectively with each style.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Recognize their natural communication tendencies and the impact those tendencies may have on others.
- Identify likely style preferences in other people without treating one style as better than another.
- Adapt pace, detail, tone, and involvement to improve communication and productivity.
Create a Culture of Employee Engagement
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders understand the direct role they play in team member engagement. It introduces six leadership strategies that create clearer expectations, stronger connection, meaningful involvement, and recognition.
Process
Participants define engagement, assess their own engagement and the current state of their team, and identify practical actions they can take. Discussion and application focus on emotional intelligence, expectations, meaningful work, listening, leader visibility, and recognition.
Key Tools and Concepts
- At-a-Glance Engagement Assessment helps leaders examine the current experience of their team and identify improvement priorities.
- Emotional Intelligence includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
- Six Strategies to Create a Culture of Engagement cover emotional intelligence, clear expectations, meaningful and challenging work, listening to learn, visibility, and reward and recognition.
- Visibility Action Plan helps leaders build purposeful interaction with team members into their regular routine.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Recognize leadership behaviors that strengthen or weaken engagement.
- Assess engagement conditions and select practical actions for improvement.
- Create more opportunities for team members to contribute, use their strengths, and feel valued.
Maximize Performance 365 Days a Year
Purpose
This workshop gives leaders a year-round approach to maximizing performance. It shifts performance management away from an isolated review event and toward the ongoing work of defining expectations, monitoring progress, and coaching.
Process
Participants use the Leadership Engine to work through three connected responsibilities: define performance, monitor performance, and coach performance. They clarify conduct, attendance, and performance expectations; write SMART goals; choose monitoring methods; plan consistent one-on-ones; and identify coaching opportunities throughout the year.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Leadership Engine for Maximizing Performance connects the Define, Monitor, and Coach activities.
- Expectations Charter documents the general standards team members need to understand.
- SMART Goals make goals Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, and Timed.
- One-on-Ones for Monitoring Performance establishes a regular cadence for reviewing progress, priorities, and support needs.
- Coaching Multiple Performance Areas helps leaders address more than one aspect of performance while maintaining clarity.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Set clearer expectations and performance goals at the beginning of the work.
- Monitor performance through observation, data, feedback, check-ins, and team member self-monitoring.
- Use timely coaching to reinforce success, address concerns, and support continued development.
Support Yourself and Others Through Change
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders understand both the organizational reasons for change and the individual experience of moving through it. Leaders examine their own reactions and learn how to support team members who need information, time, or coaching to move forward.
Process
Participants use rational and emotional change models to examine a current change. They identify predictable reactions, consider what people need at different stages, and prepare a six-step coaching conversation for a real change-related situation.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Rational Change Model describes how organizations move through Getting Started, Building Momentum, and Reinventing.
- Predictable Human Dynamics of Change explains why a rational business decision can still create a difficult personal response.
- Emotional Change Model describes Endings, Transitions, and Beginnings.
- Four Emotional Reactions identify anger, sadness, fear, and self-doubt as common responses to change.
- Coaching Through Change Planner and Coaching Plug-In Strategies help leaders prepare supportive, focused conversations.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Identify where they and their team members may be in the emotional change process.
- Recognize common reactions without dismissing or reinforcing unproductive behavior.
- Provide clearer information, support, and coaching to help people continue moving through change.
Resolve Conflict
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders move from avoiding or mishandling conflict to addressing it productively. It treats conflict as a disagreement that has escalated to the point that people can no longer move forward effectively.
Process
Participants examine common sources of conflict, assess their preferred response mode, and work through the elements that cause a disagreement to escalate. They then plan actions or a facilitated conversation that focuses on facts, expectations, possible agreement, and productive next steps.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Four Common Reasons for Conflict identify personal issues, infrastructure issues, limited resources, and unclear expectations.
- Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument examines Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accommodating based on assertiveness and cooperativeness.
- Conflict Model connects expectations, agreement, lived behavior, an unmet expectation, and negative emotional reactions.
- Ideas for Minimizing Negative Emotional Reactions focuses attention on facts, feelings, shared expectations, possible agreement, and solutions.
- Mediation Meeting Planner supports leaders who need to help other people work through a conflict.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Recognize their default conflict response and choose an approach suited to the situation.
- Separate the issue from the person and discuss expectations directly.
- Guide conflict conversations toward understanding, agreement, and workable solutions.
Create Productive Meetings
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders plan, facilitate, influence, and support meetings that use time well and produce useful results. It also emphasizes the responsibility every participant has for the quality of a meeting.
Process
Participants review 11 elements of a productive meeting and apply practical methods for structuring discussion, encouraging participation, addressing disruptive behavior, and documenting follow-through. They consider both the leader's role as facilitator and the leader's role as a meeting participant.
Key Tools and Concepts
- 11 Elements of a Productive Meeting cover facilitation, purpose, agenda, roles, recordkeeping, brainstorming, disagreement, listening, shared responsibility, ground rules, and action items.
- Clear Purpose and Agenda gives participants a reason for meeting and a structured path for accomplishing it.
- Brainstorming and Exploring draws out a wider range of ideas before evaluation or decision-making.
- Freedom to Disagree and Shared Responsibility for Disruptive Behaviors support candid discussion while keeping the meeting productive.
- Action Items clarify what will be done, who is responsible, and when the action will be completed.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Structure meetings around a clear purpose, agenda, roles, and expected results.
- Increase participation, communication, and productive disagreement.
- Conclude meetings with documented actions, owners, and completion dates.
Solve Problems, Make Sound Decisions
Purpose
This workshop strengthens the leader's ability to solve problems, make decisions, and develop those capabilities in others. A problem is defined as the gap between a current state and a desired state; a decision is a commitment to a course of action that closes the gap.
Process
Participants apply the five-step CIDER process to a workplace problem. They clarify the situation, generate possibilities without premature evaluation, weigh options and impacts, assign actions and decision authority, and establish a follow-up plan for evaluating results.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Problems versus Decisions clarifies the relationship between understanding a gap and committing to action.
- 13 Ways Leaders Build Problem Solvers and Decision Makers give leaders a set of practical methods for involving and developing others.
- CIDER stands for Clarify, Identify, Decide, Execute, and Review.
- CIDER Worksheet supplies questions for individual, one-on-one, or group problem solving.
- Brain Writing, Ask Someone Else, and Methods for Decision Making expand idea generation and selection options.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Define the current state, desired state, known facts, unknowns, and consequences of inaction.
- Involve the right people in generating and evaluating possible solutions.
- Turn a decision into clear action assignments and review results against the desired state.
Focus Your Team
Purpose
This workshop helps leaders align their teams around the work that matters most. It provides methods for clarifying why the team exists, identifying the few priorities that drive most results, protecting time for important work, and creating regular accountability.
Process
Participants identify the team's customers and purpose, define three to five Master Priorities, and distinguish core priorities from projects. They create a weekly planning approach, select two or three key commitments, examine urgent and important work, break large projects into manageable steps, and design a weekly review process.
Key Tools and Concepts
- 3 P's of Focus organize the team's work into Purpose, Priorities, and Projects.
- Think 20% applies the 80/20 principle to identify the core activities that produce most of the team's results.
- Plan the Week and the Weekly List organize activities by Master Priority and identify the week's key commitments.
- Eisenhower Box distinguishes important and urgent work from important project work that requires protected time.
- Break Big Rocks into Little Rocks and Time Blocking make complex work easier to schedule and complete.
- Weekly Team Review creates accountability by reviewing prior commitments, wins, obstacles, and new commitments.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Create a shared team purpose connected to the customers the team serves.
- Align team members around three to five Master Priorities and make clearer tradeoffs about time.
- Use weekly commitments and review conversations to strengthen focus and accountability.
Lead By Design
Purpose
This concluding workshop gives leaders time to review the full Series, practice integrated leadership skills, reflect on progress, and prepare for continued development. It also provides closure and recognition for the work completed throughout the experience.
Process
Participants summarize key learning, review the Series tools, and apply multiple skills to workplace case studies. They revisit a real leadership challenge, compare their current leadership expertise with their starting point, identify the behaviors or habits they want to sustain, and map the activities, obstacles, and feedback relationships that will support continued growth.
Key Tools and Concepts
- Key Models and Skills Summary Card provides an at-a-glance reference to the major models, planners, and methods taught across the Series.
- Case Studies and Role Practice require participants to select and combine skills for realistic leadership situations.
- Formula for Ongoing Leadership Growth and Development identifies personal and team activities that should continue after the Series.
- Leadership Growth and Development Planner records priority behaviors, supporting activities, possible obstacles, and people who can provide feedback.
- Feedback Loops invite key people to observe progress and provide ongoing input and accountability.
Leaders Will Be Able To
- Identify the tools they are most likely to use in recurring leadership situations.
- Apply several Series concepts together when a situation is complex or difficult.
- Create a practical plan for sustaining two or three priority leadership behaviors or habits.