Catalog

Effective business writing is one of the most important communication skills in the workplace today. By writing well, using clear sentences and correct grammar, you can ensure your message is communicated to and understood by your intended audience.

This course will help participants improve the way they write by expanding their knowledge and understanding of English grammar basics. Examples from actual business writing samples will be used for individual and small group exercises.

What Participants Will Learn

• Gain knowledge and practice writing clear, concise sentences
• Use the active voice
• Determine standard usage in grammar, punctuation, and capitalization
• Eliminate dangling and misplaced modifiers
• Ensure agreement of subject and verb, noun, and pronoun

This course is designed to support individuals who seek to cultivate more effective communication skills, clearer messaging, and better align intention and impact. In this course, participants will identify their needs and desires, practice stating them clearly, and recognize ineffective aspects of their personal communication that may be deterring them from successful interactions or hindering their impact. By identifying their goals for communication, they will develop an approach that is assertive, clear and direct.

What Participants Will Learn

• Understand how to navigate difficult topics or subjects confidently
• Identify barriers as well tools to apply an assertive mindset
• Explore strategies that lead to resolution
• Determine appropriate filters, timing and approaches to your communication
• Approach stressful interpersonal situations more effectively

The ability to communicate effectively in business is essential to both the individual and the organization. Expressing our wants, feelings, thoughts and opinions clearly and effectively is only half of the communication process needed for success. The heart of communication is effectively transferring information, meaning, and understanding from sender to receiver. Carrying out that process convincingly and proficiently is absolutely essential for success. This course will help participants develop strong communication skills that include insight into overcoming communication barriers, reading nonverbal communication cues, and effective listening.

What Participants Will Learn

• Understand how the communication process can be managed to help recognize and overcome barriers
• Positively influence another person’s behavior and his/her way of thinking
• Recognize and reduce major verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication
• Analyze your own communication style and determine how that style naturally supports some types of success while possibly inhibiting other types of success
• Adapt your delivery and message to the style of that other person

Effective communication is the secret ingredient to your organization’s bottom-line demands! When was the last time you wanted to scream: “Is anyone listening?” Well, you are not alone. Although all of us talk and listen to one another, we may not be communicating. In a working environment defined by stress and uncertainty, it is not surprising that misunderstandings abound.

This powerful course will help participants to become familiar with the processes that enhances listening strategies and encourages productive interactions.

What Participants Will Learn

• Acknowledge the emotions and ideas of others to build trust and improve communication in team situations
• Adjust communication behaviors to communicate with different styles
• Listen actively to separate message content from feeling
• Ask questions to expand knowledge and bring out new ideas
• Direct others by giving clear instructions and delegating

In today’s fast-paced world, information is sent and received more rapidly than ever before and when information needs to be disseminated quickly, there is no better way than by email. But how do you ensure that the messages you are sending are effective, acceptable, and will be taken seriously? The use of proper email etiquette is the cornerstone for ensuring your message gets across quickly, appropriately, and concisely.

The email etiquette course is designed to help participants create email messages that are understood as intended by the writer in a single reading.

What Participants Will Learn

• Identify situations when sending email is necessary and appropriate
• Recognize items that you should never send electronically from your workplace
• Create an email subject line that accurately describes the content of your message
• State and avoid the most common mistakes employees make in business writing
• Consider the visual components that enhance an email message and make for easy reading
• Review guidelines for copying and blind copying mess
• Gain an understanding of how to manage your email

One of the most important communication skills is the ability to give and receive feedback effectively. It is also one of the most challenging. Feedback is essential for learning and continuous improvement and can help to motivate and build good relationships depending on how it is conveyed.

This course will help participants present their ideas more effectively to others while also becoming a better receiver of feedback – even feedback that is presented awkwardly. Through hands-on, interactive exercises, participants will practice turning feedback sessions into tools that can help them improve their job performance and meet important goals.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize opportunities to provide feedback to others
• Identify and reduce barriers to giving effective feedback
• Avoid defensiveness by applying the principles of supportive communication
• Apply characteristics of effective feedback
• Adapt your communication style to the needs of the feedback situation
• Manage difficult feedback situations

Success in your professional life will depend on your speaking skills – either because you regularly will be asked to speak before groups or because you will occasionally be asked to do so. Making a good oral presentation is more than just good delivery. It also involves developing a strategy that fits your audience and purpose, having good content, and organizing material effectively. The choices you make in each of these areas are affected by your purposes, the audience, and the situation.

This course is recommended for everyone who needs to develop their presentation skills, speak in front of groups or sell ideas or products to others internally or externally.

What Participants Will Learn

• Practice relaxation techniques to reduce nervousness and to engage the attention of your listeners
• Learn how to project your voice and use pauses to dramatize your point
• Make your content clear and memorable
• Create an audience profile and set presentation parameters
• Condense a speech outline into notes that you can speak from
• Learn the benefits of rehearsing, adhering to a time frame and speaking from notes
• Gain confidence in your presentation skills
• Discover tips for effective composition of visual aids and speaker support materials
• Explain the importance of the questions-and-answer session
• Respond professionally to questions from the audience
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of different room setups
• Be able to anticipate, avoid and handle equipment problems

From time to time, tough conversations are a necessary part of your job. Disagreements don’t just disappear when they’re ignored. Knowing how to be both direct and diplomatic is an important skill when having these kinds of conversations. They need to be dealt with in an appropriate way that achieves the desired result, yet keeps the relationship intact.

This interactive program will give participants valuable techniques and strategies that will make it easier for them to handle difficult conversations successfully. Participants will learn how to prepare for a difficult situation, get the conversation off to the best possible start and manage their emotions. They will gain insights into real situations they have experienced and leave feeling more confident in dealing with them effectively.

What Participants Will Learn

• Discover new strategies for handling difficult conversations effectively
• Determine what makes a conversation difficult and effectively preparing for them
• Initiate and conduct skilled conversations leading to behavioral change
• Recognize and manage the other person’s emotions during a discussion
• Apply calming communication skills to move upset people to the point of reason
• Implement persuasion and negotiation skills effectively

Generational differences do exist; but to what extent do they impact working and personal relationship? By traditional definition, your age defines your generation, but what are the differences between the generations and how can understanding the differences work to your advantage?

This course will provide an overview of the generations, take a look at some of the key collision zones between the generations, provide insight on how to work well together and discuss the upcoming generations.

What Participants Will Learn

• Build awareness of the different generations in the workplace including both commonalities and differences
• Address common challenges multigenerational workplaces face
• Highlight strategies and tactics for working with and communicating with the generations
• Explore how companies have embraced the differences in the generations

The art of asking questions and encouraging a process of inquiry is sometimes lost in the demand for immediate short-term answers. One crucial skill for leaders is their ability to communicate effectively and this includes the practice of asking the right questions. Often leaders believe they need to have all the answers in order to lead others, yet more people will want to follow you if they are the ones that are discovering their own answers.

This course will benefit any individual who wants to understand and improve their process of inquiry. Through this course, participants will be reminded of the benefits of curiosity, explore various questioning techniques, and learn strategies in crafting and asking the right questions at the right time.

What Participants Will Learn

• Formulate questions to match the situation
• Guide others in finding their own answers
• Apply questioning strategies
• Establish a questioning culture
• Create your questioning learning strategy

Writing well is one of the most important skills you can develop to be successful in the business world. Every word you write tells your readers who you are. Effective and efficient writing is essential to maintaining client relations, winning job proposals and grants, and garnering support for action within the company.

This course will help participants send the right message to supervisors, colleagues, and clients by developing their skills in planning, writing, and reviewing a variety of writing projects from email to short reports. This highly interactive course will help participants compose powerful, professional documents that get attention and prompt action.

What Participants Will Learn

• Rediscover basic business writing concepts
• Write conversationally to engage your readers
• Be specific, concrete, personal and positive
• Organize information to help your readers
• Recognize and eliminate unnecessary words, phrases and repetition
• Substitute heavy, confusing phrases with simple language
• Implement techniques for writing concretely
• Recognize how action verbs improve writing
• Adapt salutations and openings that get attention
• Foster effective transitional sentences and closings
• Personalize your writing to create interest and establish credibility
• Be positive and convey sincerity
• Illustrate correct grammar, punctuation and word usage
• Use parallel construction and proofreading techniques

Demonstrating executive presence is no longer optional for leaders who wish to be exceptional in their daily interactions. Developing poise and presence is vital for any business professional today. Presence allows you to command the respect of clients and co-workers, remain balanced under pressure, impact and influence those in authority positions, and demonstrate self-esteem.

Participants will come away with the knowledge and tools to enhance their presence and positive impact. This interactive course will inspire participants to put forward their best, with increased polish and poise under pressure.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define Executive Presence and discover why it’s important
• Build impact and influence by assessing your development areas for poise, power and personal style
• Explore how body language, voice, dress and personal polish enhance your credibility and stature with others
• Discover how to hold your focus and balance during difficult situations and change
• Be confident to start appropriate conversations for work and social situations
• Calibrate your audience, the environment and what’s appropriate in a variety of business and social situations
• Communicate effectively during ad hoc presentations (such as hallway conversations)
• Build charisma, energy and an inspirational presence

In today’s fast-paced, competitive work environment, how you show up can be just as important as what you bring to the table. This interactive session focuses on the power of personal branding and self-promotion as essential tools for career advancement.

Participants will explore how to craft an authentic personal brand that highlights their unique strengths, values, and expertise – building visibility, trust, and influence within their teams and across the organization.

This session will empower participants to own their story and elevate their professional presence.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define Executive Presence and discover why it’s important
• Build impact and influence by assessing your development areas for poise, power and personal style
• Explore how body language, voice, dress and personal polish enhance your credibility and stature with others
• Discover how to hold your focus and balance during difficult situations and change
• Be confident to start appropriate conversations for work and social situations
• Calibrate your audience, the environment and what’s appropriate in a variety of business and social situations
• Communicate effectively during ad hoc presentations (such as hallway conversations)
• Build charisma, energy and an inspirational presence

Many talent development professionals have discovered that they need to add coaching to their skill set. Performance coaching can be described as a series of guided conversations that enable the “coachee” to discover and implement personal solutions to challenging issues or areas of performance. These solutions, because they are intrinsic to the “coachee,” are more likely to succeed and endure than solutions imposed externally.

This course will focus on the techniques needed to help close the gap between expected performance and actual results. Participants will gain a basic understanding of what drives their employees, build connections between each person’s work and the organization’s mission and strategic objectives.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define coaching and identify traits and behaviors of an effective coach
• Explore coaching competencies and apply them to coaching
• Prepare and deliver constructive feedback by demonstrating active listening, asking powerful questions, and using effective dialogue Improve interpersonal relationships
• Identify and overcome some of the major obstacles to supportive communication
• Recognize the relationship between performance improvement and effective coaching
• Develop and maintain an effective coaching plan with others, manage ongoing progress, hold others accountable for actions, highlight and celebrate successes, and adjourn the coaching process

In the years since the publication of First, Break All the Rules, millions have come to the simple, but powerful realization that to get the most out of people, you must build on their strengths. In fact, Gallup research proves that people succeed when they focus on what they do best. When they use their strengths, people are more productive, perform better and are more engaged. The challenge is that people often take their most powerful talents for granted, and many are not fully aware of them.

This course provides insights that will change the way your employees work. Participants will learn how to identify what they do best, tap into those unique talents and maximize their potential by using an assessment from the book StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths, Find Your Edge, Win at Work.

What Participants Will Learn

• Discover how to make a difference by doing more of what they naturally do best
• Get insights into their innate talents by working with their results report
• Identify ways to develop their greatest talents into strengths
• Acquire tools and insights that will help them apply their strengths to achieve greater productivity, engagement and happiness

An engaged workforce is a major competitive advantage for any organization. Engaged employees are more committed to their organizations, leading to greater productivity and higher net profit. In fact, according to a Gallup State of the American Workplace report, businesses with high employee engagement reap a host of benefits including reduced absenteeism, turnover and shrinkage; fewer quality defects and safety incidents; and higher customer metrics.

In this course, participants will learn about the factors that enhance and detract from employee engagement and will prepare them to integrate employee engagement principles to create an engaging workplace culture.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize what engagement is and why it matters
• Discover the positive outcomes and benefits of an engaged workforce
• Acknowledge the difference between satisfaction, happiness, and engagement
• Identify factors that disengage employees
• Explore strategies for creating an engaged workforce

All organizations have conflict. Healthy organizations encourage conflict and deal with it in a positive, creative manner to reap the benefits of new ideas and improved relationships.

This course will help participants develop a positive approach to conflict resolution by gaining an understanding of how conflict affects individuals and teams in the workplace. Participants will examine their own approach to dealing with conflict at work and will be introduced to, and assisted in the development of alternative strategies.

What Participants Will Learn

• Explore sources of conflict
• Recognize the positive and negative effects of conflict
• Examine individual approaches to conflict
• Implement strategies to develop creative solutions to resolve conflict

Research is finding that leaders who invest in the wellness infrastructure of their organization are seeing significant gains to wellbeing. Benefits from mindfulness include: a strengthened immune system, improved concentrative powers, stress reduction and conscious decision-making. Employees are happier and more fulfilled; the workspace feels more creative and open to new ideas. When leaders utilize their focus, presence, and attention to make choices more mindfully and leverage their own wellbeing, people and organizations are successful in new ways.

This interactive course will explore what mindfulness is, why mindfulness is relevant, and how leaders may integrate mindfulness into the workplace.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define mindfulness
• Identify the science behind focusing your attention on purpose
• Explore ways to shift away from auto-pilot and into presence
• Apply practices of mindful attention to your leadership style
• Review real case studies that demonstrate the benefits of practicing mindfulness as an approach to personal development, organizational health and leadership in the workplace.

Environments that have a solid accountability system in place and have a high level of personal accountability among its employees, will also have a culture of empowerment where those individuals will feel they have some (or complete) control over their destiny. By providing opportunities to be empowered, employers are also engaging their workforce in what they are doing, by the outcomes of their work.

This course explores the various elements that can help in establishing a culture of accountability while encouraging an environment where every employee feels empowered, motivated and inspired.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define accountability
• Discover why work may not be happening and address concerns
• Clarify and set expectations should open lines of communication and enable the team to have an open dialog on what appropriate responsibilities and outcomes are for each person and agree on a set of expectations.
• Create a sense of purpose through an agreed upon set of expectations and metrics
• Identify steps for empowering employees in ways that benefit them as well as your organization
• Utilize motivational techniques and coach for development to encourage ownership and buy-in
• Celebrate hitting targets and encourage a culture of continuous improvement

The next generation of leaders faces a workplace in a constant state of transformation. Employees are placing a greater emphasis on purpose and engagement in their work and disruptive innovations are remaking entire industries. This new reality requires a new kind of leader. Most organizations have emerging leaders who are promoted based on their job performance and technical skills, but rarely have they received formal training on how to lead and manage others.

UNC Charlotte’s Corporate Training and Executive Education offers a leadership development program that will turn your emerging leaders into high-performance leaders by providing them with a toolkit on how to direct and manage, the importance of decision making and communication, best practices for managing their time and prioritizing tasks as well as the key principles of people management.

With our hands-on, interactive learning model, your emerging leaders will learn, associate, and practice new skills. These practical “how to” skills can then be used immediately in the workplace. This multi-day program provides a firm foundation on which participants can build their management career.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize the difference between leaders and managers
• Discover key factors that have an impact on team climate, individual motivation, decision making abilities and organizational performance
• Improve all aspects of communication
• Develop the potential of others through key coaching techniques
• Cultivate a climate of trust and commitment
• Emphasize teamwork, innovation, and commitment to continuous improvement
• Build collaborative relationships to foster coordination across functions
• Broaden your ability to recognize different styles of thinking and emotional behavior
• Prepare to ace your next interview
• Create a personal leadership plan

Generation Z, colloquially also known as Zoomers (the generation born after 1997 through the 2010s) now account for 61 million workers in the United States. While it is important not to generalize too much, Gen Zers as a whole do possess characteristics and motivations that differ significantly from earlier generations in regards to the workplace. The challenge for managers is to lead your crossgenerational team in a way that enables all generations to thrive.

This course will provide an overview of Gen Z and some of the key distinctions of this generation as well as provide insight on how to work well together while increasing engagement and productivity.

What Participants Will Learn

• Build awareness of the different generations in the workplace including both commonalities and differences
• Recognize Gen Z as employees, people and their economic impact
• Highlight strategies and tactics for working with and communicating with Gen Zers
• Explore how companies have embraced the Gen Z generation

Organizations are steered by leaders who understand how to mobilize others on to a common ground of performance and alignment. In today’s business climate, an organization cannot afford to be underled by neglecting to develop leadership potential.

Participants will learn proven techniques that will give them the skills to make better decisions, resolve conflicts, improve employee performance and lead change throughout their organization. Through guided discussions, self-assessments and challenging case studies, participants will develop their own unique leadership style for success.

What Participants Will Learn

• Increase self-awareness through feedback and discussion
• Clarify the difference between leading and managing
• Develop skills to build productive working relationships
• Increase confidence using practical proven leadership concepts
• Improve effectiveness closing performance and commitment gaps
• Use tools to create and implement a personal leadership plan
• Manage, lead, and interact in a manner that is aligned with your organization
• Implement a leadership approach that builds and sustains a productive environment

Knowing yourself and how your behavior affects the actions of your team is a key advantage for a manager. This awareness can help you improve your ability to lead your team and improve their overall productivity.

Participants will learn about team dynamics and how understanding others – their goals and values, needs and wants, strengths and weaknesses – can lead to more effective motivation, delegation, conflict resolution and overall team performance. This course is appropriate for mid-level and developing managers.

What Participants Will Learn

• Grow your organization by continually increasing your team’s levels of competency
• Become a more effective and efficient manager by utilizing effective time management techniques
• Track work activities, implement project processes and successfully manage projects across your organization
• Recognize how your behavioral style influences the actions of others
• Determine the key values that can help you find ways to motivate people
• Resolve conflict with proven strategies
• Identify the behavioral indicators that lead to effective team performance
• Become a transformational coach: creating a learning partnership with your employees
• Practice effective delegation techniques that will benefit the individual and the organization
• Improve your skills in managing and leading change

On a daily basis, leaders face daunting challenges. While judging multiple projects and processes, they are also expected to motivate a team of diverse individuals to work collaboratively and productively. Without the proper skills, leaders can be left feeling overwhelmed when faced with these competing priorities.

To help leaders cope with these challenges and succeed, this course will equip leaders to effectively manage their work and relationships to be more productive in contemporary organizations.

This certificate program teaches leaders how to use inspiration rather than fear to enhance their team’s performance, shows them how to empower teams to operate toward common goals and gets results that are critical to the success of the organization. Above all, this program develops leaders who can coach, delegate, communicate and meet goals effectively to not only meet expectations, but to exceed them.

This multi-day certificate program is a highly interactive, hands-on experience specifically designed for leaders and is founded on content that is solid and balanced. Participants leave the program with a clear understanding of the behavioral and strategic expectations of a leader in today’s business world.

What Participants Will Learn

• Create a work environment that promotes innovation and peak performance
• Understand the difference between leaders and managers
• Inspire a shared vision and common purpose
• Empower subordinates to enhance performance
• Create a climate of trust and commitment
• Emphasize teamwork, innovation, and commitment to continuous improvement
• Build collaborative relationships and management systems to foster coordination across functions
• Review strategies for analyzing and preparing for negotiations
• Change confrontation into problem solving
• Understand the dynamics of conflict by learning to identify its nature and sources
• Manage relationships between all functions within the organization
• Develop your ability to recognize different styles of thinking, conflict management, and emotional behavior
• Use teams to implement strategy and manage corporate culture
• Enhance a team’s creative and decision-making abilities
• Understand key factors that have an impact on team climate, individual motivation and organizational performance
• Examine techniques for managing tasks forces, project teams, and other temporary groups

Being an effective leader involves much more than just getting things done. Today, a much higher level of supervisory skill is required. This course will explore how supervisors can maintain technical expertise while demonstrating the right type of leadership. Participants will experience the personal, interpersonal and group skills to be influential in one-on-one situations, facilitate group performance and become an overall effective leader.

Supervisors who attend this course will develop the individual, group and one-on-one leadership skills to keep up with evolving management roles and responsibilities.

What Participants Will Learn

• Develop interpersonal skills that help you communicate, listen and handle conflicts
• Become more effective at influencing others
• Accomplish goals and control outcomes when dealing with staff, peers, management and other departments
• Grasp how to work with groups and teams to solve problems and accomplish projects
• Hold performance discussions that result in changed behavior and enhanced productivity
• Analyze your own style of behavior and recognize your strengths and weaknesses

Nowadays, the majority of knowledge workers can work anywhere, not necessarily in the office. Hybrid teams include team members who are based part of the time in the office, part from home and perhaps part from a third place such as a coworking space or coffee shop, or a mixture of all of these. Hybrid teams aren’t new. However, COVID-19 has increased the number and complexity of these teams in the interim and perhaps permanently. Hybrid is the future of work and requires a new set of skills for managers to lead the hybrid teams.

This is a course for open-minded managers searching for non-obvious, evidence-based solutions on how to build engaged and effective teams regardless of where people are working.

What Participants Will Learn

• Establish a hybrid work model the right way by analyzing, planning, managing, and evaluating on a continuous basis
• Uncover the challenges, while maximizing the advantages, of remote and in-office work
• Create a fair and inclusive hybrid work environment
• Assess team member communication in the absence of visual cues (i.e., body language and facial expressions)
• Define the right success factors for hybrid work and set up the metrics to gauge success

Almost all organizations today confront an ever-changing environment. Change is no longer a choice, but rather, it’s a requirement to staying competitive and doing business. Inspiring organizational change is a key job qualification needed for any leader. Productive and sustainable change leadership is about effectively managing the processes involved with change as well as the human element to change.

Through this hands-on course, participants will learn research-based frameworks and strategies that will help them become a stronger leader of change within their organization.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize the change process and understand the steps leaders can take to successfully drive a transformation initiative.
• Identify techniques for preparing your organization or team for change.
• Acknowledge reasons change initiatives often fail.
• Review methods for addressing resistance and negativity.
• Formulate a plan for rolling out change management initiatives.

Leaders come from all styles. The most successful leaders stand out because they have confident self-awareness and have the ability to effectively adjust their styles to meet the demands of their different roles. The “DISC” behavioral assessment system is just one tool that a strong leader can utilize to recognize each employee’s unique differences. As a leader, how you’re able to relate to, communicate with and ultimately put these diverging personalities together can bolster your team’s effectiveness and your organization’s success.

In this hands-on program, participants will enhance their leadership influence by effectively adapting their behavior to meet the needs of those they lead and engage their team in successful and consistently productive interactions.

What Participants Will Learn

• Appreciate the impact your style can have on your employees
• Learn how to adapt your style to build better working relationships within your team
• Improve communication and learn how to adapt your approach
• Understand and value the work styles and strengths of others
• Deepen the ability to develop others based on each individual’s potential in the team

The day-to-day grind of leading is emotionally demanding, and new challenges and higher accountability create a fever pitch of emotion that can simmer inside even the strongest of leaders. However, leaders with developed emotional intelligence possess greater self-awareness and have the ability to recognize their own behaviors and triggers. By harnessing the power of emotional intelligence, leaders can apply these attributes to motivate and engage their teams, strengthen cooperation and increase performance.

Participants will discover what emotional intelligence is, how it factors in at work, and explore strategies and techniques to become a more effective and inspiring leader to build an organizational culture anchored in emotional intelligence.

What Participants Will Learn

• Discover your personal emotional intelligence quotient and what it means for you
• Gain insight on how to better leverage your emotional intelligence to effectively support your team members
• Manage and adapt emotional behaviors that expand your sphere of credibility and influence by inspiring and maintaining productive relationships
• Recognize emotional intelligence elements and how they impact stress management, decision-making, interpersonal relationships, and leadership interactions
• Create an expectation that emotions matter
• Harness emotionally intelligent motivational skills to achieve team results

Set the stage for a successful management career! You’ve been a superstar in your current role as an individual contributor – so they’ve promoted you. This course will help participants lay the foundation for their management career and provide them with easy-to-apply tools they need to make a successful transition into their new role.

Participants will gain the practical know-how they need – and the confidence they want – to plan, organize, coach, motivate, delegate and communicate in order to be an effective new manager. This course is specifically designed for newly appointed or prospective managers with less than one year of management experience.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize what is expected of a manager and the challenges of making the transition
• Build successful relationships with managers, peers and direct reports
• Understand, utilize and “flex” your management style to manage with more confidence
• Align organizational interests with the individual’s interests
• Create an ongoing process to interact, communicate, provide feedback and coach direct reports
• Set SMART goals and facilitate delegation techniques to achieve win-win outcomes
• Motivate and create a positive work environment

It’s no secret. Employees who feel they are valued and recognized for the work they do are more motivated, responsible and productive than those who don’t.

This practical, hands-on, interactive course will help participants learn the most effective way to motivate others. We’ll also discuss how to tell whether it’s motivation or training that a team really needs, how to use consequences to motivate your team and how to develop a motivational plan that meets a work group’s needs. Return to the workplace ready to apply specific and practical motivation tools and techniques that can bring real results.

What Participants Will Learn

• Describe the nature and scope of motivation
• Identify the differences between people that distinguish the application of motivational skills
• Explain the significance of knowledge and understanding to motivation
• Define the effects of tangible and intangible rewards as a major motivator
• Recognize how actions can be motivated by negative motivators such as pain, suffering, discipline, and threat and distinguish this type of motivation from positive motivation
• Initiate motivation with an individual or group in a situation not previously confronted
• Maintain or increase motivation in both successful and unsuccessful environments
• Identify a range of situations where motivational skills can be applied, and determine an appropriate way to initiate and maintain motivation in each of those situations

You want to become a leader, but are you ready to take that step? Learn how to get noticed and elected for a leadership position and develop the skillset every confident leader needs!

This course is uniquely designed to help leaders-to-be, get ready for their new challenges and responsibilities. Participants discover the heart, soul and mind of true leadership. Participants will also explore leadership roles as strategist, change agent, coach, manager, communicator, mentor and team member. Finally, this course will show participants how to develop their unique leadership style for maximum impact.

What Participants Will Learn

• Discuss which qualities senior management looks for in candidates for leadership positions
• Recognize the challenges that leaders face
• Discover what people expect and respect in a leader
• Identify your leadership style
• Adapt your style to the needs of others
• Get noticed by learning how to look and talk like a leader to build your power and influence
• Identify the strategic alliances you need to build
• Explain strategies for getting others to support your agenda
• Protect yourself against the pitfalls of intra-organizational politics

How can you resolve conflicts less painfully, delegate critical tasks more efficiently, energize your employees and transform resistance into support? Adjusting your management and personal styles to complement the culture of your work group and your organization as a whole can be the catalyst that motivates your teams to heightened productivity.

This course underscores the importance of self-awareness in developing sensitivity to and better communication with others. Participants will leave this course well-versed in the most effective methods for dealing with difficult people…winning cooperation and trust…and ensuring that their people’s values and your organization’s goals are in sync.

What Participants Will Learn

• Determine your own personality style profile
• Gain insight into the strengths and limitations of your profile
• Recognize behavioral clues to determine others’ personal styles and work more effectively with them
• Appreciate motivational factors and their impact on behaviors and work settings
• Use active listening to gain information and understand employees’ perspectives
• Apply positive and corrective feedback
• Identify your own preferred conflict-resolution style
• Use different conflict-resolution styles in different situations
• Diagnose different delegation styles: how and when to use them
• Identify and build on the strengths of your team’s culture

You can’t do everything yourself. If you try, you will quickly find yourself in a cycle of burnout. Not only would you be unable to finish it all, but the quality of your work would likely be reduced. When you delegate, you spread out the load, balance resources strategically and enable people to work to their strengths. The ripple effect of delegating – or not – is either powerfully positive or profoundly paralyzing. Leaders who don’t delegate create bottlenecks and frustration for their team.

This course will give participants real-world practice in delegation strategies that will reduce their stress level, empower their staff and build morale. Participants will take this opportunity to pinpoint the right task, the right time and the right person to help them maximize productivity for themselves and their team.

What Participants Will Learn

• Exhibit greater competence and confidence in assigning work and responsibilities
• Demonstrate delegation basics: what to delegate, who to select, when to start, how to maintain control and give feedback
• Prevent miscommunication when setting tasks and expectations
• Foster greater teamwork, cooperation and collaboration through clear delineation of roles and authority
• Empower and motivate staff to handle more difficult assignments
• Overcome reluctance, resistance and lack of motivation
• Set success milestones and responsibilities
• Create accountability control and follow-up procedures (without micromanaging)
• Recognize, reinforce and reward performance

Having authority alone is not enough. At every level, business and performance should be built on a solid foundation of mutual trust. Trust has been proven to decrease turnover, increase innovation, and improve team performance. When trust is compromised, relationships and productivity can suffer.

This course will enable participants to develop and drive performance, build mutual trust and foster effective working relationships with team members.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define trust and its value in the workplace
• Identify and model behaviors that solicit trust in others
• Create a climate of communication
• Increase employee trust, productivity and morale
• Active communication: how to build trust and get committed action
• Foster effective, authentic working relationships within your team
• Determine the factors that affect the ability to trust
• Rebuild relationships when trust has been broken
• Recognize others in a way that builds respect

Research shows that women bring unique characteristics and capabilities to the leadership challenges they face. In fact, the most successful women have vision, fortitude, and the ability to work in competitive environments without compromising their unique traits and skill sets. To be successful, organizations need to leverage this diversity of leadership to improve the quality of decision-making, provide inspiration and role modeling, and tap into diverse points of view.

This program is designed to improve the leadership capabilities and performance of high potential professional women. Participants will leave with new ideas, skills, confidence, and fresh perspectives to add more value to their company and cascade the benefits of improved diversity across the organization.

In a supportive and highly collaborative atmosphere, UNC Charlotte facilitators will guide participants through a rigorous and engaging program of intensive classroom instruction, individual assessments, case studies and simulations. Every element of this program is focused on strengthening and broadening the participant’s leadership talents and delivering positive results for your organization.

In addition to a multi-day program, each participant will receive one-on-coaching with the overarching goal to help each participant be the very best version of themselves as a leader, executive, and whole person. The experience can feel like a blend of therapy and Olympic cross-training. The focus is on the learner’s advancement as they define it, a definition that usually evolves.

What Participants Will Learn

• Explore current issues impacting women in the workplace
• Gain the insights and skills needed to move purposefully toward the highest levels of corporate leadership
• Transform your leadership presence by creating a personal brand and optimizing the art of tactful self-promotion
• Gain clarity on how others perceive you as a leader
• Expand your understanding of how remarkable women lead and gain your own confidence to become visible
• Improve your leadership skills: Learn different styles to adapt to an individual’s, team’s, or company’s situation
• Communicate with power: Develop executive presence with effective verbal and non-verbal skills
• Build an authentic leadership style: Articulate your value proposition and create a career strategy to support your goal to work in senior management.
• Improve your business acumen by gaining a more sophisticated understanding of marketing, talent management, and financial reporting
• Better understand nuances of negotiations and emotional intelligence
• Hone your critical thinking and decision-making skills
• Build trust and interpersonal relationships while creating an effective team

When creating solutions to complex problems, we often fail to consider what behavior changes will need to be undertaken by key stakeholders (customers, employees, students, etc.) to achieve sustainable success. As Tim Brown and Roger Kelly argued in their September 2015 Harvard Business Review article, design principles can also be employed to help people “engage with and adopt innovative new ideas and experiences.” But, like most things, this is easier said than done.

This course will explore how to leverage principles from the worlds of design thinking, behavioral economics, and decision science to “nudge” people to make different choices and adopt new products, services, and programs.

What Participants Will Learn

• Connect more deeply with customers to discover opportunities for innovation
• Identify social, behavioral, and psychological factors that influence decision making
• Discover the top psychological biases impacting you (and your customers)
• Recognize the differences between choice architecture / nudging and other approaches to
  behavior change
• Use a prescribed process for designing your own nudges, and identify specific resources and
  tools you will need to execute a nudging strategy

Across the arc of any journey, there are certain moments that matter more than others. Whether we’re talking about customers or employees, educators or students, volunteers or donors, the experiences people have at critical touchpoints can have an outsized impact on engagement, loyalty, and retention. To better support these “moments that matter,” it will require a shift in our thinking from programs, processes, and policies to the design of experiences that delight and engage. If any of these things matter to your organization, then you should be asking yourself two questions:

• “What experience do we want people to have?”
• “How might we deliver that experience?”

In this course, participants will explore how organizations can identify the moments that matter most and then intentionally design those experiences to delight employees, customers, and other constituents. Participants will discover that breakthroughs don’t happen by accident. They happen by design.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize the importance and effectiveness of “moments that matter”
• Identify the critical touchpoints in which to invest time and resources
• Intentionally create exceptional experiences that spark deep relationships and generate lasting value

In today’s world, the ability to innovate and to adapt to change is critical for any organization. Clinging to the status quo is a fast track to obsolescence. New products, services, and processes may be the answer, but which ones? And for which audiences?

Design thinking is an innovative, yet repeatable approach to solving problems, exploring opportunities, and creating new products, services, and experiences. By utilizing the tools of design thinking to understand the needs, wants, and limitations of customers or other stakeholders, practitioners can create solutions that are at the intersection of desirability (Does someone want or need it?), feasibility (Can we do it?), and viability (Can we do it a way that’s profitable or sustainable?).

In this multi-day certificate program, participants will gain an understanding of the basic principles and practices of design thinking while also getting hands-on experience with a number of design tools.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize how and why design thinking delivers extraordinary results that often exceed expectations
• Utilize a divergent / convergent approach balanced with a broad focus with a bias for action
• Become familiar with how collaborative design (co-creation) can uncover opportunities and accelerate buy-in
• Grasp why empathy building is a critical, but often overlooked, component to problem solving
• Realize how design thinking helps operationalize the innovation mantra, “fail early, fail often”
• Embrace how rapid prototyping fosters clarity and shared understanding of an idea
• Give and receive feedback in a way that elicits meaningful input quickly

What do moon walking bears and suburban driving habits have to do with innovation? And what can we learn from hot dog eating champions about seeing differently?

This course will share how our “frames” (the way we see the world, ourselves, and our challenges and opportunities) all factor into if and how we innovate. In addition, this course will provide participants with ideas on what we can do differently to overcome the invisible constraints that often limit how we see, think, and work.

What Participants Will Learn

• Expel the basic conventions and common practices of doing business
• Discard today’s common assumptions and management practices and adopt a new way of planning and executing strategies
• Develop an objective view of how the world is changing
• Formulate strategies that create innovation that go beyond the linear satisfaction of customer needs and wants

It has been said that operational excellence secures a company’s present, while innovation excellence secures its future. But with mounting pressures to meet financial expectations, companies and organizations of all stripes find themselves increasingly focused on delivering, not discovering. Might there be a way to lower the time, costs, and risks related to innovation?

Some of the world’s most successful business people have achieved remarkable results using a surprisingly similar approach: methodically taking small, experimental steps. Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins that allow them to find unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.

This course will discuss how leaders can develop a culture that embraces “failing fast” so the best ideas and solutions emerge with minimal investment.

What Participants Will Learn

• Gain confidence to take little, affordable risks to learn what works and what doesn’t
• Utilize design tools to help you when you’re in a situation of uncertainty

You may already know the value that a learning program could bring to your company. Unfortunately, most organizations still don’t emphasize the importance of learning and development as much as they should. Building a solid business case allows you to introduce a new process, purchase new software, create a new role, or develop new training curriculum to close the skills gap at your organization. In this course, participants will discover how to create a defensible, compelling and detailed document that outlines the benefits and return on investment (ROI) to get funding and support for one of their learning programs.

What Participants Will Learn

• Practice tools and coaching guides for you and your team to better understand your business leader stakeholders
• Increase your “business speak” fluency
• Create an actual business-focused value proposition
• Identify the elements of an annual learning plan enabling you to create one for your organization
• Develop a powerful business case to use in obtaining funding for your learning programs

Organizations are increasingly moving from instructor-led classroom training to the virtual classroom. Whether you have already started to design and deliver synchronous virtual classes or just beginning the process, this course will increase your success in the live online environment!

This course will start with virtual class design, focusing on how to convert in-person classes to virtual ones. Participants will learn how to translate activities, and how to avoid the most common design mistakes. Participants will also learn how to effectively deliver virtual training, from pre-class preparation to technology setup to facilitation skills. Participants will walk away with action plans and checklists to help them facilitate virtual classes.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define virtual training so that learner expectations are set
• Design virtual sessions for maximum interactivity and learner engagement
• Effectively engage participants, even when you can’t see them
• Apply classroom delivery techniques to the virtual classroom
• Troubleshoot (and prevent) common delivery challenges
• Manage technical issues in ways that are seamless to participants

Big Data is an extraordinary knowledge revolution that is sweeping almost invisibly through business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life. The term “Big Data” describes the accumulation and analysis of vast amounts of information. But Big Data is much more than big data. It’s also the ability to extract meaning: to sort through masses of numbers and find the hidden patterns, unexpected correlations, and surprising connections.

This course is directed to new and existing Human Resource (HR) and Learning and Development professionals who want to understand how to drive and analyze learning results using data. This course explores HR metrics, evaluation strategies, data collection instruments, as well as analysis and interpretation for the benefit of improving learning performance.

What Participants Will Learn

• Develop an evaluation strategy
• Select an appropriate evaluation methodology
• Collect and analyze data
• Develop processes and controls to ensure sustainability
• Communicate findings to create impact

It takes a certain set of attributes to be a good trainer. Comfort in front of people, knowledge of the subject matter, experience, a passion for learning, interest in people. These are the minimum prerequisites. Anyone in a Learning and Development role should have these attributes, but while nice to have, none of these guarantees great results.

This course will identify, consolidate, and discuss the most effective approaches to ensure success as a trainer. It will enable participants to discover, discuss, and practice effective techniques needed as a trainer. Participants will learn how to manage the classroom environment and the people that are in it. Participants will also gain knowledge in the basics of adult learning theory.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize the basics of adult learning theory
• Create a personal connection with your audience that maintains credibility and rapport
• Recognize different learning styles and adapt your training skills to encourage participation
• Discover effective strategies to manage disruptive participants
• Prepare quality content that is engaging and relevant
• Manage Q & A in the classroom to gauge comprehension
• Utilize evaluation methods and useful templates

No doubt, good instructional design helps guide learners toward achieving the learning goals of a course. The creation of a training program that creates a real and sustained impact on attendees is part art and part science.

During this course, participants will acquire a set of tools and guidelines for designing and developing a meaningful training experience for participants. This course is highly interactive as participants will learn through doing – – namely participants will design an actual training program from soup-to-nuts during this course. This course will focus on ways and methods to create training programs that promote meaningful and lasting learning.

What Participants Will Learn

• Establish an approach for creating a training program
• Develop sound learning objectives through prescribed guidelines
• Discuss an outline template to guide the design of training
• Create a model program
• Create effective materials and exercises with proven tips and tools
• Receive recommended resources for additional learning on each step of the instructional design and development process.

In today’s volatile and global business climate, managing talent for high performance will play an increasingly crucial role in an organization’s growth and future success. Learning and Development is a timeless resource for building employee skills, enhancing their motivation, and contributing to productivity and engagement. It is particularly valuable when the learning activities are linked to the employees’ developmental goals identified in the performance management process.

This course will focus on key components of talent management with an emphasis on learning and leadership development strategies. Participants will discover how they can build a talent management infrastructure for their organization, or strengthen the program(s) currently in place.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define the key components of a Talent Management Infrastructure
• Garner detailed instruction on processes/topics such as: creating competencies, performance management systems, and individual development plans
• Use leading research to build a business case for creating or re-engineering a leadership development program
• Create your own plan to gain sponsorship buy-in for talent management
• Acknowledge the need to strategically plan for adoption of overall talent management initiatives
• Appreciate adoption metrics: key indicators for measuring success

Great trainers do more than share information – they inspire growth, build confidence, and spark lasting learning. This immersive program equips participants with the tools and techniques to design and deliver impactful training sessions in any setting.

Through hands-on practice and real-world application, participants will develop skills in adult learning principles, facilitation, curriculum design, and feedback strategies. Whether leading a classroom, virtual session, or on-the-job training, participants in this program will be prepared to create meaningful learning experiences that drive results.

What Participants Will Learn

• Prepare the learning environment, others and yourself
• Review the principles of adult learning
• Recognize different learning preferences
• Practice relaxation techniques to reduce nervousness and to engage the attention of your listeners
• Learn how to project your voice and use pauses to dramatize your point
• Make your content clear and memorable
• Create an audience profile and set presentation parameters
• Discover how to establish trust, friendship, and credibility with your audience
• Condense your content outline into notes that you can speak from
• Learn the benefits of rehearsing, adhering to a time frame and speaking from notes
• Optimize case studies, group discussions, role play, activities and exercises
• Gain confidence in your presentation skills
• Discover tips for effective composition of visual aids and speaker support materials
• Explore the importance of the questions-and-answer session
• Respond professionally to questions from the audience
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of different room setups
• Be able to anticipate, avoid and handle challenging situations and learners

A training consultant is a professional who optimizes the productivity and development of an organization’s workforce. They evaluate an organization’s current training practices, and they create new training programs that teach material in line with organizational objectives.

This course provides an overview and practice of some of the tools and processes involved in the performance consulting role. Participants will follow a blueprint to make the transition, including a personal assessment, consultant skills inventory, and core competencies to become an effective consultant.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize roles, boundaries, and commitment in the consulting process
• Complete a personal assessment of individual skills, knowledge, and abilities
• Discover the steps in the consulting process
• Demonstrate how to contract effectively
• Practice methods of diagnosing performance problems
• Develop a plan to transition to performance consulting

Successful training professionals know that a critical first step in building the “right” training solution is to conduct a training needs analysis. But what do you do when the company executives have already decided on a training solution, or you’re asked to build a new training program in three weeks? The answer: training needs analysis for the real world.

This course will provide participants with modern, efficient tools for conducting a needs analysis in today’s fast-paced business environment. But most importantly, participants will learn how to identify if training is really the right solution before you start to build it!

What Participants Will Learn

• Generate a working understanding of the ADDIE model
• Determine appropriate methods for collecting behavioral data to analyze training needs
• Execute detailed steps for conducting an effective training needs analysis
• Perform time-saving tips for applying needs analysis principles in the real world
• Apply proven techniques for communication the business benefits of training needs analysis and gaining buy-in

Coaching salespeople is different from any other type of coaching. However, sales coaching is a sales manager’s most important job. Research has shown that salespeople respond best when they are provided a clear path forward where they receive guidance on designing the way and yet owns the steps and processes that lead to the destination.

This course will focus on solution-focused coaching which encourages employees to take personal responsibility and focus on future actions while avoiding excuse making and repeating bad behaviors. Instead, salespeople passionately pursue an outcome where they find resources that work for them uniquely.

What Participants Will Learn

• Assess your team’s strengths and areas for improvement
• Explore questioning strategies that can help your sales team find their own solutions
• Discover how to avoid hearing excuses and complaints by keeping your sales team focused on the end goal
• Listen to learn by being vulnerable enough to let go of the need to be a “know-it-all” and become a “learn-it-all”

In these increasingly complex times having a well-conceived strategic marketing plan is essential for businesses to win in tough markets and any marketing or sales manager would agree that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

In this practical course, participants will discover how to develop strategic marketing plans and translate these into actionable sales and customer plans. This course will provide participants with a set of straightforward tools and techniques to gather information on their competitive landscape, develop appropriate marketing strategies and then execute these strategies via their sales and customer service personnel.

What Participants Will Learn

• Manage what happens when marketing and sales do not work together
• Build a relationship between a Strategic Plan and a Marketing Plan
• Analyze customers, markets and competitors
• Discover marketplace opportunities and threats
• Set marketing and other key business objectives
• Relate marketing goals to sales outcomes
• Use the marketing mix elements (product, price, channel of distribution and marketing communications) to develop strategy
• Control the marketing effort
• Establish an annual planning calendar
• Create strategic marketing and sales plans
• Practice developing the framework for your own business

Sales skills and management skills are two different things. Sales management is another thing altogether. Sometimes top performers in sales are promoted with good intentions. However, what makes you a top sales performer does not necessarily make you a top sales manager. Conversely, what makes you a top manager may not make you a top sales manager without understanding what it takes to manage a productive sales force.

This course will give participants the skills to manage, encourage and see exceptional results from their salesforce.

What Participants Will Learn

• Define the characteristics of superior sales people
• Recognize different sales styles
• Read your people and communicate with them via their preferred communication method
• Develop and maintain your sales culture
• Create brand loyalty and manage your market area
• Set product and performance expectations
• Address individual goals and communicate high expectations
• Measure performance and provide feedback
• Motivate your sales force and overcome sales slumps
• Evaluate your needs – skills, knowledge and attitudes required for your sales team
• Utilize hiring tools – what’s available and how effective are they
• Incorporate key motivators – why and when money is and is not the best motivator
• Manage (and measure) sales meetings for efficiency and effectiveness
• Hold effective sales meetings with a geographically scattered sales force

It’s time for a new perspective in sales and sales leadership. Research shows that only slightly more than half of sales representatives (53%) are meeting or exceeding their quotas. And this is in spite of salespeople and sales managers having access to more information, education and sales enablement tools than ever before.

This course is designed for sales leaders seeking to maximize their sales team’s performance by increasing their self-awareness and managing their emotions to achieve positive results.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize the benefits of emotional intelligence
• Review the four dimensions of emotional intelligence
  • Self-awareness
  • Self-management
  • Social awareness
  • Relationship management
• Create an environment for productive work relationships
• Increase your sales team’s deliberateness in making decisions
• Motivate your sales team to manage their emotions with confidence

Today it seems there are as many different approaches to sales effectiveness as there are products and services to sell. Regardless of their methodology, the sales professionals who truly succeed understand that sales happen when you know and connect with your prospects and clients.

This course will take participants step-by-step through the entire sales process and covers every critical phase of selling. Participants will leave this course better equipped to win the confidence and trust of prospects, develop presentations that meet your clients’ real needs, create long-term sales relationships by offering solutions, influence the right buyers and close the sale with ease.

What Participants Will Learn

• Identify qualified prospects
• Research prospect companies and locate the true decision-maker and influencers
• Plan calls for maximum impact
• Copy gatekeepers and composing effective voicemails
• Define and understanding the importance of each step of the sales process
• Exhibit confidence in front of new customers
• Establish credibility and trust with new or prospective customers
• Distinguish the value of customer interviews
• Create a list of probing, industry specific question
• Identify individual customer needs – and immediate selling opportunities
• Present solutions vs. presenting products and services
• Communicate your product/serve superiority effectively
• Distinguish between real and phony objections
• Overcome sales resistance with proven techniques
• Clarify reasons to buy and achieving customer commitments
• Recognize when to close and what to close for by using various closing technique

Whether your sales team is crushing it every month or struggling to reach targets, you can always get better results. It’s important to view every negotiation as an opportunity to build trust and lay the groundwork for repeat business. One of the main reasons that sales teams don’t reach their full potential is because they bring the wrong tactics to the table.

This course will focus on teaching your sales team to negotiate better deals, by embracing the right mindset, developing trust-based influence and creating a win-win culture.

What Participants Will Learn

• Become instrumental to creating a positive mindset within your sales team when they’re negotiating
• Emphasize the need for your sales team to position themselves as a trusted advisor
• Encourage your sales team to approach each negotiation as a win-win opportunity

Today’s competitive sales environment requires more than exceptional products, features and benefits to separate you from the competition. Consultative selling is the key to customer-focused sales interactions.

This course addresses the heart and soul of effective selling during face-to-face customer interactions. Participants will apply the skills and strategies they need to gain competitive sales advantage by planning and executing a proven sales process. This course will provide the tools that they need to become successful in professional sales.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize what it takes to be a top performer today
• Gain an introduction to consultative selling
• Improve sales effectiveness and self-assessment by understanding the evolution of a sales professional
• Acknowledge a customer’s perspective of why people buy from who they do
• Analyze and understand different sales styles
• Read buying styles of customers
• Adjust your approach to meet the styles of your internal and external customers
• Overcome communication barriers through active listening
• Present to visual, auditory and kinesthetic customers
• Develop customer-focused interactions
• Create sales questions that involve the customer and gain commitment
• Uncover customer needs through assessment
• Build instant rapport and trust as well as long-term relationships
• Prepare and clarify objections, overcoming skepticism, indifference and opposition
• Identify buying signs and eliminate the fear of closing
• Utilize closing techniques in a consultative sales process

As every CEO will tell you, staying afloat is difficult enough as it is. To succeed on top of simply surviving and to actually grow — that’s a whole other challenge in itself. It doesn’t matter what your organization does, what its products or services are, you’re always going to be competing directly with other similar companies in your industry. By defining what your organization’s competitive advantage is, you automatically improve your position in a competitive business environment.

This course provides participants with the tools to make it easier to define their organization’s competitive advantage and help them to redefine their strategic roadmap. Participants will explore how using a framework and asking the right questions can make this process easier and more effective.

What Participants Will Learn

• Discover analytical frameworks for strategy formulation
• Recognize the economics of value creation and capture
• Explore the market forces underlying industry profitability and firm performance
• Assess the long-term sustainability of competitive advantage
• Develop resources and effective capabilities for strategic investments
• Capitalize on growth opportunities through strategic positioning and fit

Winning new business contracts requires innovative bidding approaches. This course provides a thorough overview of the entire proposal development and presentation process – including each successive stage from RFP analysis to submission of a compliant, persuasive written proposal and compelling oral presentation.

This course features a variety of teaching techniques, including a simulated RFP. Each team analyzes a RFP; creates a winning strategy; develops themes; then plans, outlines, writes and submits a written proposal. Every participant will benefit from this hands-on learning approach. This course will teach participants how to write for results!

What Participants Will Learn

• Differentiate the difference between a RFP and proposal
• Appreciate why we write proposals and why they fail
• Recognize the evaluators point of view
• Plan and schedule proposals
• Discover the typical stages in producing a proposal
• Write effective, compelling and persuasive proposals
• Organize page layout and design considerations
• Implement essential elements of a win strategy
• Utilize brainstorming techniques to differentiate your company from the competition

Billions of dollars have been invested in process improvement and information technology by corporate America and the government over the last 15 years. The payback has not met expectations. The key to solving this “Process Paradox” or “Productivity Paradox” is to link and align business process management with strategic planning so that improvements truly impact the longterm health of an organization.

This course will help participants to evaluate process performance relative to current strategic goals, use process analysis techniques to discover new strategic opportunities, leverage processes and/or information technology to create differentiation to ensure the success of process-driven strategies.

What Participants Will Learn

• Grasp why business processes are more important in today’s business environment
• Utilize process improvement techniques to reveal the strategic potential of business processes
• Implement techniques for leveraging process excellence to expand market share, strengthen customer relationships, enter new market segments and create new revenue streams
• Apply strategy maps to focus day-to-day performance on strategic (as well as operational) objectives
• Recognize why technology and process investments must be tied closely to corporate strategy for these efforts to create meaningful, long-term return on investment

Business Process Management has emerged as the glue that enables organizations to effectively integrate strategic initiatives, information technology investments and day-to-day operations, thereby enabling sustainable operational excellence. Essentials of Business Process Management will provide foundational knowledge from the Association of Business Process Management Professionals’ (ABPMP) Comprehensive Body of Knowledge as well as practical roadmaps to guide your BPM journey.

What Participants Will Learn

• Recognize why a systems view is essential to sustainable success
• Appreciate where the ABPMP’s Knowledge areas fit
• Observe key results you can achieve with BPM
• Acknowledge improvement strategies (Lean vs. Six Sigma, etc.)
• Identify the 3 Ms of Process Improvement: Map, Measure, Manage
• Create a culture of improvement
• Manage across silos by reviewing the results of a best practice survey
• Chart the course ahead for your organization

The last decade has seen organizations in all sectors benefit from a renewed surge in productivity. These gains are the direct result of improved process management techniques and the application of new technology. Still, the business press reports many stories of failed reengineering efforts, insufficient ROI from enterprise software systems, and the rejection of new technology by workers. Why this disparity?

In this course, participants will gain an understanding on how to accelerate the adoption of a process change by engaging stakeholders, communicating the benefits of the change, recognizing the significance of the change, and involving stakeholders in the implementation process.

What Participants Will Learn

• Develop a strategic program for improving business performance
• Build cross-functional coalitions of influential people
• Develop a communication plan to sell and reinforce the new process vision
• Staff and facilitate process or technology implementation teams
• Achieve buy-in from the people who must utilize new processes and technology
• Provide high-level direction for implementation project management
• Recognize systemic changes needed to institutionalize improved process performance

Improving processes begins with the customer, be it internal or external. Understanding which customers and which requirements are most critical to your business determines which processes should be improved.

In this course, participants will discover how to map a process, design a measurement system, measure process performance, identify gaps, select and apply improvements, and evaluate the results.

What Participants Will Learn

• Measure and analyze process performance
• Understand variability and how it drives your improvement tactics
• Identify the stability, capability, and flexibility of your processes
• Determine what level of quality your process is capable of delivering
• Evaluate and apply process improvement alternatives
• Develop results-oriented solutions that will yield improved business results

Process Mapping is the essential foundation for every approach to quality improvement (Six Sigma, Lean, reengineering) and workflow automation (ERP, BPMS, CRM). However, business processes do not exist in a vacuum. Before mapping and improving how work gets done, it is essential to understand the business system in which a process operates, lest we create a more efficient system for garbage-in, garbage-out.

This practical, how-to-do-it program delivers a one-two punch: Systems thinking techniques to clarify the “big picture” and a toolbox of mapping techniques that will enable you to streamline and redesign performance. It will arm you with the knowledge you need to analyze the way your organization really operates, to identify opportunities for eliminate waste and inefficiency, and to identify upstream metrics that will help your organization manage quality, customer service, productivity and financial performance.

What Participants Will Learn

• Identify and understand your organization’s true core processes
• Recognize and remove activities that do not add value
• Eliminate systemic flaws that result in poor quality
• Document processes for knowledge management or BPM initiatives
• Identify critical “pulse points” or lead measurements
• View customer/supplier relationships and their impact on your system
• Engage business leaders, users and customers in process change efforts

There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for getting better business results. It is both art and science, requiring data-driven problem solving and out-of-the-box solutions to assure sustainable success.

This course will add creative redesign techniques (Six Hats, SCAMPER, Five Max) to your classic, data-driven process improvement skills so you are able to deliver both incremental change and breakthrough solutions for your organization. It takes a strategic view that assesses how your organization’s unique process strengths can be leveraged as competitive weapons.

What Participants Will Learn

• Evaluate the need for innovation vs. improvement
• Interpret data and graphics to make key decisions
• Think outside the “process box”
• Devise innovative process designs based on customer needs
• Evaluate and apply process improvement alternatives
• Develop results-oriented process improvement solutions
• Assess the strategic impact of process capabilities
• Deliver more value to current and future customers