Communication skills are at the heart of everything we do each day, whether at home, at work, or at play. Active listening encompasses the best of communication, including listening to what others are saying, processing the information, and responding to it in order to clarify and elicit more information. This course will help participants develop and practice their active listening skills.

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Do you love those moments of exception, when everything seems to have come together and things are working beautifully? Would you like to create an environment where those rare extraordinary moments become the norm? Then you may just be ready to learn the value of Appreciative Inquiry, also known as AI. AI is a method for implementing change that is rooted in being positive, sharing stories of things that work well, and leveraging people’s strengths and the power of co-creation to initiate lasting, powerful changes that can make an organization the best it has ever been, because of people who care and are committed.

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Change is something that excites people who love opportunities for growth, to see and learn about new things, or who like to shift the status quo. Some changes, however, are harder to adjust to and lead to expressions of resistance and anger. We can take concrete steps to make change more palatable by understanding people’s hesitation, enlisting the help of others, setting up plans, and managing stressors. These steps can also ensure that desired changes are implemented successfully.

In this course, you will learn how to manage and cope with change and how to help those around you too.

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Many people see conflict as a negative experience. In fact, conflict is a necessary part of our personal growth and development. Think of when you were trying to choose your major in college, for example, or trying to decide between two jobs. However, conflict becomes an issue when the people involved cannot work through it. They become engaged in a battle that does not result in growth. When this type of conflict arises, negative energy can result, causing hurt feelings and damaged relationships. This course will give participants the tools that will help you resolve conflict successfully and produce a win-win outcome.

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Effective leaders understand how powerful an opportunity can be when they can tap into the intelligence, wisdom, and innovation present in their workforce. Conversational leadership provides the space and infrastructure for knowledge sharing to take place; for employees, stakeholders, and the community to be involved in discussing big, important questions; and to generate solutions that people within the organization can take action on.

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Viable organizations need to be ready for emergencies because they are a fact of doing business. The worst plan is not to have any kind of plan at all, and the best plans are tested and adjusted so that they work over time. Fortunately, you do not need separate plans for fire, weather disasters, and all the different kinds of crises that can occur. One solid plan will help you to prevent, respond, and recover from all crises. This course will help you ensure your organization is ready to manage any kind of crisis.

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Effective delegation is one of the most valuable skills you can master. It reduces your workload and develops employee skills. Delegating prepares employees who work for you to be able to handle your responsibilities and simultaneously allows you to advance to other career opportunities within your organization.

Delegation is often one of the hardest skills for a manager to master. However, the skill can be learned. This course workshop will explore many of the facets of delegation, including when to delegate and to whom to delegate. We will also go through the delegation process step by step and learn about techniques to overcome problems.

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More than ever, a workplace is a diverse collection of individuals proud of who they are: their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their ethnic background, and all the other components that make an individual unique. One of the challenges for workplace leaders is how to help these diverse individuals work as a team. We all know what happens to organizations that don’t have effective teamwork: they fail. And, failing to embrace diversity can also have serious legal costs for corporations. This one-day workshop will give you ways to celebrate diversity in the workplace while bringing individuals together

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Have you ever been in a workplace situation where a supervisor has made a decision that you didn’t agree with? Did you wish that you could ask someone else what they thought of the decision; whether they would have done the same thing? The peer review process offers employees just that chance, using a formalized procedure to ask, consider, and resolve just these sorts of questions. This one-day workshop will teach you everything you need to know about employee dispute resolution through mediation

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This course is designed to help workplace leaders learn how to provide feedback any time that the message is due. Whether feedback is formal or informal, and whether it is provided to employees, peers, or someone else, there are ways that it can be structured to be effective and lasting.

This course will help participants learn why the way we deliver is feedback is important, how to deliver a message so that people accept it and make changes that may be needed, and how to accept feedback that we are offered.

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Understanding how to manage the knowledge within your organization is the key to business success. Mismanagement of organizational knowledge comes with a price: frustrated employees, angry customers, and decreased productivity. All of these things can affect a business’ bottom line. The purpose behind knowledge management is to help us bridge organizational gaps and to use our greatest asset (our knowledge) to take our business performance to the next level. The theory of knowledge management has emerged to help us harness and enhance both the individual and collective brain power of our businesses. This course will introduce you to knowledge management tips, techniques, and proven processes

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When things are extremely busy at work and you have your hands full with many tasks and dealing with difficult people, having skills you can draw on are essential for peace of mind and growth. This course will help participants understand the causes and costs of workplace pressure, the benefits of creating balance, and how to identify pressure points. They will also learn how to apply emotional intelligence, increase optimism and resilience, and develop strategies for getting ahead.

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Did you know that most employees decide to leave a job within their first 18 months with an organization? When an employee does leave, it usually costs about three times their salary to replace them. You can greatly increase the likelihood that a new employee will stay with you by implementing a well-designed onboarding program that will guide the employee through their first months with the company. This course will explore the benefits of onboarding, show you how to design an onboarding framework, give you ways to customize the program for different audiences (including managers and executives), and demonstrate how to measure results from the program. (Statistics from a 2007 study by the Wynhurst Group)

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We make decisions and solve problems continually. We start making decisions before we even get out of bed (shall I get up now or not?). Sometimes, we will have made as many as 50 decisions by the time we leave for work. Despite all the natural decision making that goes on and the problem solving we do, some people are very uncomfortable with having to make decisions. You may know someone who has a hard time making decisions about what to eat, never mind the internal wrestling they go through in order to take on major decisions at work. Likewise, we’ve probably all looked at a solution to something and said, “I could have thought of that.” The key to finding creative solutions is not just creativity, although that will certainly help. The answer rests in our ability to identify options, research them, and then put things together in a way that works. Having a process to work through can take the anxiety out of problem solving and make decisions easier. That’s what this course is all about.

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Workplace accidents and injuries cost corporations millions of dollars and thousands of hours lost every year. They also have a profound, often lifelong impact on workers. Introducing a safety culture into your organization, where safety is valued as an integral part of the business’s operation, not only saves the business time and money, it also builds a committed, loyal, healthy workforce. This course will give you the foundation to start building your safety culture.

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Today’s workforce is experiencing job burnout and stress in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels feel stressed out, insecure, and misunderstood. Many people feel the demands of the workplace, combined with the demands of home, have become too much to handle. This course explores the causes of such stress, and suggests general and specific stress management strategies that people can use every day.

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This workshop is for people who are new supervisors or who are interested in a supervisory position, as well as those who are team leads or part-time supervisors without a great deal of authority.

This course is designed to help participants overcome many of the supervisory problems that they will encounter as a workplace leader. Dealing with the problems that a new supervisor encounters isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to lead to discouragement.

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It’s easy to forget the “manager” part of your “project manager” title among the other range of activities you are responsible for. However, your management skills are an important part of your success as a project manager, so it is crucial that you grow both of those skill sets. There are also some advanced project management techniques that you can master to help bring your projects to successful completion.
 This course presumes that participants have a thorough understanding of project management, including topics such as preparing a statement of work, setting project goals, scheduling, budgeting, managing project risks, and executing a project.

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Teams are an important building block of successful organizations. Whether the focus is on service, quality, cost, value, speed, efficiency, performance, or other similar goals, teams are the basic unit that supports most organizations.
With teams at the core of corporate strategy, your success as an organization can often depend on how well you and other team members operate together. How are your problem-solving skills? Is the team enthusiastic and motivated to do its best? Do you work well together? This course can help you get there!

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Coach, Mentor, Role Model, Supporter, Guide… do these words ring a bell? Being a coach involves being able to draw from several disciplines. Coaching is based on a partnership that involves giving both support and challenging opportunities to employees. Mentorship is a related skill that is often a part of coaching. It’s about being a guide, offering wisdom and advice when it is needed.

Knowing how and when to coach (and when to use other tools, like mentoring) is an essential skill that can benefit both you and your organization.

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Success in dealing with conflict comes from understanding how we behave, as well as how we can influence others. If we approach difficulties as needing to take place in one or a series of conversations, and we approach those conversations with a plan, we will find that we have less difficult people to deal with. More often than not, we will also have more meaningful and significant conversations. In this one-day workshop, you will learn how to turn difficult situations into opportunities for growth.

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Organizations recognize that they do better business when their people are engaged, motivated, and yes, talented. Having the right people in place at the right time is a key aspect to continued growth, success, or even just stability. This two-day course will provide you with just what it takes to have the right people ready. It will help you create a program to measure the talents of your people and how to help them grow in preparation for the future. It will also help you support and grow your organization by teaching you how to apply the most current research and adapt your organization to the ever-changing marketplaces.

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In today’s society, many people experience information overload. We are bombarded with messages to believe various ideas, purchase things, support causes, and lead our lifestyle in a particular way. How do you know what to believe? How do you separate the truth from the myths?

The answer lies in critical thinking skills. The ability to clearly reason through problems and to present arguments in a logical, compelling way has become a key skill for survival in today’s world. This course will give you some practical tools and hands-on experience with critical thinking and problem solving.

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The right training at the right time can make a huge difference in the productivity and profitability of your organization. Whether you are scanning your workplace for opportunities to make things better and training is the answer, or a client asks you to come into their organization and do an assessment, your answer is best framed in the form of a training needs analysis. Your ability to create an analysis that is comprehensive yet simply prepared is critical for it to be understood and acted upon. This course will help you to gather the information, assess the data, and present your suggestions for training or non-training solutions.

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As project managers and leads, we all know how difficult it can be to accurately determine the duration of a project, yet that is exactly what is expected of us on a regular basis. This workshop will not disclose the secret of creating an accurate schedule, because there isn’t one. However, it will provide the factors and fundamental elements that you should consider and address when creating any type of schedule.

Participants should complete the Intermediate Project Management workshop prior to this course, or have equivalent knowledge

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How can you facilitate, rather than control, group decision-making and team interaction? With no formal training, people may find it difficult to make the transition from instructors or managers to facilitators. This course has been created to make core facilitation skills better understood and readily available for your organization. It represents materials and ideas that have been tested and refined over twenty years of active facilitation in all types of settings.

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When we talk about influence and persuasion, we often talk about marketing and sales. However, we influence in many ways and with great frequency. If you want a raise, sometimes you need to persuade your boss. If you want to convince your team to adopt a change, help your staff make choices, or choose the best place for lunch, there is often influencing taking place. This one day workshop will help participants learn how to influence and persuade in a variety of areas.

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Supervisors represent an important force in the economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who report to you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. Although you usually have more technical experience than the employees you supervise, you may not have had a lot of leadership experience. This course will give you the skills in communication, coaching, and conflict that you need to be successful.

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Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This course will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.

Members of such a group want to get some kind of result out of their time together: solving problems, brainstorming, or simply sharing information. At its best, such a group knows what it is about, and knows and utilizes the strengths of individual members.

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Inspiring someone to be their best is no easy task. Just how do you manage for optimum performance? How do you create a motivating environment that encourages people to go beyond their best? This course will give you some of those skills

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This course has been designed for those in positions where they must speak in front of audiences that are hostile or demanding. This material is also suitable for those who are relatively new speakers who want some encouragement to speak up in meetings or who want some training before they begin making presentations on behalf of the organization. Speaking under pressure, or thinking on your feet, means being able to quickly organize your thoughts and ideas, and then being able to convey them meaningfully to your audience to modify their attitudes or behavior. It applies to formal speeches as well as everyday business situations. This course is aimed at improving your skills and learning some new techniques which will give you the persuasive edge when you are making a presentation, fielding difficult questions, or presenting complex information

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Self-leadership puts together taking responsibility for our outcomes, setting direction for our lives, and having tools to manage priorities. Self-leaders work at all levels of an organization. They are front-line workers in every possible role, middle managers, and CEOs. Self-leaders like Walt Disney and Wayne Gretzky worked hard to achieve their dreams without using the term self-leadership. However, they have clearly demonstrated that being in control of their behavior and results, focus, practice, and learning were necessary to achieve their goals.

Self-leadership requires a commitment from individuals to decide what they want from life and to do what’s necessary to get the results they want. This course will help participants internalize the four pillars of self-leadership and to make meaningful, empowered choices while taking action to get where they want to go.

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Success as a manager is heavily influenced by how well your team operates and what kind of results they achieve. Is your team able to solve problems? Can they resolve conflict? Are they enthusiastic and motivated to do their best? Do they work well together? This course is designed for participants who want to develop their team leadership skills and unleash the talent of their individual team members

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Time is money, the saying goes, and lots of it gets lost in disorganization and disruption. We also deal with a constant barrage of technology, people, and tasks that can contribute to that disorganization. Many people find that they flit from one task to another, trying to get everything done. In this course, you will learn how to make the most of your time by getting a grip on your workflow and office space, using your planner effectively, and delegating some of your work to other people.

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Anger is a universal experience. Dogs get angry, bees get angry, and so do humans. You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that managing anger productively is something few individuals, organizations, and societies do well. Yet research tells us that those who do manage their anger at work are much more successful than those who don’t. The co-worker who can productively confront his teammate about his negative attitude increases his team’s chance of success as well as minimizes destructive conflicts. The customer service agent who can defuse the angry customer not only keeps her customers loyal but makes her own day less troublesome. This one-day workshop is designed to help give you and your organization that edge.

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A healthy self-esteem is essential for growth and achieving success. Of all the judgments you make in life, none is as important as the one you make about yourself. Without some measure of self-worth, life can be painful and unrelenting. In this one-day workshop, you will discover some techniques that can dramatically change how you feel about yourself, and how you approach the world to get the things that you want.

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Performance reviews are an essential component of employee development. The performance review meeting is an important aspect of career planning, and the outcomes of the meeting should be known to the employee and supervisor before the meeting actually takes place. Remember what the German philosopher Goethe said: “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.” Setting goals and objectives to aim for will give both supervisors and employees a focus, and is one of the key aspects to meeting overall company objectives. Supervisors must also learn how to give feedback, both positive and negative, on a regular and timely basis so that employees can grow and develop. Performance appraisals involve all these activities.

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Companies everywhere, no matter what their industry, can benefit from the principles of continuous improvement with Lean. Whether they adopt a very formal process or commit to something less structured, they can follow its principles and improve their bottom line by reducing wasted time and resources.

This course is designed for learners who have completed the pre-requisite Lean Process Improvement course, and perhaps have been involved in implementation of its principles in their workplace. It is the ideal next step along the path of learning and creating a workplace culture committed to continuous improvement

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Creative thinking and innovation are vital components in both our personal and professional lives. However, many people feel as though they are lacking in creativity. What most of us do not recognize is that we are creative on a daily basis, whether it’s picking out what clothes to wear in the morning or stretching a tight budget at work. While these tasks may not normally be associated with creativity, there is a great deal of creativity involved to get those jobs done. While some people seem to be simply bursting with creativity, others find it a struggle to think outside the square. If you fall into the latter category, it is important to understand that boosting your creative and innovative abilities takes practice. Recognizing and honing your own creative potential is a process. That’s what this two-day workshop is all about.

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As with many significant undertakings, undergoing a CRM review (even simply considering its implementation) requires learners to analyze technical and complicated systems. This one day course sorts through a myriad of information and brings you the basics you need to make a decision about the need for CRM, its benefits, and how to coordinate the base requirements for a CRM undertaking.

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Some people immediately command attention and respect when they walk into a room. Do you have that kind of presence? If not, is it something that you would like to develop? This course will help you do just that by building your credibility, improving your personal appearance, honing your networking skills, and enhancing your ability to communicate effectively. You will also receive an introduction to core leadership skills.

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Organizations who promote accountability are more successful and more productive. In this course, you will learn about what accountability is, how to promote it in your organization, and how to become more accountable to yourself and others.

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There are currently five generations in the workforce. Only a few short years ago employers who were expecting to be faced with mass retirements are now looking at accommodating workers who cannot afford to retire, or are simply healthy and happy enough they’d like to stay at work. However, the labor force continues to put in hard work and lots of strategy to find the right people to fill vacancies and to be able to serve their customers.

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Project management is not just restricted to certain industries, or to individuals with certification as a project manager. Lots of us are expected to complete assignments that are not a usual part of our job, and to get the job done well, within our budget, and on time.

This course is intended for participants who understand the conceptual phase of a project’s life cycle, including setting goals, creating a vision statement, and creating the Statement of Work. This course will take participants through the remaining three stages: planning, execution, and termination.

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We have so many interactions in the run of a day, it’s reasonable to expect that some of them are going to be difficult. Whether these are conversations that you have in person, or you manage a virtual team and need to speak with someone in another city, there are things that you can do to make these conversations go smoothly. This one-day course will give you the tools to manage difficult conversations and get the best results possible out of them.

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Negotiating is about resolving differences. People who can master the process of negotiation find they can save time and money, develop a higher degree of satisfaction with outcomes at home and at work, and earn greater respect in their communities when they understand how to negotiate well.

Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling support duties, this workshop will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate in any situation. This course includes techniques to promote effective communication and gives you techniques for turning face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.

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This course is about the type of impact we want to have in life and work. Participants will consider and define the influence that they can have on their life and work. They will also learn skills for success and how to create those circumstances.

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A great presenter has two notable qualities: appropriate skills and personal confidence. Confidence comes from knowing what you want to say and being comfortable with your communication skills. In this course, you will master the skills that will make you a better speaker and presenter.

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If you and the people who work with you don’t understand where the company is going, they may all develop their own priorities and actually prevent you from getting where you need to be. Part of getting everyone on board is creating a strategic plan complete with the organization’s values, vision, and mission. Then, there’s the challenge of bringing these principles to life in a meaningful way that people can relate to. This course will help you describe what you want to do and get people where you want to go.

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This workshop is for people who are new supervisors or who are interested in a supervisory position, as well as those who are team leads or part-time supervisors without a great deal of authority.

This course is designed to help participants overcome many of the supervisory problems that they will encounter as a workplace leader. Dealing with the problems that a new supervisor encounters isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to lead to discouragement.

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Whether you are creating a workplace wellness program from scratch, or enhancing what you already have, you’re already on the right track! With increasing costs of health care, a shrinking workforce, and aging workers, a savvy workplace understands the value in supporting workers to improve their conditioning and to live a fitter lifestyle. This course includes all aspects of designing or upgrading a program, from concept through implementation, to review.

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