Designed for Working
Our Work Together Series features five programs aimed at improving collaboration and team performance. Each program can be delivered either in-person by a certified facilitator, or online through our learning portal.
COLLABORATE*
There are many ways to work better with others, but if you try any of these ways insincerely, you’ll come off as a sleazy and manipulative. The first step to working together is to have our heads and hearts right. (We know it sounds cheesy, but it also happens to be true.) We teach three skills to help people think and feel differently, and then teach you how to use that difference to work together. (*Prerequisite for all courses in the Work Together series.)
Communicate
Organizations bleed time and money because people don’t communicate well. Part of the problem is we have a habit of figuring things out in our heads, and then presenting our conclusions as finished products. Since those around us weren’t involved in our inner-dialog, what we share is generally divorced from proper context. Misunderstandings ensue. In Communicate we learn the skills for effective communication with others.
Resolve
You can judge the quality of an organization by how it handles disagreements. When differences of opinion are explored and weighed on the merits, good things happen. Yet often ideas succeed or fail based solely on the power of the author. Not only is this less effective, it kills morale. Resolve teaches participants how to solve conflicts on the merits in a way that usually meets the needs of everyone.
Motivate
If getting people to improve was as easy as hanging a poster, we’d all be giving 110% and rowing our way to teamwork. When soft tactics don’t work, we tend to move to carrots and sticks. When it comes to carrots, often people either don’t care or get so caught up in winning they act poorly, and with sticks people will only do as much as it takes to avoid being swatted. (And they’ll hate you for it.) Motivate teaches a more effective way to help people to change.
ENGAGE
Year after year polls show about two-thirds of employees aren’t engaged. They come in as late as they can, do as little as they can, and leave as soon as they can, costing U.S. companies about $16,733 a year per employee. But when people know how to find meaning within their organizations and their daily tasks, engagement dramatically improves. Engage helps companies decrease turnover and increase productivity.