Coaching, Learning & Development

A strong workplace fairness system has many components. Soft skills training and coaching can provide support for employees by building capacity for a stronger, more collaborative working environment and improved communication.  Our learning sessions focus on conflict resolution, negotiation, influencing others, collaboration, managing change and successful communication.  Coaching sessions will focus on the goals of the individual clients.

Coaching: Looking to develop your own skills in conflict resolution, negotiation or influencing others?  Our experts are Certified Coaches who can support you to explore your existing skillset and bring awareness and growth to this area.  Leaders and others who have highly developed skills in this area thrive in the workplace.

• For clients, especially for executives and managers, the ROI for investing in coaching was nearly 600%. (Source)
• A study of the effect of executive coaching on a Fortune 500 company concluded that it produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business. (Source) 
• Executive coaching produced positive ROIs in various areas including improved productivity (53%), teamwork (67%), improved supervisor relationships (70%), etc. (Source)

Learning & Development: All Workplace Fairness Learning programs can be customized to suit organizational needs and budgets.  See examples in our 1 hour lunch & learns that can be adapted to 1/2 or full-day sessions.

60% of employees never received basic conflict management classes or training for conflict resolution in the workplace. Of those who did, 95% state that the training helped them navigate workplace conflict positively and seek mutually beneficial outcomes CPP Inc., 2008

Below is an example of quick helpful learning videos that we are sharing on our Youtube Channel. You can access more of these videos here.

Shifting Conflict Styles can Shift Conflict

Are you familiar with your go-to conflict style and how it affects conflict situations?   Are you an avoider, a director, or an accommodator?  Learn more about the five conflict styles, where you comfortably function and how you can shift styles for different situations.  Become more aware of other’s conflict styles and learn strategies to successfully interact for collaboration.

From Confrontation to Collaboration – Running Effective Meetings

Despite their reputation as a huge time-suck, meetings can be the makings of real, measurable teamwork.  Are you getting sidetracked by confrontational outbreaks and meandering discussions? Make meetings meaningful again and reclaim productivity for your team.

Managing Change and Coping with Resistance

Change is unavoidable in today’s business environment, and individuals, managers and companies have a choice: be controlled by, and reactive to changes in their environments, or, be proactive and manage the change successfully.  How does demonstrating empathy and building understanding play a substantial role in managing change and overcoming resistance?

Supporting Clients – Building Better Relationships.

Do you deal with upset or evasive clients on a regular basis?  Your relationship with your business partners affects your efficiency, productivity and peace of mind. Approaching client disputes confidently, with an eye toward effective resolution will ensure you build successful working relationships.

Conflict to Innovation – Creative Change can emerge from Conflict

“Our present challenge is to change the culture of conflict itself, within our workplaces, our communities, and our world. We must create a culture where even the most serious disputes are handled not on the basis of coercion or force, but from mutual respect and coexistence. Far from eliminating differences, our challenge is to make the world safe for differences.” –William Ury.  How can we structure our conversations to ensure participants are in a state of mind to innovate and not fight, flight or freeze?

How Active Listening can Overcome Resistance and Build Influence

Given all this listening we do, you would think we’d be good at it! In fact most of us are not, and research suggests that we remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what we hear.  How well you listen has a major impact on your job effectiveness, and on the quality of your working relationships with others.  Can you improve? Learn to open the door and earn yourself a hearing.

Painless Performance Review Conversations

It’s that time of year again that many managers and employees dread.  For many, a face-to-face performance review is the most stressful work conversation they’ll have all year. How can you as a manager create more active participation and involvement in the review process.  How can you as an employee bring forward your concerns and build understanding?  Have a different type of conversation this year.

The Coaching Conversation – Tools for Supporting Self and Others to Make Good Decisions

 We can be at our best helping others when we can help them see themselves and their situation at new angles. Learn to be supportive helping others and empower them to make their best decisions without solving it for them. Questions can be more powerful than solutions.

Influencing Without Formal Authority or Power

How many times have you been asked to affect change in your team or organization when you have had no formal authority or power to make this happen?  We all have influence even if we are not the team lead or the CEO.  Can you be the person in the group who everyone turns to in complex situations?

Change Fatique

Change is perpetual. It’s never going to stop, and that fact alone is pretty daunting.  Why does change, which can be so exciting and lead to so many great opportunities, create fatigue?  In this session we will define change fatigue and provide some practical tools to manage change more effectively.

Say What you Mean Without the Mean

This session will give you the tools to get your message across while getting the reaction you want. You’ll understand the neuro-science behind feeling threatened and learn to make statements that lessen the chance of a defensive reaction or conflict escalation.  Discover how you can respond confidently and productively in complex situations.

Shift Team Thinking through Storytelling

We are wired for storytelling. We look for patterns and narrative arcs as a way to organize information in our brains. Is the story memory of your team members clouding their perspective? Explore how storytelling can help your team gain fresh perspectives, stimulate senses, and lead the way to new solutions for old problems.

Managing Stress in the Workplace

Stressors in the workplace come in many different forms, and each of us reacts to them differently. Faced with work stress, some power-up and work harder, some withdraw from meetings and responsibilities, and others are overwhelmed and face an inability to move forward. Regardless of your response, it is important to recognize and manage workplace stress, and to support others around you who experience it.  You will learn to identify the symptoms of chronic workplace stress, and three strategies for managing it.

Negotiation for Workplace Success (1 day)

Every conversation aimed at decision making is a negotiation. Whether you are firming up a contract with a client, or discussing the process and timelines for delivery of a project with a colleague, balancing your own needs with those of the organization, the client and the project can be a real challenge. In this program you will learn to

• Plan for effective strategic discussions
• Structure conversations for reaching agreement
• Build value through using trades effectively
• Balance needs of self, client, and organization

This session consists of lecture and role playing exercises with coaching. Participants will receive a negotiation checklist.

Facilitating Change Effectively (1 day)

Change is an inevitable reality in every organization. Facilitating group discussions around change can be challenging, particularly when emotions are running high. In this session you will learn to:

• Create a workable inclusive agenda
• Manage time and ensure concrete specific go-forward steps are achieved in each session
• Ease stress by acknowledging concerns (without demonstrating agreement)
• Ensure balanced discussions where everyone has a say

This session is an active facilitation. Participants learn through experiencing facilitation, group discussion, and small group interactive exercises. Participants will receive a meeting planning checklist.

Influencing and Collaborating with Colleagues, Clients and Senior Leaders (1 day)

Do you regularly come across resistance to your ideas and projects?  Are you having difficulty affecting change and influencing others?  This one-day workshop will enable you to collaborate effectively with colleagues, clients and senior leaders.  Role-plays and exercises will help develop new strategies, skills and tools to deal with resistance, change and authority.

In this session you will learn to:

• Describe the neuroscience behind the brain when influencing others
• Develop and employ strategies and tools to manage resistance more effectively
• Determine collaboration styles and how it affects you and others
• Structure conversations for successful outcomes when you have no direct authority.

Turning Conflict into Collaboration (1 day)

For many people, conflict is little understood and best avoided.  This one-day workshop will shed some light on how to deal with conflict, analyze your role in conflict and build awareness about conflict within yourself and with others.  Role-plays and exercises will develop new strategies, skills and tools to assist in turning conflict into cooperation.  You will create a ‘Go Forward Plan’ to ensure that the skills and insights you have acquired are applied and appropriately introduced into the workplace.

Upon completion of this seminar, participants will be able to:

• Describe their usual role/reaction in conflict
• Develop and employ strategies and tools to manage conflict more effectively
• Determine their conflict style and how it affects others
• Explain how conflict affects Team dynamics
• Make a plan to assist with future conflict situations

Manage and Resolve Conflict (2 days)

This program was developed specifically for supervisors and team leads. Participants gain insight into their own behaviour in conflict, learn strategies for coaching others in conflict, and learn and practice tools for effective listening and assertive communication.

Powerful Performance Conversations (1day)

Morning: The POWERful Performance Conversation

Powerful Performance Conversations require POWERful listening. People who feel heard, understood, and acknowledged are more engaged and open to change. In this session, you will learn and practice tools for active listening and effectively managing emotions. You will walk away with the language to ask open questions and a strategy for empathizing and acknowledging strong emotions without demonstrating agreement.

Afternoon: Ask, Don’t Tell.

Even the strongest rhetoric may not convince someone to be motivated and work harder. In fact, a demand may have the opposite effect. In this session, you will learn to diagnose an employee’s performance and determine when it is effective to ask, and when it is effective to tell.  Using Blanchard’s Situation Leadership model and a real case study, we will explore effective responses to different scenarios. Join us and learn when those active listening skills are really critical.