Corporate Programs

Accelerating High-Performing Virtual Teams is a highly interactive program conducted virtually using the Adobe Connect platform. It is designed to equip virtual teams with the key skills and tools to enhance their leadership and team effectiveness.

Because today’s teams are dispersed geographically, sustaining high-performance levels, continuously improving, and staying “engaged” is especially challenging. In addition, while the attributes of high-performing teams are the same for all types of teams, several key distinctions must be taken into account for virtual teams to achieve high performance.

These include challenges to focus and flexibility, using technological tools, and engaging virtually, given the lack of “live” face-to-face interaction on virtual teams. This program equips team leaders and members with the ability to accelerate performance in the virtual environment.

Accelerating High-Performing Virtual Teams is delivered in four phases:

Phase 1: Team assessment of current strengths and opportunities
Phase 2: Team “virtual” observation with feedback
Phase 3: Four team skill-building modules:

• Active Listening
• Assertion
• Conflict/Trust
• Decision Making

Phase 4: A 90-day, post-learning assessment that measures the team’s progress and effectiveness.

Additional team coaching and consulting support can be provided through the Guttman Leadership Institute to enhance continuous learning and development.

Learning Objectives

• Assess current “as is” virtual-team effectiveness through an online survey and real-time observation of team members
• Understand the skills, accelerators, and stallers of high-performing virtual team
• Identify the actions and behaviors necessary to leverage the skills/accelerators and mitigate the stallers
• Practice key skills, including virtual meeting facilitation, assertion, active listening, decision-making, building trust, and resolving conflict in a virtual environment

In today’s organizations, work gets done through teams. You are not likely to succeed unless team members are aligned, accountable for one another’s success, fully engaged, and competent to act. But no team can operate at peak performance from Day One, though you can accelerate the process.

This highly intensive and interactive two-day program is exclusively for entire teams and is designed to quickly move your team along the path to high performance. Team members will learn to diagnose their team’s behavior by mastering the “Team Development Wheel.”

This will enable them to assess the team’s “as is accurate,” identify the blockers preventing them from attaining peak performance, and develop a shared understanding of—and commitment to—a game-changing strategy for team success.

This hands-on program deals with structured exercises and “live” team issues. Participants will begin to redefine their business relationships and ways of working together individually and as a team.

Learning Objectives

During the session, participants will:

• Understand the various stages through which a team progresses on its journey to high performance
• Assess precisely where their team is positioned on the “Team Development Wheel”
• Identify their individual and collective strengths
• Look for potential opportunities—and derailers—as they strive to raise performance levels
• Build strong relationships and greater trust among one another
• Uncover and replace negative “stories” that have been impeding their ability to work together
• Reduce blind spots that negatively impact performance
• Formalize productive ways of working together as a team
• Plan next steps to continue the momentum built up during the session

The “Coach Yourself to Win” program is designed to help leaders throughout an organization develop to their full potential by providing them with the capabilities to take responsibility for their growth and development. As organizations attempt to green the next generation of leaders in times of significant constraints, this program equips leaders to take command of their careers and develops bench strength throughout the organization.

Guttman’s self-coaching approach allows organizations to continuously develop talent while setting the organization up to win big in the future. Besides being a cost-effective way to develop talent, a self-coaching program for numerous high-potential senior leaders creates a pool of synergy among leaders that cannot be duplicated by individual mentoring. As they go through the process, self-coachees, many of whom work together daily, form a strong bond and, in fact, become coaches to one another.

Participants will be introduced to Guttman’s dynamic 7-step self-coaching process.

They will learn and apply each step, from determining their self-coachability to setting their Intention, from soliciting and analyzing feedback to developing an action plan and tracking progress. This will provide them a clear, proven pathway to personal and professional success.

Based on the executive-coaching model that Guttman has used with senior managers for more than 30 years, the process has been adapted for anyone who wants to take his or her career to the next level.  The self-coaching process is featured in the book, Coach Yourself to Win, by Howard M. Guttman.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this program, participants will have:

• Determined whether or not they are self-coachable
• Clarified, set, and committed to a realistic Intention related to increasing their impact organizationally
• Examined and shifted the “stories” that have kept them from realizing their full potential as business leaders
• Selected a Guide and Circle of Support to assist them in achieving their goal
• Employed specialized tools to gather and analyze feedback on their current performance
• Created a Personal Development Plan based on the feedback
• Learned how to monitor progress as their move toward their goal and get back on track if they derail

For managers, one of the most difficult challenges is resolving “people problems,” especially when a direct report’s performance is off the mark. The search for cause often devolves into pointing a finger at the employee; rarely does the manager hold up the mirror to reflect on his or her own performance or to look for causes of underperformance that lie in the work environment.

This session introduces participants to a systematic process for finding the causes of performance deviations and planning for corrective action. For performance issues that require employees to change their behavior, managers will gain the coaching skills needed to become adept at having difficult conversations with employees.

This highly interactive session combines concept briefings, practical exercises, and hands-on application. Participants will come away able to coach effectively; contract with employees for creating goals and changing behavior; and, when needed, involve HR in the process.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “Coaching for High Performance,” participants will have learned how to:

• Use Guttman’s “Performance-Analysis Tool” to find the actual cause of performance deviations
• Identify and eliminate environmental factors that are impeding the achievement of performance goals
• Write SMART goals for those they supervise
• Give and receive clear, specific, depersonalized feedback
• Use the Guttman Coaching Model to carry out constructive dialogue with employees
• Determine next steps in moving toward higher on-job performance

Doing what you always did gives you what you always got. And that’s no longer enough in today’s business world, where the bar is continually being raised. An organization’s ability to adapt, innovate, and anticipate requires it to be peopled, on all levels, with creative thinkers.

The inability to unleash your creative potential hinges on how you view yourself, which is why this program starts with the premise that everyone possesses the capacity to come up with original, innovative ideas and to combine existing ideas in fresh ways.

We’ll begin by examining the assumptions you make about what creative thinking is and what blocks it. We examine the self-limiting stories that hold you back and how to replace them with confidence-building strategies that will increase your ability to innovate. Whether predominantly left- or right-brained, participants will come away better able to access their latent creativity and tap into the other, less-used side of their brain. Through a series of experiential and engaging exercises designed to take you out of your comfort zone, you will begin to approach reality in an entirely new and different way.

Concept briefings by the program facilitator will introduce thought-changing techniques. Then, you will practice and apply these to on-job situations requiring creative solutions. You will be introduced to a pragmatic creative process: a step-by-step approach for guiding participants along the pathway to greater creativity, from idea incubation and generation to planning actions that can be taken, on a day-to-day basis, to open up the creativity within.

Learning Objectives

By the end of Creative Thinking,” participants will have learned how to:

• Determine how they currently view your ability to think creatively
• Identify the approach you use most often when they try to innovate
• Identify the roadblocks that prevent you from being as creative as you might be and develop a strategy to break through them
• Master the process and acquire the skills to work more creatively, either alone or as a team member
• Plan and commit to concrete steps for becoming a more creative thinker on the job

Leaders are paid to get results through others. But how can a leader ensure that his or her direct reports are willing and able to give their best? Faced with greater-than-ever workplace diversity—age, gender, race, values, and much more—today’s successful leaders have learned to adjust their behavior to elicit the best performance from everyone around them. They are “player centered,” zeroing in on each member of their team to determine which leadership behavior works best, with which individuals, and varying their interactions accordingly.

This program presents an in-depth discussion of the four basic leadership behaviors: prescribing/directing, coaching/instructing, collaborating/partnering, and inspiring/empowering.

Participants will assess their leadership behavior, identifying which behavior comes most naturally to them and probing the reasons why that choice may not be optimal in every situation. They will learn how to use the “Leader/Player Wheel”: a dynamic model that enables leaders to effectively diagnose the needs of their players and then adjust their leadership behavior accordingly.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “Developing High-Performance Leaders,” participants will have:

• Become aware of the various leadership behaviors available to them and identified their preferred behavior
• Learned how to assess the levels of readiness/engagement/skill of each person who reports to them
• Recognized which leadership behavior is most effective with each level of engagement/skill
• Learned how to adjust their behavior to drive up the performance of individuals at each level

Decision-making: These two words are among the most important in the leadership lexicon. Bad decisions cast a shadow over organizations and those that run them. Effective decisions move an organization forward, create opportunities and growth, and are at the heart of high-performance leadership.

“Effective Decision Making” is a rigorously “how-to” learning experience that enables participants to master the decision-making fundamentals. Participants are introduced to the Guttman seven-step process for making decisions, practice the process on case studies, and then apply it to “live” decisions they are currently making or recommending.

In an age of data overload and increasing complexity, having a standard, step-by-step process for organizing information; asking all the key questions; and assessing outcomes, alternatives, and risks is essential. Participants come away with a common language and systematic approach to decision making, including how to identify desired results, generate and assess possible alternatives given those outcomes, and then consider potential risks—the latter step being the most frequently overlooked aspect of decision making.

“Effective Decision Making” goes beyond how to “make” decisions per se and transfers the Guttman Decision Protocol for Implementation, which includes issue identification and prioritization, determining levels of decision-making involvement, and selecting the best decision-making mode: unilateral, consensus, or consultative.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “Effective Decision Making,” participants will have:

• Improved decision-making capability through mastery of the GDS decision-making process
• Learned how to ask the right decision-making questions, organize and assess relevant information, and involve others in the decision-making process
• Provide a common language and approach to make or recommend decisions within a team and communicate those decisions to others in the organization
• Identify key decision issues, set priorities, and assign accountability for action
• Practice the decision-making process and apply it to real-time decisions

“Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness” is a breakthrough leadership development program based on Guttman’s years of experience working with generations of leaders in organizations of every size and type across the global landscape. We have structured an integrated, best-practices learning experience with five core GDS leadership programs, an upfront organization assessment to ensure relevance and cultural fit, and post-program performance measures. We then field-tested the program over many years.

The process begins with a needs assessment in which we probe the leadership-related issues confronting the organization, both currently and shortly, the capabilities needed to achieve success, and the skill gaps and developmental priorities.

The findings allow Guttman consultants to tailor each building block—and to reconfigure the building blocks themselves—to meet specific organizational objectives.

Each of the five building blocks focuses on mastering a core team leadership capability: influencing—engaging others to move in the desired direction; conflict management—working through issues in a way that builds relationships and accelerates results; developing high-performance leaders—enabling leaders to assess the strengths of team members and vary their leadership behavior accordingly; leading high-performance teams—driving up results by structuring teams for high performance from day one. And, lastly, managing performance—enabling managers and employees to work together as partners to raise productivity and business results significantly.

While “Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness” offers a robust leadership development experience when embedded directly into business units and functional groups, it is ideal for those corporate universities seeking to go beyond standard, ad hoc training programs to offer a more strategically focused, results-based approach to building the leadership capability of current and emerging leaders everywhere in an organization.

“Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness” consists of five one-day programs, delivered at phased intervals over six months:

• Managing Conflict
• Influencing Others for Results
• Developing High-Performance Leaders
• How to Lead Your Team
• Managing Performance

After each building block is completed, participants return to the workplace with specific objectives and assignments intended to enrich their mastery of the subject matter and embed newly acquired capabilities into their leadership behavior. Pre- and post-program assessments monitor progress and behavior change.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness,” participants will have learned to:

• Resolve conflict, whether in one-on-one interactions or team settings
• Improve their working relationships with colleagues throughout the organization
• Identify their current influencing behavior, evaluate its costs/benefits, and develop a plan to improve results when seeking to persuade others to act significantly
• Use their influencing capabilities to gain the agreement, cooperation, and support of others
• Identify their preferred leadership behavior and adjust it to drive up the performance of the individual members of their team
• How to lead successfully from Day One: structure the team correctly, create a team identity, establish relationships, protocols, etc.
• What performance management is, and how it differs from performance evaluation (8) How to write performance goals that clearly define results and can be measured objectively (9) Participate in mutually practical performance discussions at every phase of performance management

In the words of sports great Casey Stengel, “It’s easy to find good players; getting them to play together is the hard part.” For most people, working in teams doesn’t come naturally, whether in sports or in business. In business organizations, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that, traditionally, employees have been rewarded for their individual contribution to the organization.

As more organizations have shifted to the team model, and more and more work gets done by teams—whether cross functional, cross regional, or global—the ability to lead a team effectively and efficiently is at a premium. But becoming a high-performance team leader doesn’t come about naturally, at least not for most managers. Nor is the traditional route to team leadership—technical proficiency and functional expertise—an adequate training ground for learning how to work through others to get results. It is an acquired capability, one that involves mastery of the key elements necessary for team leadership and success. “How to Lead Your Team” is designed to transfer that capability.

We begin by examining why great business teams outperform others and the pivotal role that great team leaders play in shaping a group of individuals into a goal-driven, aligned entity focused on achieving team wins.

We introduce the “Guttman Team Development Wheel” and review the four stages of team development, along with the specific strategies that team leaders must adopt to manage players through each of the stages, ultimately taking the team to Stage 4: High Performance.

During this highly experiential session, participants will take a close, introspective look at their own leadership behaviors, examine how they may be inadvertently sabotaging team performance, and then be introduced to—and practice using—the tools needed to plot a path toward the highest level of team performance.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “How to Lead Your Team,” participants will have learned:

• The elements necessary to create successful teams and successful leaders of teams.
• Their current strengths and challenges as a team leader; behaviors they currently engage in and “stories” they tell themselves that have kept them from leading maximally.
• What is expected of them as a leader and what they should expect of their team members.
• How to lead successfully from Day One: structure the team correctly, create a team identity, establish relationships, protocols, etc.
• How to plot a path to get their team from Stage 1 to Stage 4 on the Team Development Wheel.
• What support they need to give to individual team members as they move through the stages.
• What vehicles they can create to move their team forward, such as developing protocols for holding meetings, resolving conflict, and making decisions.
• How to give and receive feedback.

The Leadership Effectiveness Acceleration Program (LEAP) is an integrated program designed to equip senior-level leaders with the full range of strategic, operational, and interpersonal capabilities needed to show up powerfully and excel in today’s organizations.

To compete effectively at senior levels, leaders must think incisively about their organization’s future direction: to ask the tough questions and understand how strategy drives operational planning and decision-making. They must be fully evolved, high-performing players able to build high-performing teams, and they must possess the savvy and interpersonal skills to shape and influence outcomes across organizational boundaries, especially in highly matrixed environments.

This in-depth development experience combines ongoing assessment of each participant’s leadership behavior and progress, hands-on learning led by expert facilitators, peer-to-peer interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences, and one-on-one coaching.

Learning Objectives

LEAP is structured around three leadership-development learning modules and is limited to 12 participants who must:

• be in a senior leadership position
• be nominated by their organization
• have the support of their organization for structured sponsorship and coaching
• have the time to participate in each of the three modules and complete interim application assignments
• participate in each of the three leadership development modules and complete interim applications

The curriculum begins with an assessment of participants’ leadership behavior, including both strengths and areas for improvement. Prior to the first session, those attending the program will be asked to complete a leadership inventory, which has been designed specifically for senior-level leaders. This instrument enables participants to accurately profile their leadership skills/behavior and provides essential guidance for program facilitators, ensuring that program content meets participants’ needs.

LEAP is divided into three leadership development modules:

Module 1: Developing Your Leadership Brand, Leveraging Your Influence and Managing Conflict
Module 2: Leading Your Team for High-Performance
Module 3: Making Strategic Decisions

Following each Module, participants return to their organizations guided by specific objectives and assignments intended to reinforce and extend their learning; ongoing assessments will monitor progress.

Coaching and consulting support is provided through the Guttman Leadership Institute to work individually and organizationally to enhance continuous learning and development.

Learning Objectives

By the end of LEAP, participants will have learned to:

• Take stock of their leadership strengths/areas for improvement and strengthen their ability to lead up, down and across their organization
• Master the Guttman Leader-Player model, measure their leadership behavior against the requirements of the model, and apply the model to real-time leadership issues
• Lead horizontally, across functions and within complex matrixed structures
• Acquire leadership coaching skills through concept briefings and hands-on practice
• Create teams of leaders within key intact and issue-specific teams
• Influence outcomes, especially in situations where there is no direct authority
• Formulate strategy, review the strategic plans of others, and make more effective day-to-day decisions

Leadership Effectiveness Acceleration Program for Women (LEAP for Women) is designed exclusively for senior-level women leaders. It provides a unique, supportive learning community in which successful women leaders can sharpen their strategic, operational and interpersonal leadership capabilities, learn from experienced consultant-facilitators, as well as from other participants, and bridge the learning/doing gap through structured interim assignments, one-on-one coaching, and structured sponsorship and mentoring.

This in-depth development experience combines ongoing assessments; hands-on learning, led by senior experts, during and in between sessions; peer-to-peer interaction; structured in-company mentoring; and individual coaching.

Like the LEAP Program for men and women, LEAP for Women provides deep grounding for advanced leaders covering three core areas: strategic decision-making, team and organization development, and interpersonal dynamics.

You will complete the program better equipped to meet the complex set of demands facing today’s executives and overcome the unique challenges facing senior-level women leaders.

Each program is limited to 12 senior-level women leaders who meet three times during the program year.

To qualify for this program, participants must:

• be a senior level woman leader
• be nominated by their organization
• have the support of their organization for structured sponsorship and coaching
• have the time to participate in each of the three modules and complete interim application assignments
• participate in each of the three leadership development modules and complete interim assignments

The curriculum begins with “you” as a leader: Where you’ve been, where you are now, and where you want to go. Participants will assess their leadership behavior, identifying both strengths and areas for improvement. This creates a development roadmap for participants and our facilitators.

The GLI Leadership Effectiveness Acceleration Program for Women is divided into three leadership development modules:

Module 1: Developing Your Leadership Brand, Leveraging Your Influence, and Managing Conflict
Module 2: Leading Your Team for High-Performance
Module 3: Making Strategic Decisions

Following each Module, participants return to their organizations guided by specific objectives and assignments intended to reinforce and extend their learning; ongoing assessments will monitor progress.

In addition, LEAP for Women provides a structured mentoring program with on-site support; a world-class GDS leadership coach; ongoing research-based insights into women’s leadership issues and trends; and access to a network of peers with whom to exchange ideas and experiences.

Learning Objectives

By the end of LEAP for Women, participants will have learned to:

• Build a powerful leadership brand that commands respect
• Succeed in today’s fast-changing, matrixed global organizations
• Master the Guttman Leader-Player model, measure their leadership behavior against the requirements of the model, and adjust their leadership behavior to real time leadership situations
• Assess their ability to coach; learn and practice leader/coaching skills
• Build high-performing, horizontal teams of leader-players
• Exert influence, especially in situations where there is no direct authority
• Ask penetrating strategic questions, formulate strategy, and make more effective day-to-day decisions Leverage network opportunities within the organization
• Surmount the barriers to achieving full leadership potential

Leading in today’s business environment requires a range of skills, many of which are not taught in business school. As organizations strive to develop their “bench strength,” they must ensure that the next generation of leaders has all the skills needed to take over the reins when the time comes.

Attendance at the Guttman “Leadership Excellence” program will provide this next generation with the full suite of skills they need to become high-performance leaders. The program is a comprehensive capability development program made up of six modules, offered at phased intervals.

We begin the program by interviewing the organization’s senior executives to learn which of several key leadership skills they consider most important in their job. We also ask them to rate the importance of each skill to effectiveness at their level. Next, for each of the key skills, we ask these senior executives to rate the capability of candidates for the “Leadership Excellence” program. Working with the senior level, we then create a plan for each of their reports to close the gap in each skill area.

The planning begins with a meeting between each participant and his/her manager, in which goals and measures are set. Then, we formally launch the program with a two-hour overview for senior executives and their reports who will be attending the program. A few days later, we hold a half-day “Senior Executive Round Table,” at which “Lessons from the Top” are shared and the 360-degree assessments and feedback process that they will be going through are explained.

At the end of this round table, participants are given a case study to work on in teams before they attend the first capability development session. Also prior to the first session, participants solicit 360-degree feedback on their current skills in these key areas and, with the help of their managers, analyze the findings.

Approximately one month after the round table, participants attend the first session, our two-day program on “Managing Conflict and Influencing Others for Results.” One month later, each participant attends a one-hour individual coaching session with a Guttman coach. This is followed soon after by the second capability development session, “Developing High-Performance Leaders.” The final capability development session, “Strategic Decision Making,” is offered between one and two months later.

The program concludes one month later with a wrap-up session at which participants demonstrate their new skills in presentations to peers and managers and plan the resolution of compelling business issues using these skills.

During the five-six-month program, participants’ progress is measured in several ways:

• Between sessions: Participant/manager meetings are held to measure progress against the goals that were set.
• During each session: We assess the quality of presentations they make to one another.
• During the final session: We assess the quality of the presentations they make to senior executives.
• Six months and one year later: Focus groups are held with participants to determine whether or not they are using the skills and, if not, why not.
• Six months and one year later: Colleagues and managers are interviewed to determine whether or not participants’ behavior has changed since attending the program.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the “Leadership Excellence” program, participants will have:

• Identified their development needs in three key skill areas and created a development plan to address them
• Learned how to resolve conflict, whether in one-on-one interactions or in team settings
• Learned how to negotiate artfully to resolve core differences and solve interpersonal problems
• Improved their working relationships with colleagues throughout the organization
• Learned to use their influencing capabilities to gain the agreement, cooperation, and support of others
• Become aware of the various leadership behaviors available to them, identified their preferred behavior, and learned how to adjust their behavior to drive up the performance of individuals they supervise
• Learned the basics of the GDS strategic thinking process and developed a first-draft plan for setting and implementing strategy

Strategic thinking, planning, decision making, financial acumen—these and other “hard” skills are the competencies on which leaders have traditionally been judged. In the last few decades, however, businesspeople have come to understand that there is another dimension to successful leadership: building solid working relationships within teams and with all those critical to your success. This entails more than intellectual prowess; it requires a high level of Emotional and Social Intelligence.

On the intellectual level, team members may agree with and respect their leader, but if they don’t “resonate,” it is highly unlikely that they will ever fully support or be inspired by their leader’s vision and goals. And, in today’s matrixed business world, we all need to collaborate with people from other functions over whom we have no positional authority. Success requires building, sustaining, or rebuilding trust and establishing strong connections based on mutual respect and understanding with team members as well as with functional colleagues.

Leading with Emotional and Social Intelligence is designed for teams of every type in order to raise the emotional competency and performance of team members, and for individuals seeking to raise their ability to work effectively with others.

The program utilizes the latest ESCI (Emotional and Social Competency Inventory) assessment instruments provided by Korn Ferry. We begin by raising participants’ awareness of the 12 Emotional and Social Competencies that differentiate outstanding from average performers, then helping them identify their current level of proficiency in each. With input from the facilitator and fellow participants, each attendee will develop concrete plans to increase Emotional and Social Intelligence in his or her development areas. The session provides opportunities to practice these new skills.

An added benefit: Participants’ emotional and Social Intelligence breakthroughs during this program will significantly impact all aspects of their professional and personal lives.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the “Leading with Emotional Intelligence” program, participants will have:

• Completed the 360-degree Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) to identify their competencies, strengths, and development opportunities
• Reviewed their scores with a Korn Ferry, ESCI-certified Guttman coach
• Gained an understanding of the choices they have in terms of their own behavior, and the impact of those choices on themselves, their team, those around them, and the results they deliver
• Built upon their strengths, helping them to broaden their range of leadership and influencing styles, and improve their impact on their team and other key stakeholders
• Made concrete plans to begin immediately using the skills

Change is about going from here to there. Sounds easy, but navigating the space between the two is rarely simple.

“Managing Change” provides the road map you need to cross the challenging terrain that lies between the current situation and the desired future.

Change can be disorienting, especially when it is poorly communicated and not understood. This program provides the key questions that participants need to ask to gain clarity and demonstrates how to integrate the answers into a purposive way forward to “there.” The discussion emphasizes both the organizational and personal preconditions for success in managing change.

Change begins with the individual. People typically go through a number of transitional phases as they are faced with both an ending and a new beginning: the four “Ds”—disorientation, disidentification, disengagement, and disenchantment. During the program, participants complete a self-assessment exercise to determine which phase they are in and how they can move beyond the “Ds” to align with and even embrace change. They also assess which of the Nine Key Competencies for Dealing with Change they already possess and which they need to acquire. The program zeros in on the causes of change resistance and outlines individual, team, and organizational strategies for dealing with them.

Learning Objectives

After attending “Managing Change,” participants will have:

• Become aware of the wide spectrum of reactions generated by change
• Learned the Nine Key Competencies for dealing with change, measured their personal competency against these, and developed personal plans to close the gaps
• Identified the beliefs and practices that create individual and organizational resistance
• Explored capabilities and strategies to overcome that resistance
• Examined their own role in facilitating team and organizational change
• Achieved a level of understanding and expertise regarding stewarding change within their organization
• Created action plans for managing individual transitions and building organizational support for change

In today’s organizations, most work gets done by cross-functional teams. Leaders and members of high-performance teams need a new set of conflict management and influencing skills to succeed in this new work environment.

Based on more than 30 years of experience managing conflict at all organizational levels, this program presents a powerful and unique process that enables participants to constructively deal with both interpersonal conflict—whether one on one or in teams—and with organizational conflict—whether rooted in culture processes, or structure.

The ability to influence others up, down, and across the organization is also essential for success in today’s organizations. Influencing others is a learnable capability which can be acquired through the mastery of a systematic process, which is what this program transfers. You’ll learn a step-by-step approach for sizing up situations and people, employing the right influencing strategy to excel, and persuading and engaging others, while maintaining solid interpersonal relationships.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this program, participants will have learned how to:

• Resolve conflict, whether in one-on-one interactions or in team settings
• Assess organizational “hot spots,” where conflict is likely to occur, and plan corrective action
• Negotiate artfully to resolve core differences and solve interpersonal problems
• Listen more effectively and assert themselves without impairing business relationships
• Improve their working relationships with colleagues throughout the organization
• Identify their current influencing behavior, evaluate its costs/benefits, and develop a plan to improve results when seeking to persuade others to act significantly
• Use their influencing capabilities to gain the agreement, cooperation, and support of others, including how to: “Read” situational cues, Listen intently and actively, Identify—and change—their position on the “Assertion Continuum,” Set boundaries, Effectively “push back,” Question without interrogating

As organizations become increasingly matrixed and global, the ability to influence others has become a must-have for leaders. When working across functions and geographies, leaders are often expected to produce results through people over whom they have no direct authority. How can you become a powerful influencer across your organization who commands respect without commanding it? And one who can turn your agenda into theirs by gaining the commitment of others rather than forcing compliance?

This interactive session probes the dynamics of power and organizational politics.

Participants will examine how they show up to others. They will learn to become more agile in their interpersonal relationships, able to employ the full range of influencing behaviors that will enable them to project a new, more powerful image. They will learn how to take the measure of key colleagues—potential partners, fence-sitters, and adversaries—and frame strategies for positioning their ideas and plans for maximum acceptance by each group.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “Leading by Influencing Across Your Organization,” participants will have:

• Become aware of the degree to which they are viewed as a powerful, influential force in their organization
• Learned techniques for modifying or changing their image and becoming a stronger force
• Gained practical tips for understanding and navigating organizational politics
• Learned how to assess the degree of cooperation they can expect from key colleagues
• Used the “Matrix for Framing Strategies” to vary the way they market their ideas to colleagues
• Created a concrete “Influence Plan” that will enable them to achieve results across their organization

For many senior managers, performance management means dispensing the dreaded annual performance rating, the results of which often determine merit raises and promotability. It is not an especially effective approach, for many reasons, including:

• Performance feedback is typically a once or twice-a-year activity that has little positive impact on the results you get from your employees.
• Senior managers often find it challenging to set measurable performance goals, provide constructive feedback, and give employees the support they need to develop and improve their on-job performance continually.
• Employees may find it challenging to receive constructive feedback and are not clear about the accountability they have to partner with their supervisor to effectively manage their own performance.

“Optimizing Your Performance Management System” is designed to help managers and employees work together, as true partners, to create high-performing individuals and organizations. This program describes performance management as a year-round, joint effort between manager and employee to manage employee performance. One of the unique features of the program is that it provides parallel capability-development tracks for both managers and employees.

Each session begins by having participants examine the performance management system currently in place in their organization. How is it structured? What actions are required on the part of supervisors and employees in order to make it successful?

Because meaningful goals are key to the success of any performance management system, we next focus on transferring to both groups a set of capabilities that will enable them to create clear, measurable goals. In an initial two-day session, senior managers practice writing such goals for their employees; in a half-day program, employees learn to draft their own goals, which they will share and discuss with their supervisor back on the job to align with them on performance expectations. In a second, follow-up training session nine months later, senior managers will prepare to conduct effective year-end performance discussions with employees. This “just-in-time” approach for supervisors gives them the skills they need at the point in the performance management cycle they need them so that learnings are fresh and immediately applied.

And because so much of the success of a performance management system depends on the dynamic between senior managers and employees, both groups will be introduced to and have an opportunity to learn and practice the interpersonal skills they need to become performance-management partners: active listening, assertion, coaching, resolving differences, giving and receiving feedback.

Learning Objectives

Both senior managers and employees will have learned: (1) What performance management is and how it differs from performance evaluation (2) How to describe their organization’s current performance management system and the accountabilities of both supervisor and employee in ensuring its success (3) How to write performance goals that clearly define results and can be measured objectively (4) The interpersonal skills that are necessary to participate in mutually effective performance discussions at every phase of performance management

Senior managers will additionally have learned:

• How to effectively coach employees on progress against goals to achieve the desired results
• How to handle difficult performance issues that may arise
• How to handle resistance and defensiveness on the part of those who report to them
• How to coach employees, between performance reviews, to help them achieve their performance goals and develop the skills to advance in the organization
• How to effectively conduct a performance-review session

Employees will have learned:

• How to make clear, specific requests to their supervisor to help them be effective

After attending the half-day program, which is presented nine months after the initial two-day session:

Senior managers will have learned:

• How to evaluate and rate employees against goals
• How to plan for and conduct performance reviews with their employees
• How to create specific, actionable development plans for employees

Flawless project implementation. It’s a tough challenge, given the need to work across national boundaries and functions and under severe time and budget constraints. In today’s business world, there is no safety net. Projects must be delivered on time, on budget, and on goal, every time.  “High-Performance Project Implementation” prepares leaders and members of project teams to achieve those results.

Our approach aligns and develops the three foundational elements required for flawless project implementation: project leadership, team behaviors, and project processes and capabilities.

We go well beyond one-dimensional interventions that focus either on capabilities or tools or processes. As a result, leaders and players can transform their project teams into high-performing entities that routinely exceed expectations.

“High-Performance Project Implementation” is rigorously results focused. Project management is not a result; it is a process. We prefer to keep the focus on implementation, which is a result.

During the program, participants begin to work on actual projects: setting project objectives, developing working project plans and schedules, delineating responsibilities, creating protocols for team issue resolution and team behavior, and acquiring the capabilities they will need to continue implementation back on the job.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “High-Performance Project Implementation,” participants will have:

• Learned the “Eight Absolutes of Project Implementation”
• Learned the distinct characteristics of a high-performing project team
• Become familiar with a proven process for improving the success rate of projects
• Set project objectives, and developed a project plan and schedule for a project on which they are currently working
• Recognized the importance of and begun drafting team protocols for issue resolution, decision-making, and team behavior
• Been introduced to several tools that will significantly increase the chances that their project will meet or exceed expectations
• Planned the next steps they will take back on the job

In a world where change is the new normal, strategy is more important than ever. It provides a compass point for making the key product-, market-, and resource-allocation decisions that drive the business.

In “Strategy Formulation and Implementation,” participants will be introduced to Guttman’s disciplined process for setting strategy—whether for the enterprise, business units, or functions—and linking it to business operations.

By the end of the session, participants will have a solid grasp of what strategy is and what constitutes the key elements of a strategic framework. This will enable them to set strategy fully confident that they have touched all the bases.

Strategy is first about taking stock. Participants will learn how to conduct a thorough Situation Appraisal of the current product and market landscape, the competitive picture, internal strengths and vulnerabilities, and potential external threats and opportunities. They will come away from the session knowing how to establish a solid baseline for setting strategy. Armed with this information, the session moves to a discussion of how to develop a clear, specific strategic vision. Participants will learn the key questions to ask to set strategy, how to establish competitive differentiation, and how to go about making the best choices for optimizing scarce resources.

Strategy is also about making key choices relating to produces, markets, key capabilities and financial expectations. This session provides a disciplined, step-by-step process for making key decisions, including a consideration of risk factors. In addition, participants learn how to structure the involvement of others to ensure maximum commitment.

For the strategy to be effective, it must be implemented. What key elements must be in place for strategy to take hold? What are the key alignment levers that drive implantation? What are the implications of alternative strategies on organizational structure, processes, capabilities, and culture? And how best to identify the barriers to success? “Strategy Formulation and Implementation” guides answering these questions.

A key objective for the session is to have participants develop a first-draft strategic plan for setting strategy, whether at the corporate, business unit, or functional levels.

Learning Objectives

After attending Strategy Formulation and Implementation, participants will have:

• A firm understanding of the core elements of a strategic framework
• Learned the basics of the Guttman strategy formulation and implementation process and began to apply it to their own situation
• Learned how to identify the key strategic choices for developing a clear, specific strategy
• Identified potential problems that could stand in the way of successful implementation

Successful negotiation is more about mind-set than muscle. If you approach negotiation as a winner-loser, zero-sum game, you might ink the deal, but don’t count on it being implemented—especially if the support of your “adversary” is required. Think of negotiation as a win-win process, and both sides will walk away from the table eager to go from discussion to positive action.  But attitude is not enough. Negotiating is a capability that requires a keen understanding of strategy, tactics, human dynamics, and information requirements. Whether your job requires negotiating internally, with other managers and departments, or externally, with clients, vendors, and legal representatives, this program will provide you with the range of win-win mind-sets, the core capabilities to excel as a negotiator, and a proven process to ensure that you—and your counterparts—leave the negotiating table as  winners fully committed to the outcome.

The program begins with an introduction to the most common negotiating styles. These serve as a template that enables participants to assess their negotiating style and that of the individuals on the other side of the table. The GDS five-step negotiating process—preparation, strategy setting, tactics, closure, and follow up—will be explained and illustrated, and participants will practice applying the process to a variety of situations.

Learning Objectives

At the end of “Win-Win Negotiation,” participants will have learned the following:

• The five critical mindsets needed to negotiate successfully and consistently achieve win-win outcomes
• A proven negotiation process and how it can be applied to any negotiating situation
• How to prepare for a negotiation session
• How to assess the negotiation style of the other side—and adapt their style in response
• The best tactics to deal with unexpected issues as they arise
• How to move from stalemate to settlement
• How to build lasting relationships with negotiating counterparts