Professional development and personal effectiveness

A recent study suggested that the average office worker receives 190 pieces of information a day and wastes as much as 150 hours a year looking for “stuff”. Another study suggests that at least 10% of all documents are lost or misfiled. With information overload growing and budgets tight, you can’t afford the wasted time and lost productivity that comes from a cluttered desk, messy files, or no system of personal organization. At this workshop, you’ll develop organizational skills: learn to how to streamline daily tasks, organize personal space, effectively use calendars, communicate using the appropriate means, and more.

More and more people are encountering stress, overwork, and the pressure of time constraints in their lives. Some stress is actually good for you because it inspires you to meet life’s challenges. Too much ongoing stress causes an almost continuous activation of your body’s stress-response system. The overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can increase your risk of obesity, insomnia, digestive problems, heart disease, depression, memory impairment, and physical illness. It is important to recognize when we are in DISTRESS. This workshop will provide practical tips and techniques to help you achieve better results and health through the effective management of distress.

In today’s workplace, training has taken on a broader role as more employees are now responsible for, or taking on the challenge of, training others within their department or organization. Recognizing that training and education is one of the key components to any organization’s success, whether you are providing new hire orientation, transferring knowledge or skills, or training a group of employees on a specific subject, some basic learning principles will apply. That’s where we come in. By guiding you through the ins and outs, the tips and tricks, and the do’s and don’ts of training others, we will help you to provide an effective and positive learning experience. This one-day course provides an essential tool-kit to help you acquire the underlying skills of an effective trainer. We will help you understand the learning and training fundamentals, and assist you in designing and delivering training that will guarantee positive results from your audience. You will also learn how to evaluate your training effectiveness, while receiving practical feedback on how to improve and hone your training skills.

Thinking strategically can be described as the way people in an organization think about, view, assess and create the future for themselves, their team, and the organization. More than simply reacting to day-to-day or long-term problems and opportunities, it is concerned with creating opportunities and choosing options in order to be able to realize the best possible future. It is an ongoing process that becomes part of the organizational culture and part of the local vocabulary; it also ensures that strategic planning activity is more meaningful. Strategic thinking is a foundational skill and the same principles can be equally applied to people’s personal lives and their work responsibilities. The same thinking approach is relevant to all levels of responsibility throughout the organization. However, thinking strategically is only half of the workplace challenge; the ideal outcome for any organization is for its people to be able to both think strategically while acting tactically. Striking the proper balance is critical to the smooth operation of the organization and the full involvement of all its people. Achieving the balance helps team members collaborate and better align their day-to-day activities with the higher goals and vision of the project, department, or organization as a whole. This workshop will explore both what it means to think strategically, and how day-to-day operational action can be aligned to the grander strategy at both the individual and team level.

Emotions are a key component of what makes us human. While emotions have often been seen as less important than intellectual reasoning, emotions motivate us to act, inspire us to create and connect our relationships. Our experiences shape how we understand, process and manage our emotions. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, assess and positively engage with one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. Many people have not developed the foundational building blocks to be emotionally intelligent, resulting in emotions getting in the way of our judgement, relationships, or careers. This workshop provides opportunities for participants to build emotional intelligence by focusing on developing understanding and skills in: self-awareness, emotional management, physiological and behavioural reactions, understanding the connection to values and motivations, overcoming barriers to communication, building trust, and exercising empathy. Participants can apply their new skills in EQ to their personal and professional lives. Note: This workshop is designed to be informative and interactive. Information and concepts will be introduced and participants will have ample opportunity to discuss, exchange ideas and work in groups.

Almost everyone encounters overwork and the pressure of time constraints — even the most organized person can sometimes feel overwhelmed and frustrated. This workshop will introduce you to practical ‘how-to’ techniques to help you achieve better results, both at work and in your personal life. You will learn how to organize your time effectively and utilize self-management habits that lead to increased productivity both on and off the job. You’ll complete a 21 point self-assessment that will help you understand your personal style of time management, learn how to make that style work for you rather than against you, and work more productively with people who manage their time differently.

How are you feeling while working these days? Do you feel like you have influence or agency over those emotions? Or are you feeling like circumstances dictate your mood? This program gives you the science behind and the practices in support of diagnosing and creating your emotional experiences at work. The result is more satisfaction, joy, and peace in times that frequently trigger less positive emotions.

This course follows Personal Effectiveness Through Emotional Intelligence – EQ1. It builds on the theory and tools presented in the initial program and dives deeper into developing the practical skills and behaviours that increase one’s own emotional intelligence both at work and in personal life. This course provides the opportunity to gain greater knowledge and skills to understand, express and regulate one’s emotions. In addition, participants will develop strategies to manage emotional interactions with others.  Participants engage in a variety of self-reflective exercises, group activities, and discussion to explore and develop higher levels of emotional intelligence in a supportive environment.

Influence is a key skill that is necessary for having impact on organizations and communities, especially when you do not have formal authority. Being a leader means sharing your ideas and taking action, regardless of your position or title. This session focuses on how participants can have a positive influence on their personal and professional communities without depending on authority or organizational hierarchy.  Instead of considering influence to be a process of “persuading others”, this session focuses on building 5 key leadership qualities that will positively impact those you work and socialize with. Participants will learn communication strategies to improve influence. This session also includes a social styles assessment to help participants learn how to leverage their strengths. Even when in a formal leadership role, influence can motivate, engage and empower others, rather than relying on giving orders or using formal ‘power’. Instead of presenting traditional approaches to influence such as ‘networking’ or ‘ being persuasive’, this session focuses on authentic leadership, building relationships,  effective communication, connecting ideas to organizational values, and being a leadership role model. Myths around influence as applying pressure, manipulation, or requiring a social media presence will be dispelled. Participants will have the opportunity to develop communication skills, craft a vision statement, and create an action plan for making an influence in their community.

Confidence is not just an asset that’s nice to have. It is a fundamental basis for success and satisfaction in your professional and personal life. Whether you are selling your ideas, taking calculated risks, responding to criticism, working as part of a team, interacting with co-workers or clients, applying for a promotion, or a myriad of other everyday activities, you will achieve more faster if you have self-confidence. This workshop explores the positive impact of self-confidence in your career and personal life. Through exercise, you will discover the sources of low self-confidence and develop new skills to increase your self confidence in order to increase your effectiveness and comfort in various areas of your life.

Your memory helps you to shape your understanding of your present, and your application of your memories helps you to shape your future. How well your memory works has a direct impact on how much you get done in a day and the quality of your work. Your memory is a window into the health of your brain, how you care for it, and how you use it. It also helps to define who you are – for yourself and for those around you such as family members, friends, colleagues and others. This very engaging, interactive, and memorable workshop is about your memory – how it works, how you can better use your recall capacity, and much more. We guarantee you’ll remember it for years to come!

The practice of mindfulness – centering your attention in the present by focusing on the breath – has been around for thousands of years. A growing body of scientific research demonstrates that a regular mindfulness practice can have a powerful impact on your well-being and wellness through how you think, feel, act, relate, perform and collaborate at work – reducing the daily stress of life in a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.  On an individual level, mindfulness practice helps you to control your emotions and stress – anger, frustration, fear – so you can be inquiring, thoughtful, logical, rational and strategic, and focus on the work that needs done, rather than on the situations that may distract you from your priorities. In effect, being mindful and aware allows you to be compassionate, acknowledge emotion and move towards logic and reason in any situation. This results in a better state of mind, health and wellness for mental clarity and endurance through the daily challenges of life.  This one-day interactive workshop, facilitated by a long-term workplace mindfulness practitioner, will show you how to integrate mindfulness with emotional intelligence and organizational behaviour theories and tools, so you can immediately begin to enhance your own well-being and improve your relationships and effectiveness at work.

“There is no such thing as creative and non-creative people, only people who use creativity and people who don’t” – Brene Brown Creativity is innate in all of us; but too many people and organizations unknowingly hinder it from flourishing. Without creativity, it is impossible to develop an innovative organization that can deliver improved services and products and maintain sustainable competitive advantage. And the stakes have never been higher. The world is in the early stages of a new era of disruptive innovation that promises to transform every workplace and sector of society. Adaption is the new normal, and creativity is the new literacy. Explore how using creativity strategically can help you provide powerful solutions to problems and increase motivation, job satisfaction and engagement. Learn how creativity can be harnessed at an organizational level, and, with the right process in place, serve as an engine of innovation. Please note:  There is an online assessment to be completed in advance of this workshop.  We ask that participants who register less than 48 hours before the session ensure they make time to complete their online assessment prior to workshop day.

Mastering critical thinking and problem-solving skills can help you make better decisions or recommendations- an essential competency in today’s knowledge workplaces. Critical thinking helps you to examine and improve thought processes, ask the right questions, challenge assumptions and consider varying viewpoints. Effective problem-solving helps you to properly identify and systematically work through a problem in a comprehensive manner, ensuring clarity when it comes time to make decisions or recommendations. This course will demonstrate how critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making work optimally together, and will provide hands-on practice with tools that you can apply to your everyday workday tasks, big or small.

As diversity increases in the workplace, people from different backgrounds and orientations will integrate with the workplace culture and perform when they feel welcomed, safe and included to become a part of the organizational culture. The program is designed to create an interactive conversation to help understand what equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) means and how people from different backgrounds and cultures may experience it in their daily lives. It is acknowledged that there is no one perfect or certain approach to dealing with EDI. It is very much related to the existing leadership and organizational culture and what the organization aspires to be in meeting its goals. The program will be facilitated through a mindfulness lens with a focus on unconscious biases and possible systemic barriers to inclusion and equity.  The facilitator will encourage self-reflection and a compassionate inquiry into how to effect change, and overcome biases and barriers, so every member of the team is valued as a part of an inclusive culture. The program will be facilitated in an interactive co-inquiring manner encouraging participants to actively contribute to the learning process.

Why are there so many different organizational systems and time management methods out there? The answer is simple: it’s like any other personal challenge, like weight loss or money management. There is no simple, one size fits all answer. You must build a solution that works for you. Over the course of this two-day workshop, we will explore various time management and organizational tools and techniques so that you can build a customized productivity plan for your personal and professional lives. At the end of the course, you will emerge with a plan that works for you, so that you can start regaining control of your life!

Now more than ever employees are practicing flexible work options and many of us have arrangements to work from home. Overcoming work-from-home challenges are crucial in order to improve our workplace performance, and engagement. This session will help participants stay engaged in the work from home process. Learners will be given tools and techniques that can be easily applied to their WFH with clear methods on how to increase their productivity and results by applying a WFH framework with proven success. Participants will gain an understanding of the challenges faced when working from home and learn techniques to overcome these challenges as they enhance their WFH routine and overall performance strategies.

This two-day workshop provides an overview of how to develop and manage your career progression. You will learn and apply skills to support your career planning. You will also learn how to organize key information in a way that will support your career objectives. You will receive practical tips to apply at any stage of your career and work search journey.

The challenges of the modern work environment – changing priorities, heavy workloads, working with difficult people and situations – frequently result in stress, anxiety and loss of productivity. At this workshop you’ll discover time-tested techniques to develop integrated mind/body awareness to reduce your stress and increase energy, resilience and the confidence to deal with difficult situations. The course is practical, interactive and fun.

Change offers huge opportunities for personal and professional growth. This workshop is designed to help you understand the new world of constant change. This one-day workshop explores the human response to change and will provide you with practical strategies to identify and exploit opportunities for increased job satisfaction, performance and personal success.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein Feeling connected to the people you work with matters. Disconnection costs in productivity, lost staff, and stress. Whether your team is coming together for the first time, or you have been together for years, experiential learning opportunities that are work related can help develop a better understanding among team members that encourages creative ideas to solve problems. “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation.” – Plato  PLAYDOH Power Solutions Corporate training is a collaborative, experiential process that enhances thinking, innovation, productivity and team performance.  Your team will be 100% engaged in the process as it unfolds. Learn about each other and tackle your organizations’ toughest challenges all while having fun. If you are looking for a unique experience that has your team thinking, creating and doing through play, this workshop is for you. We’ll have you thinking differently, guaranteed!

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The only thing that is consistent is change.” We are in an unprecedented time in history when everything is changing. How we perceive the experience will impact if we react, or how we can choose to respond. Many of us are not used to talking about our feelings, which can be especially difficult when we are asked to organize our lives a different way, without knowing what the future might hold. This interactive workshop provides an opportunity to reflect on change, how we feel about the change, and how we can understand our stress responses while using them to propel us forward. We will do this in a straight forward manner that is appreciated by even the most skeptical virtual meeting participants.  Resilience is often considered the “ability to bounce back” from life’s challenges. With challenges facing us from all directions, participants will appreciate the opportunity to reflect on their own past experiences that could help them face current challenges. Participants will also learn about easily accessible tools that they can use to address stress, understand and decrease fear of the unknown, and identify new opportunities for living a more satisfying life.

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 workshop 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.

This half-day workshop is designed to support professionals in understanding and overcoming unconscious bias in the workplace. The workshop is divided in 2 parts: understanding of unconscious bias and its origins followed by concrete tools to elicit behaviour change. Section 2 focuses on the ongoing practice of self-awareness and regulation in order to overcome existing bias as well as techniques to improve overall communication and relationships. A follow-up session with workplace leaders is recommended to support ongoing reinforcement or positive behaviours. “Intuition matters but, pay more attention to the unconscious bias.” – Pearl Zhu

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 one-day 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.

We all have things we want in life. The route to success is to take the things that we dream about and wish for, and turn them into reality. This one-day workshop will lead participants through thinking, planning, and taking action on the things they really want. They will learn ways to ensure that they get where they want to go in life.

This workshop will help your team communication become stronger, by sharing tasks, calendars and notes using Microsoft Office Outlook and OneNote.  Sharing MS OneNote, outlook tasks and calendars will enhance team collaboration and communication using Outlook and keywords. Participants must have a solid knowledge of Outlook.

This workshop is designed to support professionals in creating an ongoing respectful and collaborative workplace.

Change drives innovation, yet as individuals we still struggle to organize ourselves to capitalize on the opportunities that change and adversity provides. Through these times of massive change, many want to leave aspects of their “old” life behind, yet lack a path to move forward with so many questions unanswered. People are feeling this in both their work and personal lives. This course uses simple evidence-based concepts to use change and adversity as a springboard to plan the unknown on your own terms. Understand stress responses and uncover opportunities for resilience practices. Consider those things that you or your team are willing to leave behind post-COVID and new opportunities that should be incorporated. As we move through this transition period, help ground yourself and your work in those things that can be controlled, while remaining open to the opportunities ahead of you.

Change is a time-consuming distraction. It takes us away from our regular work, it slows productivity and it often creates conflict. You may even notice an increase in absenteeism during periods of change. The reality is that you may never be happy with the change you are experiencing, and that’s okay. At some point, though, you will have to learn to live with your new reality. The more quickly you can do that, the sooner you can get back to being productive and feeling like yourself again.  The Change Cycle™ is a change management model that helps individuals and teams deal with change pragmatically, resourcefully and effectively. Change is the result of change, choice, progress, or crisis, and is often unpredictable. People react, respond, and adjust to change in a sequence of six predictable stages which identify thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with each stage of change. There is no better map to assist individuals in navigating through the changes in their work and life.