Leadership Training
What Sets Us Apart?
All too often, leadership training programs are based on superficial platitudes and clichés, which insult the participants’ intelligence and leave them rolling their eyes and mentally checking out.
At the other end of the spectrum, some courses overwhelm participants with too much theoretical content, leaving them unable to retain most what they’ve learned — much less apply it once they return to their normal routines.
At Executive Sound Board, we take a very different approach. Our philosophy is best captured by an old proverb, which says:
“Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I might remember. Involve me, and I’ll learn.”
Accordingly, our programs are experiential, engaging, and participatory by design. Attendees leave with valuable new mindsets and skills that they have already begun to internalize and are eager to apply in the real world.
Format
To provide meaningful value regardless of time and budgetary constraints, we offer training in a variety of formats and durations, including:
- 60-to-90-minute lunch & learn sessions, either in person or online
- In-person targeted skills training
- Group training sessions ranging from ½ day to multiple days
- Offsite leadership retreats
- Ongoing webinar series' spanning 4-to-12 weeks
Curriculum
Our curriculum covers an extensive range of leadership development topics, including:
Influence without authority
Communication & influence styles
⇒ Head: left brain, facts & logic, reasoning
⇒ Heart: right brain, emotional appeal, vision, mission, values
⇒ Gut: accountability, consequences, deliverables, results
⇒ Legs: when and how to walk away to prevent unproductive escalation
How to prepare for high-stakes conversations
⇒ CPR exercise (Context – Purpose – Results)
⇒ Role play
⇒ Preparing for and handling objections
Overcoming overwhelm via time & priority management
⇒ Time studies
⇒ Rating activities for strategic value
⇒ Eliminating/consolidating/delegating lower value activities
⇒ Discerning what needs to be done at an A+ level vs. where a B is perfectly sufficient – and therefore better.
⇒ Designing the ideal day/week
Boundaries
⇒ Limiting beliefs and fears around setting boundaries
⇒ Keeping the big picture in mind vs. the perceived need to please others and say yes to everything
⇒ Communicating clearly
⇒ Negotiating and enforcing boundaries
⇒ Effective requests, offers, and counter-offers
The key components of trust, and why the distinctions matter
⇒ Sincerity
⇒ Reliability
⇒ Competence
Communicating simply and powerfully
Ensuring deep alignment
⇒ Explicit vs. implicit expectations
⇒ Shared “backgrounds of obviousness”
Active listening and awareness
⇒ The five levels of listening
⇒ Harnessing the power of curiosity
⇒ Mirroring & paraphrasing exercise
– Seeking not just to understand, but to have the other person feel understood
⇒ Executive Presence
Creating and maintaining a high-performance team culture
Clarifying team purpose and vision
⇒ Creating alignment around roles & responsibilities
⇒ Establishing team values, norms, and standards
– Communication standards
– Consensus around how to hold each other accountable
– Aspirational vs. behavioral values (i.e. your stated values vs. the values your behavior reflects)
– Going beyond fuzzy adjectives to define specific behavioral habits
– Leading by example
Handling conflict – key mindsets
⇒ Distinguishing between productive (healthy) vs. unproductive (unhealthy) conflict
⇒ Recognizing that healthy conflict is essential to team performance
⇒ Recognizing when interpersonal conflicts are actually signs of structural ambiguity (e.g. lack of clarity & alignment around role definition)
⇒ Recognizing and leveraging different conflict and communication styles
Naming elephants
⇒ What uncomfortable conversations are you avoiding that could come back to bite you in the future?
⇒ How to navigate uncomfortable – yet critical – conversations
– Setting context
– Creating psychological safety – the “go first” principle
– Communicating clearly and productively
– Future & solution focused vs. past-based and/or accusatory
– NVC (Non-Violent Communication)
The power of recognition and strength-spotting
Communicating with internal and external stakeholders
Team feedback cue card exercise
Engaging, motivating, and retaining employees
Essential ingredients for satisfaction & fulfillment at work
⇒ MAP (Mastery – Autonomy – Purpose)
⇒ Setting clear expectations
Giving effective feedback
⇒ Timely
⇒ Specific & behavioral vs. abstract and character-based (i.e. avoiding fundamental attribution error)
The untapped power of acknowledgement and recognition
Best / worst manager exercise
Best / worst organization exercise
Earning the right to lead
Effective delegation
⇒ Limiting beliefs & concerns around delegation
– “If I want it done right, I have to do it myself”
– “It’ll be faster just to do it myself” vs. taking the time to build capacity in others
⇒ Setting clear expectations
⇒ Going beyond task assignment to build organizational capacity
– The importance of creating context, i.e. building the connection between individual assignments and broader organizational mission
Cognitive biases and decision-making
⇒ How to recognize and transcend common thinking errors to vastly improve decision-making
If you are interested in a specific topic we haven’t listed, please contact us. We would be delighted to discuss your unique requirements and custom-tailor a program for you.
