Seminars and Workshops
For Enhancing Personal-Interpersonal Effectiveness
And Developing Organizational Capacity
Historically the clients for my training seminars
and workshops have been organizations who have
recognized the value of providing training for their employees.
The focus of my training and organizational consulting has been on improving
the
productivity of organizations. I specialize in providing programs and
services to organizations to meet their specific needs. This type of training
(contrasted to "career-development" training) is based upon an understanding of the dynamics
of organizational change. So briefly, my philosophy.
I believe for organizations to make major improvements in productivity it
takes a “committed core” of similarly
minded people. Individuals who take training "one at a time" typically have
difficulty engaging in new behaviors on
the job if their environment is still the same. Personal change is far more
likely when people can provide support to one
another. As this “committed core” of people begins behaving
differently the culture of the organization begins to
change and over time the culture will begin modifying the behavior of all
members. A complete model of organizational change is not possible to present in
this amount of space. I am happy to provide more details.
While the purpose of the training is upon
improving the organization, the improvement occurs through changes in
individuals. I believe in the "inside-out" model of
self-development that Steven Covey discussed in The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People. A person's ability to be an effective manager or
leader begins with self-understanding and self-development. Thus,
all my seminars (multi-day) and workshops (single day) have both an internal and
external component. I make extensive use of self-assessment questionnaires
to provide individuals insight into their own attitudes, values, beliefs and
behaviors and organizational-assessment questionnaires for obtaining data about
organizational effectiveness (see Appendix E of the Core Competencies for
a list of questionnaires).
My formal training (education) is a mix of behavioral and clinical
psychology, supplemented by practical experience as a manager and thirty years
as an educator, trainer, and management consultant. All my training has been
personally field-tested, that is, I know the
material works.
The design of my workshops, and my own training behavior, is based upon the premise
that participants want to make changes in their behavior and their relationships
to others, and my job is to help
them do so. In other words, I am not just providing information, but information
and personal insight which together will translate
into motivation and a personal strategy to make changes, which in turn will
result in improved job performance. Many participants have reported benefits
in their personal life as well as improvements on the job. When the
training is provided to a group of employees from an organization, the group
typically also prepares a plan. Improved job performance is first effectiveness
(doing the right thing) and secondarily efficiency (doing it with minimal effort
and with comfort and ease).
My workshops are very interactive in order to
make the connection between “abstract” ideas and personal experience. I use
a variety of self-analysis questionnaires (both commercial and ones I have
developed) to help participants make this connection, as well as small group
discussions, role playing, and other experiential activities. I also include a
list of readings and in many instances 3-5 page abstracts
of the key books. Workshop length is variable dependent upon depth and
extensiveness desired, and they can be combined to meet specific needs. The
workshop descriptions are meant to be illustrative, since in almost all cases
the specific content is customized to the needs of the client organization.
Teaching Training and
Instructional Design is a summary of the variety of teaching, training, and
instructional design activities I have done in university, business and
government settings programs, including programs for various private sector
clients on a consultant basis.
December 06, 2002
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