Seminars and Virtual Programs
America's Founding Documents: Vision and Values
Beginning with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, this session uses the nation’s founding documents to explore the role of organizational vision and values in everyday leadership. After laying out the context for the creation of these two documents, we carry forward to later reform movements – including abolition, women’s suffrage, and the Civil Rights Movement – when people contested the vision and values of these frameworks in ways that reinterpreted and expanded the founders’ original meanings. Program Length: 2-3 hours.
Communication: Lincoln and the Art of Communication
In the past week have you stopped reading an email before reaching the end? Or, have you reached the end and needed more information? Have you been frustrated because you were given too few options, or too many? On the other hand, why is it that we still remember Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address over 150 years after it was delivered? This session uses Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s greatest Communicator in Chief, to explore the fundamental competencies of interpersonal skills, oral communication, and written communication. Weaving together Lincoln’s greatest speech and extensive-research on decision-making and communication styles, this session explores how we can adapt our messages to reach every possible audience. A range of hands-on, practical and fun activities help illustrate the principles covered in ways that participants will never forget. Program Length: 1-2 hours.
Decision Making
How do we ensure that we are making the best decision possible and not prematurely eliminating options or, worse yet, giving ourselves no options in the first place? This seminar examines some of the challenges in making decisions, and offers a number of tools to help make decisions as an individual, to navigate group dynamics when making decisions, and to lead teams to make great decisions. Program Length: 90 minutes to 1/2 day.
Employee Engagement: Chamberlain Among the Mutineers
This program examines the all-important topic of employee engagement. We begin by exploring the most recent data and theories on employee engagement and disengagement from Gallup, Dale Carnegie, and the Federal Viewpoint Survey. We then look at a real-world case study from the Civil War to see how Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was able to convince 120 mutineers – disengaged employees – to reengage and rejoin his regiment. That successful intervention would prove critical when, just six weeks later, this unit was tasked with holding the Union army’s left flank at the Battle of Gettysburg. The combination of modern research models, clips from Hollywood movies, and actual documents from the 1860s, make for a compelling case study into this most critical of topics. Program Length: 1 hour to 3.5 hours, with 2.5 hours the ideal.
Emotional Intelligence: EQ-i2.0
The EQ-i2.0 or Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 is the world’s leading emotional intelligence assessment. This seminar offers an overview of the model and its components: self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal, decision-making, and stress management. A range of practical activities illustrate each section and then offer tangible tools that help participants: set and achieve goals, read other people, make better decisions, and handle stress. This seminar can be done as a theoretical introduction to the model or with the assessment included. Program Length: 2 hours to 2 days.
*For information about taking the EQ-i2.0 assessment and receiving the report and an individual debrief, please click here.
Hidden Figures in the Race to Space
This session uses the space race – both the actual history and its portrayal on the big screen – as a thought-provoking window into the Business Acumen competency of Human Capital Management as well as the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Program Length: 1-3 hours, with 2-2.5 hours the ideal.
Time Management and Schedule Prioritization
In an era when the average office worker receives over 100 emails per day, determining how to prioritize work and how to make time for bigger projects is increasingly difficult. This session introduces four models that help participants figure out what to do, when to do it, and how to get started on the most important tasks. Program Length: 1-2 hours.
*For an article on this subject, please click here.
Young Men and Fire(fights): Crisis Leadership Insights from the Contrasting Fortunes of the Mann Gulch Smokejumpers and the 20th Maine
This case study explores a straightforward, yet critical question: what factors determine why some teams survive – even thrive – during a crisis, while others do not? This case study compares two small teams during crises: a group of 15 smokejumpers – firefighters who parachute into wilderness areas – during their fight against a forest fire in Mann Gulch, Montana, and a Civil War regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. Program Length: 1-2 hours.
America's Founding Documents: Vision and Values
Beginning with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, this session uses the nation’s founding documents to explore the role of organizational vision and values in everyday leadership. After laying out the context for the creation of these two documents, we carry forward to later reform movements – including abolition, women’s suffrage, and the Civil Rights Movement – when people contested the vision and values of these frameworks in ways that reinterpreted and expanded the founders’ original meanings. Program Length: 2-3 hours.
Communication: Lincoln and the Art of Communication
In the past week have you stopped reading an email before reaching the end? Or, have you reached the end and needed more information? Have you been frustrated because you were given too few options, or too many? On the other hand, why is it that we still remember Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address over 150 years after it was delivered? This session uses Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s greatest Communicator in Chief, to explore the fundamental competencies of interpersonal skills, oral communication, and written communication. Weaving together Lincoln’s greatest speech and extensive-research on decision-making and communication styles, this session explores how we can adapt our messages to reach every possible audience. A range of hands-on, practical and fun activities help illustrate the principles covered in ways that participants will never forget. Program Length: 1-2 hours.
Decision Making
How do we ensure that we are making the best decision possible and not prematurely eliminating options or, worse yet, giving ourselves no options in the first place? This seminar examines some of the challenges in making decisions, and offers a number of tools to help make decisions as an individual, to navigate group dynamics when making decisions, and to lead teams to make great decisions. Program Length: 90 minutes to 1/2 day.
Employee Engagement: Chamberlain Among the Mutineers
This program examines the all-important topic of employee engagement. We begin by exploring the most recent data and theories on employee engagement and disengagement from Gallup, Dale Carnegie, and the Federal Viewpoint Survey. We then look at a real-world case study from the Civil War to see how Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was able to convince 120 mutineers – disengaged employees – to reengage and rejoin his regiment. That successful intervention would prove critical when, just six weeks later, this unit was tasked with holding the Union army’s left flank at the Battle of Gettysburg. The combination of modern research models, clips from Hollywood movies, and actual documents from the 1860s, make for a compelling case study into this most critical of topics. Program Length: 1 hour to 3.5 hours, with 2.5 hours the ideal.
Emotional Intelligence: EQ-i2.0
The EQ-i2.0 or Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 is the world’s leading emotional intelligence assessment. This seminar offers an overview of the model and its components: self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal, decision-making, and stress management. A range of practical activities illustrate each section and then offer tangible tools that help participants: set and achieve goals, read other people, make better decisions, and handle stress. This seminar can be done as a theoretical introduction to the model or with the assessment included. Program Length: 2 hours to 2 days.
*For information about taking the EQ-i2.0 assessment and receiving the report and an individual debrief, please click here.
Hidden Figures in the Race to Space
This session uses the space race – both the actual history and its portrayal on the big screen – as a thought-provoking window into the Business Acumen competency of Human Capital Management as well as the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Program Length: 1-3 hours, with 2-2.5 hours the ideal.
Time Management and Schedule Prioritization
In an era when the average office worker receives over 100 emails per day, determining how to prioritize work and how to make time for bigger projects is increasingly difficult. This session introduces four models that help participants figure out what to do, when to do it, and how to get started on the most important tasks. Program Length: 1-2 hours.
*For an article on this subject, please click here.
Young Men and Fire(fights): Crisis Leadership Insights from the Contrasting Fortunes of the Mann Gulch Smokejumpers and the 20th Maine
This case study explores a straightforward, yet critical question: what factors determine why some teams survive – even thrive – during a crisis, while others do not? This case study compares two small teams during crises: a group of 15 smokejumpers – firefighters who parachute into wilderness areas – during their fight against a forest fire in Mann Gulch, Montana, and a Civil War regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. Program Length: 1-2 hours.