Training Workshops
Meridian Workshops are designed to meet your specific needs
or can be drawn from our extensive library of existing workshops:
The Art of Delegation: Getting Work Done Through
Others
This workshop is designed for managers at all skill levels. It will
help you improve your competence in one of the most crucial management responsibilities—task
assignment. You will learn how to get work done through others efficiently
and effectively, while building stronger working relationships.
Whether you are supervising people for the first time or have been in management
positions for years, The Art of Effective Delegation will provide
you with the opportunity to improve your skills, acquire new tools and techniques
that really work, and learn how to get tasks back on track when things go wrong.
By learning how to apply Meridian’s “Task Transfer” model,
you will acquire management tools and skills that will enable you to:
- Clearly and concisely communicate desired outcomes.
- Ask more effective questions that further action and increase capability.
- Give appropriate feedback without blame or judgment so that you get the
results you desire.
- Monitor assignments for improved coordination and results.
- Create accountability.
You will get better results and improve your own level of job satisfaction
when you learn the “Art of Delegation.”
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Building Shared Understanding: The Basics of Communicating
Effectively
Communication is fundamental to human relations. It is also frequently
the root cause for conflict and misunderstanding. It is a basic skill
fraught with complexity.
In this highly interactive workshop, the participants will examine and practice
both oral and written communication skills that are required to work effectively
with others.
Written Communication – In this section you will:
- Critically examine your writing style and clarity using the unique “fog
index.”
- Acquire invaluable techniques for improving the clarity of your writing.
- Learn the pitfalls of e-mail and how to avoid the “e-mail monster.”
Oral communication – In this section you will:
- Examine your own personal communication style and how to get your message
heard by others.
- Learn the best techniques for giving clear feedback.
- Learn how to manage conversations in order to further action.
You will get better results and improve your relationships with others once
you improve your ability to create shared understanding.
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Business Ethics: Value Based Management Strategies
The lack of ethics can have a severe economic impact on the organization – not
only in terms of the company’s ability to attract and retain customers
and employees, but also in terms of the internal, hidden cost of doing business. It
can have a direct impact on your bottom line.
Ethical practice is not just a good idea, it is good business. The
Global Reporting Initiative has documented the fact that “value based’ corporations
have a distinct competitive advantage and excel in terms of their financial
performance.
In this workshop, you will examine, discuss, and debate the often-cloudy world
of human values and business ethics. You will examine:
- The role of values in the workplace and how values emerge.
- The responsibility of ethical practices in leadership and in teams.
- How to create a value based management structure and how to improve your
relationships with critical stakeholders.
- The tools of workplace ethics including Codes of Conduct and Codes of Business
Practices.
- Learn how to develop “stakeholder management” initiatives.
Ethical business practices are not just a good idea they are good business. This
workshop gives participants an opportunity to understand how “business
value” can be created through ethical business practices.
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Giving Effective Feedback
In almost every modern organization today, people would identify “communication” as
either a problem or one of the primary opportunities for improvement. While
communication seems simple enough, we know from experience how truly complex
it can be.
One of the important needs in business communication is the need to give constructive
feedback. However, not giving the necessary feedback, only serves to
prolong the problem or make it worse. The reasons people fail to give
feedback are varied:
- It is hard to tell someone that they are not meeting expectations.
- We want people to like us.
- We don’t want to hurt a person’s feelings.
- We want to avoid potential conflict.
- We want to preserve the relationship.
In this workshop, participants will not focus on the “why’s” of
feedback failure, but instead will focus on how to become better at both giving
and receiving feedback. Feedback is not a one-way street. It involves
sending, receiving, and clarifying communication. It is a type of communication
that, when done well, will lead to appropriate action and more collaborative
business relationships. This workshop relies heavily on the use of scenarios
and role-playing because the ability to give and receive feedback effectively,
requires practice and that is what this workshop is intended to do.
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High Performance Teams: The Keys to Improving Results & Relationships
In today’s workplace, change is constant. Competition has expanded,
the marketplace is more global, technology is more prevalent, and customers
are more demanding. As Yogi Berra once said, “The future ain’t
what it used to be.”
More than ever before, your organizations performance reflects the collaborative
effort, and success is defined by the collective response of the people in
you organization. The concept of “teamwork” has never been
more relevant. Getting results and developing and sustaining effective
work relationships are critical to high performance. In this unique workshop
you will learn:
- How to use “team mapping” as a tool for understanding team
dynamics.
- Specific skills and techniques that will help you improve the three “C’s” for
building and sustaining high performance teams:
- Coordination
- Cooperation
- Communication
- How to recognize different styles and personal preferences and how to tap
into the awesome power of the diversity in your work community.
Your professional success will be determined more by your ability to work
effectively with others than by your functional expertise. This highly
interactive workshop will put you on the road to success.
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Influence Without Authority: How to Expand Your Personal Impact
None of us exists independent of our relationship with others. In today’s
fast paced and challenging business environment, the depth and quality of one’s
individual relationships, regardless of title, will affect one’s long-term
success more than any other factor.
In this one-of-a-kind workshop, you will acquire knowledge, skills, tools,
and techniques to improve your ability to manage yourself in ways that are
situationally appropriate and to improve your ability to influence the actions
of others. As a result you will have greater personal impact at work. In
this highly reflective and interactive workshop you will:
- Learn how your personal preferences and work style affects not only your
world-view, but also affects your relationships with others.
- Gain skills and tools that help you manage yourself in ways that are situationally
appropriate.
- Acquire skills that will help build work relationships that are more satisfying
and more productive.
Organizations are a complex web of people, processes, and systems. Effective
people have the ability to influence the actions of others, the decisions that
are made, and the strategies that are implemented. Be one of those people.
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Improving Performance Through Coaching: Managing in the Age of
Collaboration
The responsibilities of management are enormous. The demands on management
continue to grow as the workforce becomes more skilled and more diverse, and
are being asked to do more with less. More than ever before, your organization’s
success is defined by the collective response of those people in your organization.
You cannot succeed alone. Effective coaching means being able to accomplish
objectives by getting the best from a diverse group of individuals. Your
job is to create an atmosphere of commitment and collaboration. This
comes from your ability to manage yourself for the best results and role modeling
the behavior you want to see in others. Through the use of lecture, discussion,
team exercises and role-playing, the instructors will help the participants:
- Examine the benefits of using coaching as a leadership model.
- Identify personal leadership competencies, and assess coaching assets,
blind spots, and hidden biases.
- Learn how to maximize the contributions of diverse individuals.
- Explore individual style and personal preferences to see how they affect
the work environment and the people in it.
- Learn how to create accountability and sustain high levels of motivation.
Coaching provides a valuable leadership model for the 21st Century. It
will help you improve performance and increase the levels of satisfaction for
yourself and others.
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Partnering With Your Boss
The business environment of today is built upon a service economy and relies
heavily on the full participation of people within and outside of the organization
itself. As the manager, you are at the center of this collaborative business
venture. You are the lynchpin that connects customers, your boss, vendors
and employees together. You directly impact all of the characteristics
that make the business successful.
In your position, you are expected to participate in important decision making
and be able to communicate, plan, organize and negotiate with those around
you, acting as your boss’s representative. In order to be successful
in this role, you need to develop a good working relationship with your boss. In
this course the instructors will work with you to:
- Understand workstyle preferences and how they affect business relationships.
- Examine the trust and agreement that exists in your relationships with
others and how you can build that.
- Learning to value and leverage the differences of others.
- Use effective communication skills to build clarity and alignment.
- Identify potential conflict issues and learn to reduce friction in relationships.
This seminar provides you with the opportunity to examine your relationship
with your boss and explore the skills, tools and techniques that will allow
you to partner effectively with that person.
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Problem Solving & Decision Making
The ability to solve problems and make effective decisions is critical to
the success of every individual, at every level of business. Today’s
fast paced environment has resulted in a shift in the scope and nature of jobs.
More people, in more positions, are expected to solve problems and make decisions
as a part of their every day job requirements. In this workshop, you
will work in small teams and learn how to:
- Examine the roadblocks to good problem solving and decision making.
- Identify the root cause of problems and generate better ideas for solutions.
- Explore how your personal style and preferences affect both the process
and the outcomes.
- Learn how to involve others in the process.
- Apply a rigorous five-step, “Creative Problem Solving” (CPS)
Model.
- Learn how to employ “appreciative inquiry” for better results.
This is a highly interactive workshop providing participants with ample opportunity
to practice new skills and techniques. Participants will not only benefit
from acquiring new tools, but will also develop a clearer understanding of
how to integrate the efforts of others in developing sound solutions and effective
decisions.
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Process Mapping: Task Management for Today’s
Leaders
Getting the work done in the most efficient and effective way is critical
if organizations are going to be competitive, profitable, and customer centered. This
workshop focuses on providing the skills, tools and techniques for mapping
the work processes and managing them effectively. Participants will use
case studies or real work processes to examine how processes are linked activities
designed to provide value to customers, and is a visual analysis tool for understanding
how work is accomplished.
The workshop has four primary components and the participants will:
- Explore the basics of organizational dynamics and develop an understanding
of the role processes play in organizing work and delivering value to your
customer.
- Practice using the tools and techniques needed to develop process maps,
and will construct a Macro, Top-Down, Detailed, and Functional Flowcharts.
- Apply basic design principles that critically review the ability of the
process to add value on behalf of a customer and apply principles that helps
reduce the cost of quality.
- Reengineer processes based on adding value to the customer.
This workshop is designed for balance between lecture and discussion, and
for participants to practice the skills of process mapping and management. By
effectively managing how tasks are organized and performed participants can
improve work quality and increase customer satisfaction.
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The Role of the Supervisor: Creating the “Can Do” and the “Want
To”
To be a successful supervisor, you need to have a fundamental understanding
of the how to create a motivating environment and how to manage others for
the best results. You must recognize the impact created by your high
level of visibility; learn to manage yourself in situationally appropriate
ways; and build and sustain effective work relationships to help others contribute
their best efforts.
The class is very useful for newly appointed Supervisors, and equally beneficial
for those who want to sharpen their supervisory skill sets:
- Explore the skills of effective Self-Management and understanding how your
individual behavior affects the motivation and results achieved by others.
- Build and sustain constructive work relationships by building trust and
agreement.
- Learn to value and leverage the differences of others.
- Understand the basics of delegation and learn how to make effective work
assignments and to help your people be accountable.
- Give effective feedback to others.
- Learn the basics of effective communication.
Participants will examine Supervisory skill sets, tools and techniques that
will help them improve productivity and enhance the efficiency of their work
group. The participants will engage in small group discussion, team activities,
and role-playing to fully experience the supervisory role.
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What To Do When Things Go Wrong: Success = (MS + MR + MT)(A)
Things do not always turn out as planned. Even the most goal-oriented
individuals and organizations find it difficult to stay focused and productive
when emergent issues, unforeseen problems or performance problems occur.
It is not the fact that things go wrong, as much as how you react, individually
and collectively when they do. Participants will examine how organizations
create cultures where problems are merely events in search of a solution, and
problems present opportunities for growth, learning and improvement. These
are collaborative organizations, soundly rooted in a culture of interdependence
and learning.
This workshop focuses on what to do when things do not go as planned:
- Learn a straightforward problem-solving model that will enhance your ability
to resolve performance and interpersonal problems.
- Determining the root cause of problems.
- Practice expanding your capability to resolve problems.
- Improve both performance and job satisfaction for others.
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Workplace Conflict: The Cost, The Cause, and The
Cure
Conflict in the workplace is a business issue, and one that affects the bottom
line. Everyday, at every level of the organization, unresolved conflict
increases the cost of doing business, reduces productivity, and places enormous
stress on important business relationships. The costs of unresolved workplace
conflict have a very real impact on the bottom line both directly and indirectly.
- When employees are focused on, or are involved in conflict, it dilutes
their ability to pay attention to important daily business tasks and strategic
initiatives.
- When conflict intervention skills or experience are low, individuals tend
to avoid dealing with the conflict. Unfortunately, the very thing that
is feared, is practically guaranteed to show up, when least expected.
- The cost associated with conflict increases the longer the situation goes
unresolved, and the impact of conflict escalates, involving more people and
more time; often leaving litigation as the only remedy.
In this workshop you will learn:
- How to diffuse interpersonal conflict in a positive manner.
- Create value-based decisions.
- How to use conflict to improve innovation and enhance job satisfaction.
- How to improve your ability to collaborate with people who have the same
wants and needs, and how to negotiate effectively with those people who have
different wants and needs.
You will engage in small group discussion, team activities, and role-playing
to fully experience the role of conflict resolution and mitigation, and how
to use conflict to improve innovation and enhance job satisfaction.
“If you can’t change the circumstances,
change your perspective.”
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