Join this unique and highly-praised workshop–designed and led by an instructor with more than 30 years of experience in leading teams across multiple industries–to improve your skill in leveraging the potential of your team to improve must-succeed meeting outcomes. Topics include how to mitigate social influences and biases, effectively frame problems, navigate the messy decision, deal with difficult behaviors, create alignment when faced with multiple objectives, and ask the better questions to improve team engagement and foster deeper thinking.
Workshop Details
WORKSHOP FORMAT
This two-day workshop includes classroom instruction, paired exercises to apply new learnings, and hands-on practice session for each participant. These practice sessions are based on real-life case studies or specific situations currently faced by participants. During these practice sessions, other class members are given roles, allowing the designated group leader to apply their new skills while handling typical group dynamics. Participants are given personalized feedback at the end of their practice sessions. Class size is limited to 12 to ensure personalized feedback.
WORKSHOP MODULES
Day One
Module 1: Explore the influences of social dynamics on team performance. Learn questions and tools that mitigate predominant cognitive and motivational biases. Practice tools that increase engagement and foster balanced and insightful discussions.
Module 2: Learn how to structure and lead purposeful and productive meetings by focusing on the question (s) that need to be answered. Introduction to the Discussion Framework, a 5-phase meeting GPS that (a) assists with meeting design and (b) the team is not leaping to solutions prior to succinctly defining the problem to be solved and the associated set of objectives. Practice skills in redirecting a team stuck in a conversational cauldron due to lack of focus on the questions to be answered.
Module 3: Introduction to the workshop leader’s extensive research and practice of asking the better question. Discuss the neuroscience behind why certain questions work the way they do. Learn six powerful question structures that identify underlying drivers, promote innovation, challenge assumptions, and create richer discussions regarding alternatives. Practice skills learned in stakeholder, client, or employee interviewing sessions.
Day Two
Module 4: What’s Your Problem? Learn how to create alignment on the problem to be solved. Practice techniques that improve problem framing. Introduction to methods to bring competing objectives into one field of vision.
Module 5: Improve your innovation efforts with the power of question-storming. Learn why brainstorming fails to deliver when seeking to innovate. Review the neuroscience research on the challenges to thinking creatively. Discuss and demonstration of the question-storming technique.
Module 6: Explore the common pitfalls when making choices or assessing risks. Ask the better question to elicit and ensure alignment on decision criteria. Understand how objectives are different from decision criteria. Practice questions that dealing with differences when evaluating options.
Supportive workshop materials designed to be referenced long after the class is completed.
Leadership Workshop Workbook
Topics covered include a discussion of the biases and social psychology of groups, principles of robust meeting design, question dos and don’ts, the difference between compliance and commitment, why brainstorming does not work (and what to do instead), the power of using a small wins approach during implementation, and over 100 examples of questions to ask during each phase of the discussion process.
The Ultimate Tool Kit
Contains over 25 creative thinking, decision-making, engagement, and problem-solving tools. Provides tool purpose, constructions steps, and tips for use. Select tools include an audio file for a more in-depth discussion of tool usage.