Half-Day Learning Experiences

Once an individual understands his or her thinking style preferences, the door is open to improved communication, leadership, management, problem-solving, decision-making, and other aspects of personal and interpersonal development.  Prior to the session, participants complete a 120 question self-assessment online. During the session, a certified practitioner will provide each person with a comprehensive report outlining their dominant thinking style.  Participants learn how they can use this information to ask questions regarding any business issue and also develop deeper trust bonds with work colleagues.

Energy increases when a team coalesces through adaptability, trust, and a shared goal.  Participants experience the inspiring story of a climbing team who help a blind fellow climber reach the summit of Mount Everest overcoming multiple obstacles in the process.  Participants learn the keys of high-performance teaming:  purpose, communication, and steadfast trust.  Also in this session, participants learn the maturity continuum of teaming—how we can avoid the pitfalls of victim or egotistical behaviors.  All skills are applied to current organizational issues.

How do we each show up for work each day?  Do our moods affect others?  How do our dealings with direct reports or colleagues affect their success? Participants learn the power of positive expectations, which include providing clear instructions, offering the right resources, and establishing two-way feedback.  Accountability starts with ourselves.

Great teams capitalize on the different perspectives and knowledge of each team member.  At times, we can reach impasses when we sincerely believe our way is the best way. Participants learn five ways of moving to action when differences of opinion bog down decisions and daily work.  Learning how to create “third right answers” utilizes the best ideas of both viewpoints, creating one that is better than both of the originals.

At times, underlying beliefs and unspoken rules can have limiting effects on creating new ideas for the future.  Participants learn to identify organizational views, determine when these views are blocking new thought, and how to create new paradigms that lead to success.

Do you find yourself dragging out of bed each morning and dragging yourself to work?  Do you come home at night and collapse in front of the TV?  Do you feel as though your job is your life…or your life is a job?  Participants examine symptoms of fatigue, discover a wealth of creative ideas and strategies for energy renewal, and learn how to perform at peak capacity.

In this beginning class, participants are introduced to servant leadership through a community building activity, six key traits of servant leadership and what they look like in the workplace, followed by a video clip from of a team solving a problem practicing servant leadership behaviors.  Next, participants learn about the role of trust in servant leadership—what builds trust, what destroys trust, and how to assess themselves on their trustworthiness.  The class ends with a hands-on project simulation using all the skills of servant leadership from the morning activities. (Available in Spanish, too.)

Now EVERYONE in your organization can have access to servant leadership. In this beginning class, participants are introduced to servant leadership through a community building activity, six key traits of servant leadership and what they look like in the workplace, followed with a video clip from of a team solving a problem practicing servant leadership behaviors.  Next, participants learn about the role of trust in servant leadership—what builds trust, what destroys trust, and how to assess themselves on their trustworthiness.  The class ends with a hands-on project simulation using all the skills of servant leadership from the morning activities. In addition, the class uses cultural traditions to examine leadership skills, teaching through stories and participants’ experiences.

When moving from being an individual contributor to a supervisor, responsibilities change.  This course is designed for those who are currently supervising other people or have been identified as potential supervisors. Class content covers such skills as delegating work, creating accountability and ownership, and coaching for effectiveness.

This course is designed to apply concepts of servant leadership to real work situations.  The emphasis is on giving and receiving good feedback to improve performance.  The class begins with a fun activity to illustrate what happens when you perform a task without proper feedback. Next, participants are broken into teams and are given case studies of workplace issues to solve using servant leadership principles and practices.  The class ends with a hands-on activity focusing on the importance of real time feedback to successfully complete a work project.

What is the biggest block to innovation?  Many of us say, “I’m just not the creative type.”  Hogwash!  Innovation is about looking at the same thing as everyone else and seeing something different.  And I bet you have thought it many times, but just not said it.  Participants learn how to identify where they are and what they are doing when their best ideas appear.  Next, they learn about woolgathering and imaginology, two processes for priming the imagination pump.  Lastly, participants learn nine tips for looking through a different lens to generate new possibilities.  This activity-based learning experience will delight your organization with both fun and practical strategies for immediate work application.

Shadows are parts of us we cannot or choose not to see in ourselves.  They hold us back, limit our performance, and can be off-putting to our colleagues.  But who wants to attend a learning experience based on revealing the not-so-good side of themselves?  There’s good news!  Most of our shadows are the flip side of our genius we are wearing wrong-side-out.  Yes!  The strengths we have…the things we are best at, if we overplay them can go south quickly.  In this program, participants identify strengths, learn the shadows associated with them, and create a “self-awareness tracker” for keeping them at bay.

Just as each snowflake has a unique pattern, each person, so we are learning, has the potential for unique genius.  Some people live their gifts with a spirit of adventure, others, for whatever reason, may never realize that it’s their difference that makes them special.  In this session, participants will work from TMCA’s book, Awakening Your Sleeping Genius and experience five learning activities to identify genius and nurture the process over the following months.  The outcome?  A plan for discovering, developing, and growing hidden strengths and bringing them to the forefront of your life.

It would be great if life were predictable, but sometimes it throws us a curve.  Organizations and individuals can be faced with economic volatility, surprising resignations, tragedies, and projects that can turn south unexpectedly.  Servant-leaders need a skillset for dealing with the unforeseen. Through a powerful, gripping story of an airliner crash, participants learn lessons in proactive planning, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork.

What if we could find the place where our talents, passion, and conscience intersect?  That sweet spot is where we can make the greatest contribution in the world, and it is different for each one of us.  Participants learn how to listen to one another’s stories and hear the wisdom within them.  They learn how to listen for skills, assets, and abilities.  Servant-leaders seek input and act on it believing that others have knowledge from which we can all benefit.  Welcoming diversity of thought is essential.  By taking part in a simulation requiring input from all to assure success, participants learn to honor differences and appreciate the knowledge of others.

“Life is about change.  Sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it is beautiful, but most of the time it is both.”

Of all the topics we have taught in the past three decades, change tops the list.  We are all frequently adapting to change in our organizations.  Author Lillie Brock writes, “Change just happens like the weather.  Changes result from chance, choice, or crisis, and are generally unpredictable.  But the process of ‘how’ we move through life’s changes is predictable.”

TMCA has helped organizations and individuals work through many changes—organizational, professional, and personal/family changes.  We examine change from four perspectives: intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual.  Participants learn how to use these different perspectives to identify where they are prone to get “stuck” and create strategies to move forward.

We like to define intuition as “knowing without knowing HOW you know.”  In the emerging field of brain technology where untapped potential lies, we are discovering more about the skills of intuitive thinking.  We validate intuition by tracking it and listening to each other’s stories.  Participants explore three different kinds of intuition—ordinary gut instinct, expert intuition from years of experience, and strategic intuition when answers become clear from reflection and problem incubation.  Participants also learn common traits of business people who have learned to use intuition as an essential problem-solving tool.

Matrixing/Storyboarding is an advanced creative problem-solving technique that helps the brain see new connections when you have run out of fresh ideas.  Matrixing encompasses all of the creative thinking muscles:  fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality, and evaluation.  A storyboard allows information to be brainstormed, communicated, and organized quickly.  By seeing many bits of information simultaneously, pieces can be linked to create new ideas.  Any organizational issue can be used as the practice problem for learning these new skills.

There is an iconic scene in the “I Love Lucy” television show when Lucy and Ethel work on a chocolate candy assembly line.  They cannot keep up with wrapping the pieces of chocolate as quickly as they come across the conveyer belt, so they hide them in their blouses, hats, and anywhere they can.  When the supervisor inspects their work and sees no unwrapped pieces of chocolate, she yells to the foreman, “Speed it up!” What ensues is a hilarious scene that has been enjoyed by generations of all ages.  Although systems thinking is a highly complex field of study, this example is one we like to start with.  Participants learn that a series of events can be drawn on a causal loop and each separate event has a bearing on the outcome.  As an introduction to systems thinking, this class offers a simple, understandable way to explore larger organizational problems, see how the parts affect the outcome, and then find an entry point for change.

In an ongoing study of the HBDI®, participants learn that they can have the same, compatible, contrasting, or opposite thinking styles with others and how this affects daily communication.  Through using quadrant checklists, participants create a holistic and comprehensive approach to problem solving and communication creating better relationships and significantly improved results.  Another fascinating tool that participants learn is the forward and reverse flow technique to problems or issues.  Attendees leave with a tool chest of great strategies for addressing organizational challenges.

Time management courses used to follow a basic premise—(1) we all have stuff to do, and (2) we all have the same amount of time, so being more organized is the answer to all of our time management problems.  While being organized is an essential element of time management, it isn’t the primary factor.  Our perception of time is the key driver.  TMCA began this idea with the publication of our business best-seller, Time Management for Unmanageable People and through new research we are learning that our brains can both slow down and speed up time. Participants explore how our brains compute time and how our individual thinking preferences influence the four basic steps of time management: planning, prioritizing, scheduling, and executing or following the plan.

Pilots tell us that an airplane is never 100% on course.  Every few seconds the guidance system technology of the plane is making small adjustments to help the plane stay on course to its destination.  “Holding people accountable” is a phrase that often makes leaders feel in charge.  Sadly, if you are having to call people into the principal’s office, you have already lost the culture of accountability. Correcting people when they haven’t performed well is not the cure-all to accountability.   Participants will learn tools and techniques for increasing personal responsibility and laying the necessary groundwork to help others be successful.

Dialogue is one of the key skills of servant-leaders. Both the spirit and practice of dialogue is different from standard business discussion.  In dialogue, the goal is to suspend personal biases, perspectives, and opinions in order to truly hear another’s point of view.  The tone is sincere, friendly, curious, and filled with humility—I must wholeheartedly believe that others have contributions that will add to the collective understanding.  Facilitating a dialogue takes on a whole new set of obligations.  Participants learn how to track the dialogue participant’s airtime, how to slow the group down if the conversation is becoming a debate, and how to use silence to increase understanding.  And the best part?  All of these skills are learned while doing a fun, hands-on activity that will keep participants listening for days!

While all of us have the capacity for creative thinking, some excel at it.  Creative mavericks are those who have energy, passion, idealism, and an unrealistic unwillingness to let anything stand in the way of their great idea.  They look at the same thing we are looking at, yet see something totally different.  Creative Mavericks need Creative Champions.  Creative Champions are nurturers, protectors, facilitators, and interference runners for the mavericks so that their ideas can get through the organization.  Participants explore both roles and learn how to create “Small Starts” or pilots to test drive the new ideas.

One of the key tenets of Robert Greenleaf’s work in servant leadership was the idea that “a true natural servant responds to any problem by listening first.”  Otto Scharmer wrote about four levels of listening, with generative listening being the highest level.  Generative listening is the ability to listen at a deeper level and generate new thoughts and new possibilities that come from the intense focus of listening.  Participants learn to not only listen for information, ideas, and feelings, but also for the person’s values.  Learning to listen with an open heart and to provide mirroring feedback as you listen, often provides new insights as the person hears themselves for the first time.  It is the most challenging form of listening, but provides participants with life-changing skills as they interact with colleagues, friends, and family.