Sample Program Descriptions

The sample program descriptions listed below will be modified/adapted to fit the unique needs of each event. As well as customization, Leadership Outfitters will integrate evolving industry or cultural issues as identified by our clients. The programs can be expanded or merged to fit the education content goals whether they are addressed in a 60-minute breakout or a multi-day conference.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

The Role of the Leader: Communicating Vision and Setting Goals
Great leaders have vision so they can clearly see the defined direction ahead. However, visions only become reality when they are communicated, embraced and followed by a clear plan of action. In this program, participants will examine how to create and communicate a compelling vision; explore the tension between vision and reality; and learn how to set S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Navigating, Coaching and Encouraging to the Summit
Individuals support the community they create. A productive team must have an understanding of the mission and as well as recognizing the values supported by the community. This session outlines the basics of working within a community environment; team stages; how to effectively communicate; and how to encourage those around you.

Leadership that is Modeled at All Levels
From the front line folks to the executive board room - leadership is essential at all levels in your organization. We.ll explore how to assess leadership potential in your organization; empower staff to model leadership in a variety of situations; and recognize and reward leadership efforts without destroying your budget.

Leadership: A Never-Ending Adventure
Designed with the mid-level manager in mind, this workshop assumes participants have already assumed leadership positions or been given the opportunity to exercise leadership behavior. We will help determine which issues are best for you, such as management vs. leadership; motivating co-workers; delegation; and conflict management.

A Practical Approach To Ethical Leadership
This program investigates individual and environmental issues that affect our decision making process. Discover how these decisions are directly correlated with the four quadrants of the Life Balance model. Participants will address the definitions of ethical leadership; what ethical behavior looks like on the job; how to inspire; and values-based decision making.

Lead and Succeed for Women
Leadership is the ability to envision the future, set a strategic direction, and take responsibility for results in your business and personal life. Women have an incredible opportunity to be exceptional leaders, which in turn, can lead to increased personal and professional success. In this session, begin the journey of discovering your own personal leadership style; explore the keys of successful planning for the future; and investigate the unique work culture of women.

101 Ways to Energize, Motivate, and Recognize Your Team
An organization's most valuable asset is its employees. Successful leaders know how to create an environment that encourages and supports employee initiative, involvement and commitment. This program considers what employees really want; discover how to create a motivating environment; learn how to empower and involve team members; examine individual vs. team rewards; and receive 101 ideas for motivating and rewarding your team.

What Are My Leadership Values?
Participants examine what values they bring to their leadership role in their work or volunteer environment as well as exploring how to work with others who may have differing values. The issue of diversity, inclusiveness, and what lenses we look through is covered. Participants engage in an interactive activity that helps them identify their own values, the values of their work and/or volunteer environment.

Moving Forward: Leading to New Levels
Participants have the opportunity to explore how to lead their organizations to new levels using some of the concepts from author Jim Collins’ bestseller Good to Great. The session looks at Collins’ concept of leading with humility as well as choosing and involving the right team and who you need to “get on the bus.” We examine the differences in today’s volunteer mix and how “great” leaders can respond to the needs of those diverse groups.

Leadership Influence and Coalition Building
In this session participants examine the elements of influence and address persuasion strategies. Activities include identifying key stakeholders, constituency needs, and how to communicate key messages to those you want to impact. Using content in the PBS Frontline program “The Persuaders” participants engage in a creative dialog about how to persuade and build coalitions in today’s media savvy world.

Envisioning the Future: Where Are We Going
Participants explore their organization’s vision and mission and how these drive decision-making and growth. Participants collaborate as they create “vision collages” that express what they see as the future of their organization. Participants are equipped with planning tools such as, but not limited to—“S.M.A..R.T.” goals, mindmapping techniques, and other analysis and planning tools.

Innovate or Hibernate – What’s the Next Step for Your Team?
Today’s most successful organizations are encouraging their teams to be innovative and creative in their structure and process. In this session, participants examine the benefits of taking a strategic approach to creative problem-solving, explore how to encourage innovation in the work and/or volunteer environment, and use practical techniques to discover new ideas and fresh insights. Participants will take home tools and techniques that can be used within their organization to boost creativity and put innovative ideas to use. Using a real-life example from the highly-innovative company, IDEO, participants will explore the “10 Faces of IDEO Innovation” as well as their “5 Step Methodology” in a purposeful and lively process that will show how these ideas can apply to their teams.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Productive Meetings: Reality or Just a Dream?
Your committee, task force and council meetings CAN be productive and effective! Explore practical ways to make meetings work for you and your organization. In this highly interactive session we will discover the essentials of preparing for an effective meeting; how to manage various disruptive meeting behaviors; what elements are necessary to record and document; and explore post-meeting strategies to ensure follow-through with increased communication.

Managing Conflict and Difficult People
We've all experienced them at one time or another - negative people, naysayers, controllers, criticizers, micro-managers, interrupters, and mind wanderers. We interact with them daily in the office, in our chapters or components, and in the community. This session also includes a “conflict assessment” and strategies on how to avert issues before they cause conflict, and how to manage conflict from a positive growth perspective.

Exploring Creativity for Both Right and Left 'Brain'ers
You can conquer the challenge of creativity and innovation! With the right tools, anyone can increase their creativity quotient. Break through the creativity barrier in this session in this hands-on session by exploring how to spark creative thinking; discover how to build a creative environment within any organization; and practice creative brainstorming techniques.

Presentation Skills with Power and Pizzazz!
Whether you present to small or large groups; colleagues or clients; this program will help you improve your preparation, delivery, and interaction with participants. In this interactive program participants practice a variety of instructional techniques; review the basics on effective handouts, audio visuals; explore the principles of adult learning; and creative techniques for increasing interaction.

Embracing the Challenge of Supervision
There's a big difference between exercising the basic skills of supervision and being able to practice the art of leadership. We will explore how to be a good supervisor as well as understanding the difference managing and leading. Participants will discuss the attributes of supervisors and leaders; debunk the five leadership myths; and review the principles of effective leadership.

Authentic Communication Strategies That Encourage and Inspire
What if we really understood the intended content and ideas of the person we were listening to before we responded to them? What if we considered their communication style before approaching them with a new idea? Explore how our interpretation of others will influence how we communicate and respond to any given situation at home or work.

Motivating, Energizing, and Rewarding Those Around You
What is your motivation environment? Recognizing the efforts of employees can have a powerful impact upon an organization. Motivating and energizing employees doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming, but it does have to be sincere. BONUS! Workshop includes tip sheet with 101 creative recognition ideas.

The Art of Inclusion: Genders, Cultures, and Generations
In this program we consider the generational issues of young professionals entering the workplace and the challenges of working alongside individuals with different values. We will look at gender issues and the different interpretations of team. Participants will explore how culture impacts interpretation; discuss dealing with different behaviors; and techniques for addressing diversity issues.

Discovering and Managing Communication Behaviors
In this session, participants discover their individual behavior styles and how this effects communication within their professional and personal environments. Focus is on identifying behavior styles in others and learning to communicate with behavior style in mind. Author Peter Senge’s concepts of “Ladder of Inference” and “mental models” are used to illustrate the lenses leaders look through when communicating and making decisions. Values are also be discussed and used to illustrate the differences leaders bring to the team. *We strongly encourage the use of an assessment instrument to determine behavior styles. This $25 per person 20-page booklet is a great resource.

Effective Meetings and Creative Process Management Approaches
Participants focus on how to make meetings more productive and engaging. We explore ways to streamline agenda planning and ideas for making meetings interesting and purposeful. Participants discover new approaches to meeting creativity and innovation. We explore how to spark creative thinking, how to build an authentic environment, and brainstorming techniques to stimulate purposeful results.

Working a 40-hour week? Yeah Right!
For many of us a 40-hour week would feel like a vacation. This session focuses on identifying and reducing areas of stress in your organization as well as discovering how attitude and interpretation contribute to stress levels. Participants will examine Leadership Outfitters’ Life Balance Model and discover tools and techniques that can manage stress and proactively deal with situations that cause stressful environments.

Enabling Others To Act Through Delegation and Clear Expectations
An effective team understands what is expected and how much authority it has to act. In this session, participants explore the areas of delegation and setting clear expectations up and down the staff and/or volunteer structure. The group will learn new techniques on how to express expectations and how to communicate in a variety of situations. Participants will create and solve a series of scenarios that illustrate situations in which these issues arise.

Women Executives: Getting In Step with Your Style, Vision, and Future
Walk into any shoe warehouse and the choices are overwhelming. Will it be the latest in flip flops, high heeled pumps, running shoes or loafers? Prada? Capezio? Skechers? The choices seem endless. Are the choices for your life and career as numerous? As we grow in our organizations, women should be thinking about the choices they have, where they want to go next, and the plan for getting there. In this session you will have the opportunity to look at your individual vision of the future, how your behavior style affects how you approach that future, how to make the decisions needed to get there, and how to start the process. As singer, Bette Midler says, "Give a girl the right shoe and she'll conquer the world". Join us as we explore the areas you want to conquer.

Creating a Premium Customer Experience with Brand Awareness
When you think of coffee, why does Starbucks almost immediately pop into your mind? In this segment, we look at some different corporate community models and how their relational marketing approaches can be applied to a participant’s organization to increase participation and authentic engagement. Participants explore the areas of key messages, building a better brand, and how a premium client and/or member experience contributes to brand awareness.

Everyday Ethics for Everyday Decision Making
Leaders at all levels continually grapple with what is the ‘right’ ethical answer. There are “situational” ethics we face every day in our professional and personal lives. This interactive program explores individual and environmental issues that affect our decision making process. Participants investigate how decisions are directly correlated with the four quadrants of Leadership Outfitters’ Life Balance model, while also addressing the definitions of ethical leadership; what ethical behavior looks like in the workplace and volunteer environments; and how to inspire values-based decision making.

The Triple Whammy: Change, Communication, and Conflict
Today’s leader must function in an ever-changing environment. Learning to communicate with different styles and preferences is key to a fully functioning leadership team. In this session participants consider change and how volunteers and staff react to it, identify their predominate behavior style(s) and learn how this affects communication with others, and how both contribute to conflict. Techniques are shared for how to work more effectively with those with different styles. Peter Senge’s “Ladder of Inference” will be used to illustrate the lenses we look through when communicating and making decisions. Creative team activities help illustrate how to deal with different behavior styles and conflict styles as they show up in group dynamics. (Note: this is an example of blending several breakout topics into one breakout. Several issues can be discussed, but in less depth than the individual topic breakouts. We can work with the organization to combine other topics is necessary).

Strategic Life Planning
Successful businesses are guided by a strong mission statement which provides clarity, direction, and a mechanism for good planning. If you want to release your full potential and contribute to your own legacy, creating a strategic life plan is the first step. In this workshop, you will identify your gifts, passions, and priorities and harness them into a plan for your life – one that will empower and energize you to bring your dreams into reality.

Managing Time & Priorities
In our fast-paced world of ever-evolving technology and the pressure to juggle multiple demands, it’s no small wonder we feel overloaded. In this workshop, you will realize how goals and time intersect; understand your time management style; and learn various time maximizing strategies.

Organized for Life
Live your life to its fullest potential by uncluttering your mind and your desk, and your life. In this workshop, you will discover your organizing style; identify the roadblocks in yourself and your environment; and tactics to get and stay organized.

ASSOCIATION & NON-PROFIT

Finding, Cultivating and Rewarding Chapter Volunteers
Participants will explore how to identify potential new leaders and volunteers, discover their skills and talents, match their talents to specific tasks, and ask for participation in the .R.I.G.H.T.. way. Using mind-mapping techniques, participants will have the opportunity to plan and place volunteers in a mock activity that will illustrate how a committee/special event task force can implement the technique at their chapter level.

Turning a Marathon Chapter Meeting into a Sprint
An effective meeting does not involve checking your creativity at the door. Participants will discuss how to make board and education meetings more productive and engaging. The session will investigate brainstorming techniques, streamlining agendas and new ideas for making meetings interesting.

Practical Membership Strategies that Engage and Produce Results
This program will provide turn-key options and fresh approaches to finding and recruiting new members. Orientation, involvement, and recognition all play a role in the retention of those members. We will identify the principles of membership development; explore ways to involve other departments; learn new techniques to involve more members; and discuss how to increase member retention.

25 Ideas for Designing the Perfect Educational Experience
A successful event depends on more than just the right location or fun social events. This session will examine how to balance the right topics and learning formats; how to work with speakers to prepare them for your audience; and explore strategies on convincing others of the value of an innovative learning approach.

Adult Learning Styles or 'Why George Likes Lectures & Judy Likes Discussion Groups.'
Always see the same people in your education programs? Seem to satisfy some audiences, but somehow not others? This program will determine your own learning style; see how different styles affect program attendance and success; discover how to plan programs to accommodate the needs of your learners; and explore new ideas in marketing that hit "hot buttons."

See It In Action In Your Own Community
Several companies have already realized and practice many positive customer service behaviors. They communicate brand through experience in addition to advertising. In order to identify how they have put these concepts to work, participants go on a neighborhood field trip and observe the staff at various commercial establishment (i.e. Starbucks, Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, etc.). Participants look for some or all of the following:

Does staff take responsibility for their actions and decisions?
Are there signs of delegation?
Are they motivating each other? If so, how?
Do they know the mission of the organization?
Are they committed to service?
Do they communicate well with each other? With customers?
Did you observe any difficult situations? How were these handled?
What key messages did you experience?

Following the field trips teams will report on their observations and findings. That data will then be used in an interactive activity in which participants will explore what techniques could be used as a guide for their own organizations.
Note: venue depends on neighborhood/community.

Stump Your Fellow Constituent/Chapter Leaders
Have you ever wanted to share an organizational challenge or management problem, but were afraid to ask? In this interactive format, you and your peers will have the chance to share an anonymous issue that is a “thorn in your side”. Then your peers will have a chance to offer some practical solutions and/or best practices to the challenge.

Board Know-How: Association Basics and Risk Management Strategies
This session reviews the purpose of associations, organizational structure, and roles and responsibilities of board members including the legal aspects of serving on a board. Participants get a thorough, yet dynamic session on issues of risk management and standards of conduct, including the opportunity to build and discuss various risk scenarios. We work with you to define what areas are important to discuss in this segment.

Helping to create passionate leaders and high performance teams
through customized training, practical solutions, and ongoing support.