Custom-Designed Workshops for Your Company
Our team can develop and deliver custom workshops for your team. We work closely with you to identify your training needs and customize our approach. These custom workshops are typically delivered as either half-day or full-day in-person workshops at your place of business.
Workshops on Strategy
Vision Co-Creation
Does your company vision* need reinvigorating (or need to be created)? Working on the essential elements of your company vision with your team builds engagement and support. You will be asked to sharpen your vision and focus on your uniqueness in the industry. It also leads to having a vision that tells potential customers/clients who you are and what you are about.
*A vision defines a future state that a company/organization hopes to reach. The "north star" we are aiming towards.
Mission, Vision, and Values
We will walk your team through an interactive process to draft a mission statement, a vision, and a written set of values. We will work through a variety of topics, including: If your company didn’t exist, why would it need to be invented? What options does it create for its owner, employees, trade partners, and customers that would not be easily available otherwise? Does your company’s essential nature come through in your mission, vision, and values? Do your values come through in your interactions day-to-day, as well as with clients?
Values Clarification
Our Values Clarification workshop explores which values are core to your company, what they look like in action, and how to integrate them further into day-to-day operations. You can work with a set of values you have already articulated for your company, or you can work with your team to distill out which values your company embodies. This can start as a half-day workshop with check-ins to follow by Zoom.
Workshops on Finance
Financial Literacy for Your Team
This workshop will introduce your whole team to the financials of a construction company. Participants will learn basic vocabulary, how to understand a Profit & Loss Statement, and what key metrics your company is tracking.
Workshops on Organization
Organization Design and Effectiveness Assessment
This workshop helps your company identify your roles and your decision-making processes. Critical work and information paths will be clarified so that getting your work done gets easier. Creating a communications architecture (map) ensures that everyone who needs certain information gets it.
Building an Effective Team
This is a workshop for your company’s leadership team. We will provide an overview of your roles as leaders, discuss leadership stages and how to move through them, and develop your skills to motivate and work effectively with your team.
Employee Development
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a well-established and validated survey tool that provides people with a description of their “Personality Type.” Using this tool will provide your team with a language to understand, and discuss, different ways people express themselves, organize their work, and make decisions. It provides a set of strengths your ‘type’ typically has and contrasts those with the strengths of others.
Your whole team will take the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator online survey prior to this workshop. Small groups and pairs will work through exercises to make sure that the content is well understood, which ensures that it is used thoughtfully (and not as a set of labels).
During the workshop, we will discuss the results and learn about how people with different types can learn to work well together. This is a very participatory workshop that is also a lot of fun.
Company Team Building Retreat
If your team needs a stronger sense of shared purpose and accountability, a day-long workshop designed specifically for your company can help to develop a sense of community. It is a highly interactive day, involving everyone. We can build on your vision and values focus on improving communication among team members, or focus on a specific issue or challenge that your company is facing.
Some of the day will be spent focusing on company specific-areas, and some will include some exercises that are fun and build an awareness of what attributes a successful team has. Growth happens throughout the day, and in the follow-up that the team chooses to take on.
Change Management for Leaders
If your company is planning on or in the middle of going through a transition, this workshop will help your leadership team understand common reactions to change, and how you can address them. For example, if you are planning to increase the staff, hoping for an improvement in quality or in staff engagement, or shifting your focus of work, you can make a plan to accomplish that and then move into action.
People react in different ways to change, but providing enough information and support helps everyone manage the change. We will share some theoretical background about change and how to manage it. Your responses to people, at the start and for the duration of the transition, can be informed by what you have learned that people need. You can feel prepared to launch and lead a change, rather than ‘reacting your way through it.’
Change Management for Employees
This day will start by introducing people to typical reactions to change, and what their reactions typically are, using some intriguing and engaging exercises. Then, the company/change leader(s) will introduce the picture of what changes are coming; why they are being made; and how they will improve the company.
Employees will be asked about what impact the planned changes might have on them, and what support they will need to make the change easier. We will address the role of leaders and employees in the process, utilizing both theory and practical exercises. At the end of the workshop, all involved will be able to articulate the planned change and *why* it is happening; where to go to get help throughout the transition; and the communications plan throughout the process.
Communicating Across Differences
This interactive workshop can bring more ease and build some skills needed to communicate effectively across differences. First, we’ll identify the differences present in the company, as each person shares which differences they bring that are important to them. Questions and answers can occur in a relaxed, collaborative manner. We will then have a set of structured conversations across/among some of the major differences (e.g. generations, gender identities, race and ethnicity, and sexual orientation.) Having these discussions with a facilitator provides a place to practice and build skills that can walk back into work with each participant.
Role Clarification and Team Interdependencies
There are different circumstances when you might need this workshop. If you are starting up a company or want to shift a series of roles; if you are bringing in a new employee whose role will create some shifts in the other employees’ roles; or if you just want to take a fresh look at who is doing what, in order to create more accountability.
The work for each workshop is tailored to your specific situation, but we start by reviewing the mission and vision since all of the jobs/roles/tasks should flow from (and back to) those. Each employee is asked to portray their key responsibilities, what they need from other people to do their jobs well, any skills or superpowers they have that could be more tapped into, and any skills/tasks they’d like to learn at the company.
The team responds to each person’s presentation. There may be clarification, a discussion of what success looks like, or negotiations with others who are interdependent with each other. Depending on your needs, there could also be feedback built into the workshop.
Leadership Development (a workshop for organization leaders)
What kind of leader do you want to be? This workshop will evaluate your leadership style based on your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; your self-assessment as an inclusive leader; and your responses to a collaborative leadership self-assessment. We will address your preferences, how you can have the most impact using your style, and what your default mode is vs. other options and choices.
We will then guide you through strategies to deal with common leadership challenges. This workshop will increase your awareness of your own style, and also help you engage your employees with your vision & mission and other areas you’d like to focus on.
Improving Communication
Communication is the key to all interpersonal relationships, including professional ones. This workshop is geared towards multiple members from the same company and includes individual interviews with participants before the group feedback session. These interviews can touch on current concerns or be used to anticipate change in the future. You will learn specifically where your company has communication challenges and be able to apply the strategies learned immediately.
Anti-Racism in Practice
What would anti-racist policies look like in your company? How would these policies shift your existing work culture? This workshop offers your company an opportunity to brainstorm and document the anti-racist work you want to do within your company and within your community.
Workshops on Community
Marketing and Lead Analysis
Once you have an effective marketing plan in place and the phone starts ringing, what is your strategy and what are your tools for managing these leads? This workshop will guide your leadership team through a look back at the past year or so to see which leads your company said “yes” or “no”; analyze which jobs were the most profitable and enjoyable. Based on this review, we will review your marketing plan to determine what sorts of leads to target going forward.
Workshops on Production
Process Map Workshop for Project Team
What is a process map and why should you bother? A process map looks at the whole life cycle of a project from the initial sales call to project close-out. The process map lists all the tasks in sequence along with who is responsible for doing them, and who needs to be informed about them. During this workshop, we will create this map with you or look at your existing map and review the key milestones in your company’s process. We will focus on the 2 or 3 milestones that are the most problematic for the team right now and strategize solutions.
Managing Up: Sales and Production
In construction companies, more attention often needs to be paid to how the production team and sales team are working together and communicating with clients. Essentially, this workshop will empower the production team to hold the sales team accountable to the standards of work (scope, quality, budget, schedule) that the production team can realistically perform.