Creative Leadership Development
Helping Leaders Think Beyond the Box
SERVICES
Our services enrich your leadership by providing a creative edge at all levels, from entry-level leaders to senior executives. We offer leadership programs, team building, creativity training for business, appreciative inquiry summits for positive change, and advanced topics for executive education. We also offer facilitated brainstorming sessions.
Whether offered as a workshop, seminar, keynote or retreat, our sessions are:
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interactive | |
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inspiring | |
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hands-on | |
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practical | |
We are certified in both Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator (HBDI) and can customize programs to leverage existing investments in these assessments or offer them as needed.
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Creativity Training |
Creativity has been hailed as the ultimate economic resource and a secret weapon that enables companies to innovate. Companies that invest in the creativity of their employees position themselves to gain a competitive edge beyond the boundaries of everyday thinking.
Our workshops help people learn how to apply fresh thinking to tough challenges, develop innovative solutions and become open to opportunities as they occur.
Creative thinkers:
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Are able to generate more original ideas | |
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Adapt more easily to change | |
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View situations from many different perspectives | |
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Embrace diversity as a valuable resource |
Everyone has the ability to boost their creativity with training regardless of current level of ability. Our programs have demonstrated success from testimonials and research results.
The Art of Great Ideas
This hands-on workshop shows participants how to develop their own unique style of creative thinking and learn how to use it in a practical way. Imagination and intuition are natural gifts that participants learn how to maximize to boost productivity of great ideas. A toolkit of brainstorming techniques gives participants a reliable resource for continuing creative problem solving in the workplace.
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Team Building |
Productive teams are the cornerstone of successful businesses. Our creativity-based workshops leverage team diversity to build teams that maximize individual strengths while working collaboratively to:
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Communicate effectively | |
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Solve problems creatively | |
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Adapt quickly to change |
We custom design team building workshops based on the needs of your team. An example of a 3 hour team building workshop:
Mental Ropes: Building Innovative Teams
Teams develop trust, communication skills and respect for member differences while working together in a process of innovation. The process of innovation - going from a new idea to a value added implementation - has many similarities to team-based rock climbing: everyone must fully engage for the team to succeed with a formidable task that could impact survival within the organization.
Benefits
Our workshops provide a long lasting foundation for teams by building upon proven assessments (e.g., MBTI, HBDI) that help align people with their passions, and by equipping teams with tools and techniques that can have immediate impact in the workplace.
Teams benefit from a boost of energizing inspiration when they realize the powerful results of combining strengths with imagination to achieve innovative solutions. Energized teams have less conflict, higher productivity and are more focused on group wins.
Creativity-based team building helps teams learn to identify opportunities and initiate change as well as adapt rapidly to external challenges. By instilling a supportive culture of "what if?" thinking, teams are empowered to think beyond the box to provide strategic insights.
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Positive Change Management |
Change is inevitable, and the way leaders lead through times of change can have far reaching impact on organizational success. A positive and creative approach can lead to an energized workforce united to seize advantage of new opportunities that arise from change.
We help leaders effect positive change through the application of Appreciative Inquiry - an approach that taps into the imagination and ideas of employees across the organization - to gain a competitive edge in today's rapidly changing global economy.
Examples of efforts that can benefit from an appreciative inquiry summit include:
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Organizational Culture Shift | |
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Employee Retention | |
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Strategic Planning | |
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Customer Service |
An appreciative inquiry summit brings together many voices from across the organization to help define new directions and strategies for growth. Through interviews and stories, the group collectively uncovers "the best of what is" and what gives life to a team or organization - i.e., that which should not change. From this positive foundation, the group imagines "the best of what could be" to set directions for positive change.
Appreciative Inquiry Summit for Positive Change
We coordinate the summit, facilitate the interviews and brainstorming components, and analyze the data to uncover patterns with an objective eye. We help leaders create questions designed to tap into the imagination and ideas of employees to effect positive change that unites and excites rather than divides and discourages. These results are then provided to the leadership team to assist with developing an agenda for positive change. Appreciative inquiry is an effective approach anytime it is desirable to have a high level of employee buy-in to facilitate positive change.
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Leadership Programs |
We custom design programs to help leaders think beyond the box in core areas critical for effective leadership. They are offered as individual workshops or bundled into a customized multi-month program. Click here to see an example of a 6-month program. Our workshops infuse creative thinking in core areas of leadership development such as:
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Change Management | |
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Communication | |
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Creativity and Innovation | |
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Relationship Building | |
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Self Awareness | |
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Stress Management |
All workshops can leverage existing investments in self-assessment results (e.g., MBTI, HBDI) or offer assessments as needed to maximize the impact of the experience.
Examples of workshops include:
First, Know Yourself
The first rule of effective leadership is to have a solid foundation for self-awareness and continuous reflection for growth. This workshop equips leaders with tools for exploring and building strengths while learning strategies for managing possible blind spots.
Creative Communication: Telling Stories for Success
Stories are a powerful means to inspire and communicate. This workshop helps leaders develop their own unique approach for telling stories that effectively convey memorable messages rich with meaning and imagery.
Workshops can be custom designed to include core areas of leadership development including:
The one certainty leaders will face is change. Our workshops show leaders how to apply creativity and positive thinking to the process of change management to energize forward momentum. Leaders learn about how different personality types react to change as well as potential sources of conflict during the process.
Is the message sent the same as the message received? Effective communication is essential in all aspect of leadership. Our workshops give leaders creative tools such as storytelling, metaphor and collage to enhance communication and reduce conflicts resulting from misunderstandings.
The ability to innovate is essential for organizations to maintain competitiveness and growth in today's rapidly changing world, and today's leaders need to be equipped to manage this process. Our workshops prepare leaders to effectively manage the steps required for moving a creative idea through the pipeline to become a value-added innovation.
Relationship Building
Having strong relationships with followers is often cited as one of the most important elements of effective leadership. Our workshops help leaders explore the essential elements of trust, credibility and integrity in forming and maintaining strong relationships.
A sense of self awareness lies at the core of effective leadership. By first becoming aware of one's own strengths and preferences, leaders can more effectively understand the differences of others and inspire them to reach for a common goal. Our workshops help leaders gain meaningful insights through assessments, reflection and other thought provoking tools.
Leaders face a potentially overwhelming barrage of demands from many different directions. Continuous levels of high stress are known to have disastrous effects such as reduced effectiveness and increased errors. This workshop empowers leaders to take control by developing creative and effective plans to manage work-related stress.
Below are some advanced topics that can be delivered individually or combined as keynotes, seminars, workshops or retreats.
Lessons for Leaders: Five Easy Ways to Kill Creativity
The role of leaders in developing and sustaining an atmosphere that supports creativity at work is crucial. This seminar addresses behaviors and attitudes known to kill creativity, and the alternatives that nurture creative thinking in an organization are discussed with suggestions for practical applications.
Leading for Creativity
The U. S. Council on Competitiveness has indicated that “innovation will be the single most important factor in determining America’s success through the 21st century”, and numerous other reports echo this prediction. Because of its fundamental role in innovation, creative thinking has become a cornerstone of organizational success. Consequently, the ability to recognize, develop, and retain creative talent has emerged as an essential skill set for leaders to remain competitive in today’s global economy.
This workshop gives executives an essential foundation for developing creative leadership by providing an awareness of creativity assessment tools, techniques for enhancing creativity at work, and best practices for successfully managing creative talent. Assessments will be introduced to evaluate individual creative thinking styles for purposes such as task alignment, training effectiveness and team development. Key leadership behaviors that support an organizational climate for creativity will be addressed. The influence of motivational factors, the physical environment and employee perception of support will also be covered within the context of creative leadership.
Participants will explore examples of idea management systems and develop a prototype system for their organization. A toolkit of basic creative thinking techniques and resources to support individual and team-based idea generation will be provided. Participants will also gain insights about their own preferred creative thinking style and develop a customized plan for continuing development in creative leadership. One-on-one follow-up sessions will be scheduled within 6 weeks following the workshop to assist with plan execution.
Creative Problem Solving – The Fuzzy Front End
Problems that are ill defined, open-ended and rich with social complexity often resist solution due to inadequate processing in the early stages of problem solving (also known as the fuzzy front end). The tendency to rush to closure and over reliance on critical-thinking during the fuzzy front end of creative problem solving can limit the scope of possible solutions and may even result in the wrong problem being addressed. This workshop provides tools and techniques to enhance the early phases of creative problem solving including problem finding, problem restructuring, the construction of shared mental models, and scenario improvisation to stimulate fresh thinking. The process of idea clustering will be introduced as a method of zooming out from the individual ideas to find unexpected connections and patterns in the big picture. Recommendations will be provided for facilitating the process of incubation to stimulate sudden insights and “aha” moments after the initial idea generation sessions have concluded.
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Facilitated Brainstorming Sessions |
Our facilitated brainstorming and creative problem solving sessions will guide your team through a series of custom selected techniques based on the needs and make-up of your members. These sessions are great for efforts such as new product development, improved processes and any time your team seems stuck in routine pattern thinking.
