Accounting Skills for New Supervisors
Many of us flinch when we hear terms like depreciation, cash flow, balance sheet, and (worst of all!) budgets. However, these are all important concepts to understand if you’re going to succeed in today’s business world, particularly as a supervisor. Even better, financial terms are not as scary as they seem!
Active Listening
Communication skills are at the heart of everything we do each day, whether at home, at work, or at play. Active listening encompasses the best of communication, including listening to what others are saying, processing the information, and responding to it in order to clarify and elicit more information. This course will help participants develop and practice their active listening skills.
Advanced Project Management
It’s easy to forget the “manager” part of your “project manager” title among the other range of activities you are responsible for. However, your management skills are an important part of your success as a project manager, so it is crucial that you grow both of those skill sets. There are also some advanced project management techniques that you can master to help bring your projects to successful completion.
This workshop presumes that participants have a thorough understanding of project management, including topics such as preparing a statement of work, setting project goals, scheduling, budgeting, managing project risks, and executing a project.
Advanced Skills for the Practical Trainer
Behind every spectacular training session is a lot of preparation and meticulous attention to detail. The truly skilled trainer can make a program exciting. The learners will have fun while they are learning if the facilitator is able to involve their emotions as well as their minds. You will see the involvement, and you will feel the energy.
To reach this stage as an adult educator isn’t always easy, but success isn’t just for the naturally gifted. It is possible for all of us who put effort into our personal growth and development. We want the enormous satisfaction that comes from working with others to help them reach their potential as human beings. This three-day workshop will help you reach that goal.
This workshop requires that you have a good understanding of basic training principles, including adult learning concepts, Mainstream Corporate Training's experiential learning cycle, training methods, and designing a learning sequence. We strongly recommend completing Mainstream Corporate Training's "The Practical Trainer" workshop before taking this course.
Advanced Writing Skills
This is a one-day advanced writing skills workshop for those who already are good writers. Our time will be devoted to writing letters of recommendation, of persuasion, of refusal, or of action, that reflect current word usage and up-to-date formats. You can also learn some basics about writing business cases, proposals, and reports.
An Environmental Audit Primer
This course provides participants with the knowledge and skills to conduct internal environmental audits. Practical, proven techniques for planning, conducting, and reporting on internal environmental audits will be introduced. Role-plays and case studies based on actual audits will be used to reinforce the concepts and provide participants with practice in applying the principles to situations typically encountered during internal auditing.
Anger Management: Understanding Anger
Anger is a universal experience. Dogs get angry, bees get angry, and so do humans. You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that managing anger productively is something few individuals, organizations, and societies do well. Yet research tells us that those who do manage their anger at work are much more successful than those who don’t.
The co-worker who can productively confront his teammate about his negative attitude increases his team’s chance of success as well as minimizes destructive conflicts. The customer service agent who can defuse the angry customer not only keeps her customers loyal but makes her own day less troublesome. This one-day anger management workshop is designed to help give you and your organization that edge.
Appreciative Inquiry
Do you love those moments of exception, when everything seems to have come together and things are working beautifully? Would you like to create an environment where those rare extraordinary moments become the norm? Then you may just be ready to learn the value of Appreciative Inquiry, also known as AI. AI is a method for implementing change that is rooted in being positive, sharing stories of things that work well, and leveraging people’s strengths and the power of co-creation to initiate lasting, powerful changes that can make an organization the best it has ever been, because of people who care and are committed.
Balanced Scorecard Basics
Over the past several decades, organizations have come to realize that success cannot only be measured in dollars and cents. Intangible assets (like a company’s reputation, the knowledge base created by their employees, and training initiatives) can make up a huge portion of a company’s wealth.
It only makes sense, then, that we need a new tool to help us measure this expanded definition of success. Enter the balanced scorecard! This tool and its related components will help your organization identify, document, plan, and execute a balanced strategic mission. It will also help your organization evaluate and revise its strategic execution.
Basic Business Management: Boot Camp
Owning a business requires a vision balanced with attention to detail. You need to be a generalist who understands the multiple aspects of running a business, as well as the ability to step back and see the big picture and to reach into the future.
The business environment is a complex place to be. Whether you wish to work as a consultant or freelancer, establish a corporation, or set up an operation that meets a need for very particular type of customer, there is a tremendous amount of information that you need to know and to apply.
This three-day business management training course provides essential learning for new business owners, whether the business is just in the idea stage or you have already begun and need to fill in the gaps.
Basic Internet Marketing
This course is an ideal start for business owners and people new to marketing to learn the basics of Internet marketing. We’ve included information on how to market online, and even more importantly, how to determine what results you are getting. Then, you can figure out whether you are reaching your target market, where your qualified prospects are, and how they are engaged as a result of your efforts. This internet marketing course includes sessions on search engine optimization, e-mail campaigns, pay per click advertising, and more.
Becoming A Progressive Employer
Many people like to think of themselves as progressive in some fashion, but is this usually the case? Employers can be considered progressive for numerous reasons, from the way they treat their staff to their approach to technology. This one-day course will point the way towards being a progressive employer for those who wish to be on the forefront of employee relations and develop an innovative stance on business.
Being A Team Player
Teamwork is essential in any successful enterprise, and to have effective teams, an organization must be comprised of individuals who pride themselves on being great team players. Many of us consider ourselves to be team players, but are we really? Do we know what that takes; and what managers consider to be the qualities that make a person a team player, or that make a good team player a ‘great’ team player? Everyone brings their own skills and strengths to the table; understanding how to use those skills within the context of a team is vital to help an organization succeed.
Beyond Workplace Politics: Using Social and Emotional Competencies
Workplace politics encompasses the power and authority processes and behaviors that are at work in a particular workplace. It is how the links between people in the workplace work. There are workplace politics at play in every organization!
In 1990, two American psychologists (Dr. Jack Mayer and Dr. Peter Salovey) purported that if there was a cognitive intelligence or IQ then there must be an emotional intelligence (sometimes known as EQ). Daniel Goleman, the co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) theorized the social aspect of behavior as a complement to the emotional. His definition expanded to: “Social and emotional intelligence involves understanding your feelings and behaviors, as well as those of others, and applying this knowledge to your interactions and relationships.” In his work with CASEL he developed five interrelated sets of Social and Emotional Competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Good Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making. This course will explore the social and emotional competencies and their role in working beyond workplace politics!
Body Language: Reading Body Language As A Sales Tool
Body language can make or break our efforts to establish long, trusting relationships. Our body language can help to reinforce and add credibility to what we say, or it can contradict our words. Understanding what signals you are sending, as well as being able to read the signals that your clients send, is an essential skill in sales and throughout our lives. What is your body language saying about you? Find out in this one day workshop!
Branding: Creating and Managing your Corporate Brand
Body language can make or break our efforts to establish long, trusting relationships. Our body language can help to reinforce and add credibility to what we say, or it can contradict our words. Understanding what signals you are sending, as well as being able to read the signals that your clients send, is an essential skill in sales and throughout our lives. What is your body language saying about you? Find out in this one day workshop!
Budgets and Managing Money
For managers in today’s business world, it’s essential to have a working knowledge of finance. We all play a role in our organization’s financial health, whether we realize it or not. If you don’t have training or a background in finance, you may be at a disadvantage as you sit around the management table.
Understanding the cycle of finance will help you figure out where you fit into your company’s financial structure, and how to keep your department out of the red. This two-day workshop will help you prepare budgets and make decisions with confidence.
Building a Brand on Social Media
Your brand speaks for your company and its products and/or services. In today’s online-focused world, it’s important that your brand has a definitive, consistent, and responsive presence.
Whether you’re looking to build a brand from scratch, or strengthen an existing brand, this course will help you build a brand using social media. We’ll cover how to build a social media strategy, identify social media platforms that fit your brand, craft strong messages that will engage your audience, and evaluate and revise your strategy.
Building a Consulting Business
Today’s business environment isn’t focused on 9-to-5, lifelong, static positions like it was decades ago. Our world is constantly shifting and evolving, meaning that businesses (and workers) must evolve with it. As a result of this shift, consultants have more opportunities than ever before. This workshop will show you how to build a business as a consultant.
Building an Online Business
The Internet has changed the way that we work, live, shop, and play. You can take advantage of this new way of doing business whether you want to set up a part-time venture or create the next million-dollar enterprise. This one-day course will give you everything that you need to build a successful online business.
Building Better Teams
Teams are an important building block of successful organizations. Whether the focus is on service, quality, cost, value, speed, efficiency, performance, or other similar goals, teams are the basic unit that supports most organizations.
With teams at the core of corporate strategy, an organization’s success can depend on how well team members operate together. How are their problem-solving skills? Is the team enthusiastic and motivated to do its best? Do they work well together? This one-day course can help participants get there!
Building Relationships for Success in Sales
No one questions that making friends is a good thing. In this workshop, participants will discover that the business of business is making friends, and the business of all sales professionals is making friends and building relationships. Strategic friendships will make or break any business, no matter how big and no matter what kind of market.
Building Self Esteem and Assertiveness Skills
A healthy self-esteem is essential for growth and achieving success. Of all the judgments you make in life, none is as important as the one you make about yourself. Without some measure of self-worth, life can be painful and unrelenting. In this one-day workshop, participants will discover some techniques that can dramatically change how they feel about themselves, and how they approach the world to get the things that they want.
Bullying in the Workplace
Bullying is called the silent epidemic. Although half of workers have experienced or witnessed bullying, policies and laws dealing with it are far less prevalent. This is, in part, because bullying can be hard to identify and address. People wonder, what does bullying look like? How can we discourage it in our workplace? What can I do to protect my staff and co-workers?
Business Ethics For The Office
What exactly makes a decision ethical? The problem with ethics is that what may seem morally right (or ethical) to one person may seem appalling to another.
This workshop will not provide you with an easy way to solve every ethical decision you will ever have to make. It will, however, help you define your ethical framework to make solving those ethical dilemmas easier. We’ll also look at some tools that you can use when you’re faced with an ethical decision. And, we’ll look at some techniques you can use so you don’t get stuck in an ethical quandary. Best of all, we’ll look at a lot of case studies so that you can practice making decisions in a safe environment.
Business Etiquette: Gaining that Extra Edge
Business Leadership: Becoming Management Material
This three-day workshop is a tool for your leadership development. It is designed to help you create and accomplish your personal best, and to help you lead others to get extraordinary things done.
At its core, leadership means setting goals, lighting a path, and persuading others to follow. But the responsibility entails much more. Leaders must get their message out in a way that inspires, make the most of their limited time, and build roads to precious resources. They must negotiate alliances, improve their colleagues, and align the ambitions of the many with the needs of the organization.
What makes for a great leader? Is it something to do with inward characteristics, such as confidence and focus? Is it more about outward presence, including charm and compassion? Or is it about the ability to create a vision and get others to commit to it?
The answer is all of the above. By accepting the challenge to lead, you come to realize that the only limits are those you place on yourself.
Business Process Management
Business process management helps organizations leverage processes to achieve their goals and be successful. Once processes are implemented, they must be monitored, evaluated, and optimized to make sure they are still meeting the goals that they were designed to accomplish. A business that can successfully manage its processes is able to maintain a competitive edge, while increasing productivity and efficiency and decreasing costs.
This course will introduce participants to business process management. Students will learn how business processes can help improve their company’s bottom line by providing a higher level of quality and consistency for customers.
Business Succession Planning: Developing and Maintaining a Succession Plan
Change is a hallmark of today’s business world. In particular, our workforce is constantly changing – people come and go and move into new roles within the company. Succession planning can help you make the most of that change by ensuring that when someone leaves, there is someone new to take their place. This one-day course will help you teach the basics about creating and maintaining a succession plan.
Business Writing That Works
We all know what good writing is. It’s the novel we can’t put down, the poem we never forgot, and the speech that changes the way we look at the world. Good writing is the memo that gets action and the letter that says what a phone call can’t.
In business writing, the language is concrete, the point of view is clear, and the points are well expressed. Good writing is hard work, and even the best writers get discouraged. However, with practice you can feel more confident about your own writing. This two-day workshop will give participants the tools to become better writers.
Change Management: Change and How to Deal With It
Change is something that excites people who love opportunities for growth, to see and learn about new things, or who like to shift the status quo. Some changes, however, are harder to adjust to and lead to expressions of resistance and anger. We can take concrete steps to make change more palatable by understanding people’s hesitation, enlisting the help of others, setting up plans, and managing stressors. These steps can also ensure that desired changes are implemented successfully.
In this one-day workshop, you will learn how to manage and cope with change and how to help those around you too.
Coaching and Mentoring
Coach, Mentor, Role Model, Supporter, Guide... do these words ring a bell? Being a coach involves being able to draw from several disciplines. Coaching is based on a partnership that involves giving both support and challenging opportunities to employees. Mentorship is a related skill that is often a part of coaching. It’s about being a guide, offering wisdom and advice when it is needed.
Knowing how and when to coach (and when to use other tools, like mentoring) is an essential skill that can benefit both you and your organization.
Code Of Conduct: Setting The Tone For Your Workplace
Workplaces are made up of diverse groups of people with diverse motivations, backgrounds, and ethics. When such groups are brought together, sometimes there are opportunities for ethical, moral, financial, or even legal, boundaries to be crossed. Sometimes those boundaries are crossed with disastrous results.
A workplace code of conduct is a tool that can be used to prevent such digressions by providing a framework for employees to follow of what is expected of them and how to conduct themselves in various situations.
This course will look at the material that goes into a code of conduct and will allow participants to build their own as the day goes on.
Collaboration
Collaboration is a skill that is utilized with one or more people to produce or create a result or shared goal. Everyone in the group has a shared vision or outcome. The group not only has to work together, they must think together, and the product comes from group effort. Collaborators are equal partners. Do we know what it takes to achieve successful collaboration with colleagues? What are the importance and benefits of collaboration in the workplace and how can employers create a collaborative environment and reward employees for collaborative efforts?
Communication Strategies
Have you ever wondered why it seems so difficult to talk with some people and so easy to talk with others? Can you recall an occasion where you met someone for the first time and immediately liked that person? Something about the individual made you feel comfortable.
A major goal of this workshop is to help participants understand the impact that their communication skills have on other people. They will also explore how improving these skills can make it easier for them to get along in the workplace, and in life.
Communications for Small Business Owners
Communication between individuals is a two-way street, but communication between business and its customers is a multi-lane highway. Navigate this highway successfully and you increase customer numbers and profits. Set out on this highway unaware, ill-prepared, or unconvinced of its importance, and you will lose ground to your competitors.
This course will introduce and reinforce the essential components of written communication that will connect you with existing and potential customers. If you are new to the communications highway, this course will provide the foundation for future development. If your company has some communications expertise, this course will help you strengthen and polish your essential components.
Conducting Accurate Internet Research
As the Internet grows, it becomes more challenging to find the correct information from a reliable source in a timely manner. As research expert Gary Price puts it, “The haystack is growing and finding the needles takes more time and requires greater skill.”
This one-day course will teach students how to conduct accurate Internet research by creating a search plan, searching both the surface web and the deep web, and staying organized. Students will also learn how to think critically and find the best sources for their Internet search.
Conducting Effective Performance Reviews
Effective performance reviews are an essential component of employee development. The performance review meeting is an important aspect of career planning, and the outcomes of the meeting should be known to the employee and supervisor before the meeting actually takes place. Remember what the German philosopher Goethe said: “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.”
Setting goals and objectives to aim for will give both supervisors and employees a focus, and is one of the key aspects to meeting overall company objectives. Supervisors must also learn how to give feedback, both positive and negative, on a regular and timely basis so that employees can grow and develop. Performance appraisals involve all these activities.
Conference and Event Management
Although it does take plenty of creativity to design an event that is memorable and meaningful, it also takes careful attention to detail, adaptability, effective delegating, and a lot of work. This two-day course will walk you through the process of event management, from the beginning stages of planning, to the final touches (like decorations, food, and music).
While this course is specifically for corporate event planning, the elements here can also be applied to more personal event planning like anniversaries, special birthday gatherings, weddings, and more. Essentially, we’re creating an effective and well-planned design that is ready for implementation and can be used over and over again.
Conquering Your Fear of Speaking in Public
Do you get nervous when presenting at company meetings? Do you find it hard to make conversation at gatherings and social events? Do you lock up in awkward social situations? If so, this one-day workshop is just for you! It’s aimed at anybody who wants to improve their speaking skills in informal situations. We’ll give you the confidence and the skills to interact with others, to speak in informal situations, and to present in front of small groups.
Continuous Improvement with Lean
Companies everywhere, no matter what their industry, can benefit from the principles of continuous improvement with Lean. Whether they adopt a very formal process or commit to something less structured, they can follow its principles and improve their bottom line by reducing wasted time and resources.
This course is designed for learners who have completed the pre-requisite Lean Process Improvement course, and perhaps have been involved in implementation of its principles in their workplace. It is the ideal next step along the path of learning and creating a workplace culture committed to continuous improvement.
Conversational Leadership
Effective leaders understand how powerful an opportunity can be when they can tap into the intelligence, wisdom, and innovation present in their workforce. Conversational leadership provides the space and infrastructure for knowledge sharing to take place; for employees, stakeholders, and the community to be involved in discussing big, important questions; and to generate solutions that people within the organization can take action on.
Creating a Dynamite Job Portfolio
The job market continues to change, as does the way we look for work. This course examines the value of presenting yourself as a complete package by using a resume as an introduction to an employer and backing it up with a portfolio presented at the interview.
In order to make the most of this course, participants need to have recently completed the Getting Your Job Search Started course, or identified target positions and completed a full skills assessment and goal setting exercise.
Creating a Google AdWords Campaign
Many companies advertise with pay per click ads. This course focuses on the largest machine available: Google AdWords. In this one-day course, participants will learn how Google AdWords work, what pay per click means, the importance of correctly setting an AdWords budget, how to select keywords and set up ad groups, how to design a compelling ad, and how to make adjustments to increase success.
Creating a Positive Work Environment
Not all of us have had the opportunity to work in a truly positive work environment. A positive work environment is important for the productivity of a company but it is also important to us personally. Our emotional and physical health can be improved by working in a positive work environment. We should wake up each morning wanting to go to work - not trying to think of excuses to not go.
We want to be proud of where we work and enjoy telling others about where we work. As an employee or a leader within a company you have a responsibility to create and maintain a positive work environment. Everyone has a responsibility to create and maintain a positive work environment. Even if this is not a companywide reality you can seek to provide this type of environment for your department/ division or those within your sphere of influence.
This one-day course will give you tools to be able to create the type of company environment that you crave through building and nurturing effective workplace relationships.
Creating a Top-Notch Talent Management Program
Organizations recognize that they do better business when their people are engaged, motivated, and yes, talented. Having the right people in place at the right time is a key aspect to continued growth, success, or even just stability. This course will provide you with just what it takes to have the right people ready. It will help you create a program to measure the talents of your people and how to help them grow in preparation for the future. It will also help you support and grow your organization by teaching you how to apply the most current research and adapt your organization to the ever-changing marketplaces.
Creating a Workplace Wellness Program
Whether you are creating a workplace wellness program from scratch, or enhancing what you already have, you’re already on the right track! With increasing costs of health care, a shrinking workforce, and aging workers, a savvy workplace understands the value in supporting workers to improve their conditioning and to live a fitter lifestyle. This two-day course includes all aspects of designing or upgrading a program, from concept through implementation, to review.
Creating Successful Staff Retreats
A staff retreat can evoke some pretty strong emotions. Dread of a week hanging around with people you would never invite home for dinner. Queasy thinking about throwing yourself backwards hoping your ‘new friends’ will catch you. However, staff retreats still continue even in hard times. Why?
Many of the things we really need to get done take longer than the two hours you have in meeting time. As well, the retreat itself can bring about a change in approach not possible sitting in your boardroom for a meeting. This course will give you tools to be able to create staff retreats that are successful and help to bolster productivity, sales and positive workplace culture.