Creating Winning Proposals
Proposals are persuasive documents that are fundamental tools in organizational funding and output. This course will look at sources of funding, types of proposals and how to write proposals that will meet funding agencies requirements. This will include a number of tips and techniques to increase the potential success of your proposals.
An important but often overlooked aspect of proposal writing will also be covered- Building and Maintaining Relationships. Relationships are built on honesty. Potential projects must be a good fit for your organization and your organization must be ready to do the work contained in the proposal. The most successful proposals are going to be those that fulfill the mission and values of your organization and that of the funding agencies as well!
Creative Thinking and Innovation
Creative thinking and innovation are vital components in both our personal and professional lives. However, many people feel as though they are lacking in creativity. What most of us do not recognize is that we are creative on a daily basis, whether it’s picking out what clothes to wear in the morning or stretching a tight budget at work. While these tasks may not normally be associated with creativity, there is a great deal of creativity involved to get those jobs done.
While some people seem to be simply bursting with creativity, others find it a struggle to think outside the square. If you fall into the latter category, it is important to understand that boosting your creative and innovative abilities takes practice. Recognizing and honing your own creative potential is a process. That’s what this two-day workshop is all about.
Crisis Management
Viable organizations need to be ready for emergencies because they are a fact of doing business. The worst plan is not to have any kind of plan at all, and the best plans are tested and adjusted so that they work over-time. Fortunately, you do not need separate plans for fire, weather disasters, and all the different kinds of crises that can occur. One solid plan will help you to prevent, respond, and recover from all crises. This two-day course will help you ensure your organization is ready to manage any kind of crisis.
Critical Thinking
In today’s society, many people experience information overload. We are bombarded with messages to believe various ideas, purchase things, support causes, and lead our lifestyle in a particular way. How do you know what to believe? How do you separate the truth from the myths?
The answer lies in critical thinking skills. The ability to clearly reason through problems and to present arguments in a logical, compelling way has become a key skill for survival in today’s world. This two-day workshop will give you some practical tools and hands-on experience with critical thinking and problem solving.
CRM: An Introduction to Customer Relationship Management
This Customer Relationship Management course will introduce the different facets of CRM and identify who the customers really are. It will also analyze the key components of CRM and explore how it can be integrated within an organization.
As with many significant undertakings, undergoing a Customer Relationship Management review (even simply considering its implementation) requires learners to analyze technical and complicated systems. This course sorts through a myriad of information and brings you the basics you need to make a decision about the need for CRM, its benefits, and how to coordinate the base requirements for a CRM undertaking.
Customer Service Training: Critical Elements of Customer Service
While many companies promise to deliver an incredible customer experience, some are better at delivering than others. This two-day course is designed around six critical elements of customer service that, when the company lives them, bring customers back to experience service that outdoes the competition.
Dealing With Difficult People
We can get into a routine where it feels like everyone we speak with is either having a bad day, or we are having a bad day ourselves. We feel like we constantly meet people who seem to be inconsiderate, stubborn, incorrigible, indecent, miserable, or passive-aggressive. Sometimes we can be equally awkward ourselves. While it might seem that the easiest remedy is to lock yourself up at home and avoid people, we eventually have to pick up the phone or step outside and have an interaction with somebody.
Success comes from understanding how we behave, as well as how we can influence others. If we approach difficulties as needing to take place in one or a series of conversations, and we approach those conversations with a plan, we will find that we have less difficult people to deal with. More often than not, we will also have more meaningful and significant conversations. In this one-day workshop, you will teach participants how to turn difficult situations into opportunities for growth.
Delegation: The Art of Delegating Effectively
Effective delegation is one of the most valuable skills you can master. It reduces your workload and develops employee skills. Delegating prepares employees who work for you to be able to handle your responsibilities and simultaneously allows you to advance to other career opportunities within your organization.
Delegation is often one of the hardest skills for a manager to master. However, the skill can be learned. This one-day workshop will explore many of the facets of delegation, including when to delegate and whom to delegate to. We will also go through the delegation process step by step and learn about techniques to overcome problems.
Developing a High Reliability Organization
Today’s world is full of the unexpected. System failures, terrorism events, disease outbreaks, and superstorms disrupt businesses every day, sometimes to an unrecoverable point. Despite these challenges, some services (such as power plants, hospitals, and airports) have no choice but to continue operating.
This one-day course will explore how these organizations maintain high reliability even in times of serious crisis and stability. We will share their secrets in a way that can be applied to all organizations in order to create high reliability and continued success.
Developing a Lunch and Learn Program
If you look at any successful organization they have the support of employee development as a core part of their culture. For these organizations it goes beyond professional or even personal development to offering learning opportunities that create increased energy, creativity and fun. Lunch and Learns are a venue to foster sharing and peer learning and are typically aimed at fostering cross-organization collaboration and communication. They are a tool for sharing of information, approaches and talent. Further, they offer opportunities for networking in a safe, friendly and relaxed atmosphere.
This course will give you tools to be able to create a Lunch and Learn Program that creates opportunities for learning that might not otherwise happen. You will also prepare a short Lunch and Learn session and receive feedback from other course participants.
Developing a Safety Procedures Manual
Safety procedures are the backbone of an organization’s Safety Management System. They provide consistency and when followed create a safe working environment and greater productivity due to less injury down time. However, safety procedure writing is more difficult and time consuming than it at first appears. This one-day course will give you the foundation to start writing effective safety procedures.
Developing a Training Needs Analysis
The right training at the right time can make a huge difference in the productivity and profitability of your organization. Whether you are scanning your workplace for opportunities to make things better and training is the answer, or a client asks you to come into their organization and do an assessment, your answer is best framed in the form of a training needs analysis.
Your ability to create an analysis that is comprehensive yet simply prepared is critical for it to be understood and acted upon. This one-day workshop will help you to gather the information, assess the data, and present your suggestions for training or non-training solutions.
Developing Your Executive Presence
Some people immediately command attention and respect when they walk into a room. Do you have that kind of presence? If not, is it something that you would like to develop? This workshop will help you do just that by building your credibility, improving your personal appearance, honing your networking skills, and enhancing your ability to communicate effectively. You will also receive an introduction to core leadership skills.
Developing Your Training Program
Training is an essential element of development in any organization. Being knowledgeable and continuing to learn throughout your career can make you a very valuable asset. We also know that training and orientation (or ‘onboarding’) for newly hired employees is a key factor in retention.
This two-day workshop is designed for a trainer who wants to develop training programs that are meaningful, practical, and will benefit both trainees and the organizations they work for.
Digital Citizenship: Conducting Yourself in a Digital World
Technology is evolving at an ever-increasing speed. People are becoming increasingly reliant in ways many have never imagined. Digital tools are literally at our fingertips, and we use them to learn, communicate, buy, bank, share, and interact. For most of us, a significant part of our days is spent in the digital world.
Online interactions and transactions are replacing real world ones. Regrettably, digital use can become misuse and abuse, often without the responsible person realizing it. As citizens of the digital world, users should learn and accept that they have certain rights and responsibilities. Many are not educated in appropriate technology use; other people know but do not practice it. ‘Digital Citizenship’ is fundamental to a safe and satisfying digital world.
This course aims to increase your knowledge and appreciation of the practices needed to ensure you are a good digital citizen.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation looks different for every business, but at its core, it means altering how a company operates with the addition of technology and with the goal of improving the customer experience and the workplace. This one-day course will teach you about digital transformation, and what companies in different industries are doing, as well as best practices so you can do it yourself.
Disability Awareness: Working with People with Disabilities
People with disabilities represent a significant and largely underutilized resource for businesses. Many disabled persons are underemployed or unemployed. As a result of advocates for diversity, as well as a shrinking labor pool, employers are taking a serious look at hiring and retaining people with disabilities. This two-day workshop will give supervisors, managers, and human resource consultants tools and tips for creating a diverse workplace.
Diversity Training: Celebrating Diversity in the Workplace
More than ever, a workplace is a diverse collection of individuals proud of who they are: their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, their ethnic background, and all the other components that make an individual unique. One of the challenges for workplace leaders is how to help these diverse individuals work as a team.
We all know what happens to organizations that don’t have effective teamwork: they fail. And, failing to embrace diversity can also have serious legal costs for corporations. This one-day workshop will give you ways to celebrate diversity in the workplace while bringing individuals together.
Dynamite Sales Presentations
A great sales presentation does not demand that you have all the bells and whistles to impress the client with your technical skills. Rather, try impressing your clients with your knowledge of the products and services you sell and your understanding of their problems and the solutions they need.
This one-day workshop will help teach you how to create a winning proposal and how to turn it into a dynamite sales presentation.
E-Commerce Management
As the global Internet population continues to grow, electronic commerce is rapidly growing. By the end of 2022 the retail e-commerce market alone is projected to surpass $735 billion US dollars. This huge market encompasses traditional e-commerce, as well as m-commerce (which is growing faster than any other sector) and location-based e-commerce. This course will teach entrepreneurs how to develop, market, and manage an e-commerce business, giving them a crucial advantage in today’s competitive market.
This program will teach entrepreneurs how to develop, market, and manage an e-commerce business, giving them a crucial advantage in today’s competitive market.
Effective Planning and Scheduling
As project managers and leads, we all know how difficult it can be to accurately determine the duration of a project, yet that is exactly what is expected of us on a regular basis. This workshop will not disclose the secret of creating an accurate schedule, because there isn’t one. However, it will provide the factors and fundamental elements that you should consider and address when creating any type of schedule.
Participants should complete the Intermediate Project Management workshop prior to this course or have equivalent knowledge. This course presumes that participants:
- Can define projects and project management
- Understand a project’s life cycle
- Are familiar with the basics of project planning and scheduling
- Know how to complete a Statement of Work and/or a project charter
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence, also called EQ, is the ability to be aware of and to manage emotions and relationships. It’s a pivotal factor in personal and professional success. IQ will get you in the door, but it is your EQ, your ability to connect with others and manage the emotions of yourself and others, that will determine how successful you are in life.
We have all worked with and listened to brilliant people. Some of them were great and… well, some were not so great. The mean and the meek and all those in between can teach us more than they realize. When we look at the truly extraordinary people who inspire and make a difference you will see that they do this by connecting with people at a personal and emotional level. What differentiated them was not their IQ but their EQ – their emotional intelligence.
Employee Accountability
An article in the March 11, 2010 edition of TIME magazine purported to explain “why we have entered the post-trust era.” Indeed, we seem to be in a time where people act inappropriately and then refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Who can we blame for the world economic crisis, or issues with religion, or the outcomes of our governments, or the state of the environment? More to the point, why do we spend so much time and energy looking to pin the blame on someone (usually anyone but ourselves)?
With this in mind, it’s no wonder that organizations who promote accountability are more successful and more productive. In this one-day workshop, you will learn about what accountability is, how to promote it in your organization, and how to become more accountable to yourself and others.
Employee Dispute Resolution Mediation through Peer Review and Goal Setting
Have you ever been in a workplace situation where a supervisor has made a decision that you didn’t agree with? Did you wish that you could ask someone else what they thought of the decision; whether they would have done the same thing? The peer review process offers employees just that chance, using a formalized procedure to ask, consider, and resolve just these sorts of questions. This one-day workshop will teach you everything you need to know about employee dispute resolution through mediation.
Encouraging Sustainability and Social Responsibility in Business
The ideas behind encouraging sustainability and social responsibility in business seem noble, as organizations commit to creating optimal circumstances for people to live and work. The reality is that every company, whether it is a micro-business or a large multinational corporation, can take steps to create sustainable, socially responsible environments that contribute to positive workplaces, communities, and futures.
English as a Second Language: A Workplace Communications Primer
“A different language is a different vision of life,” said the Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. Employees who use English as a second language demonstrate great commitment and skill in learning a language other than their native tongue. There are subtle differences between languages because of social influences and workplace demands that can create or strengthen the language barrier for employees who have learned a language other than English in their formative years. That barrier is an obstacle for both employer and employee, severing what could be productive relationships with co-workers and clients.
This course will identify any gaps in communication as the result of cultural language differences, and provide exercises to help connect those gaps. This course is written for employees with intermediate competency in English as their second language. Exercises will explore the four main categories of communication: Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.
Entrepreneurship 101
Wouldn’t it be nice to be your own boss, work on your own schedule, and make money doing something that you’re passionate about? Millions of people around the world are living that dream and running their own business.
This three-day course will teach you the basics of entrepreneurship. You’ll consider if entrepreneurship is right for you and learn the basic steps of creating your own business. At the end of the course, you’ll have a solid foundation to start your entrepreneurial journey.
Environmental Sustainability: A Practical Approach to Greening Your Organization
Environmental Management Systems (EMS) involve a set of processes and practices that enable an organization to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency. A well-designed EMS can help an organization address its regulatory demands in a systematic manner thereby reducing the risk of noncompliance. An EMS can also help address non-regulated issues such as pollution prevention, odor management, water usage and energy conservation.
In this one-day course participants will learn about EMS and how it can benefit their organization. Through the use of a Case Study and information they bring about their own company participants will leave with a draft EMS for their organization. It will include organizational Environmental Aspect and Impacts and Objectives and Targets for their organizations significant environmental impacts.
Facilitation Skills
It is impossible to be part of an organization today and not attend meetings. Staff meetings, project meetings, and planning and coordinating meetings all take time.
There has been a growing realization that we have to pay attention to the process elements of meetings if we want them to be effective. With its focus on asking rather than telling, and listening to build consensus, facilitation is the new leadership ideal, the core competency everybody needs. Managers and supervisors are often asked to facilitate rather than instruct or manage their meetings and training sessions.
How can you facilitate, rather than control, group decision-making and team interaction? With no formal training, people may find it difficult to make the transition from instructors or managers to facilitators.
GDPR Readiness: Creating a Data Privacy Plan
The Data Privacy Plan is the best way an organization can document and enforce the privacy of personal information they hold. It puts in place procedures and guidance for how to properly handle data, respond to information requests, and deal with unexpected incidents or breaches. It contains information that applies to the day-to-day work of employees, as well as higher-level policies and guiding principles that apply to the company as a whole. The Data Privacy Plan is one of the best ways for an organization to become privacy compliant.
GDRP Readiness: Getting The Message Out
An important aspect of privacy compliance is communication, both internally and externally. Employees need to know that privacy-related policies and procedures exist in your organization, and they need to be instructed on their use. Customers also need to be informed about a company’s privacy practices, and be given the chance to ask questions. Good communication is essential for maintaining company transparency and is an important aspect of compliancy with data privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation. While having written policies and procedures is the best starting place, getting the message out about privacy is a critical subsequent step in the process.
Generation Gap: Closing the Generation Gap in the Workplace
There are currently five generations in the workforce, and employers faced with mass retirements of Baby Boomers are looking for ways to prepare for the changes that will result. This course examines the history and reality of the generation gap.
This course explores whether defining the actual limits of each generation is most important, or whether the merits of people within the context of employment is the bigger issue. Understanding others helps us to understand ourselves and to manage the people that we work with. We will explore problems, solutions, and strategies to help overcome issues of the generation gap.
Getting Along in The Workplace
Many people see conflict as a negative experience. In fact, conflict is a necessary part of our personal growth and development. Think of when you were trying to choose your major in college, for example, or trying to decide between two jobs.
However, conflict becomes an issue when the people involved cannot work through it. They become engaged in a battle that does not result in growth. When this type of conflict arises, negative energy can result, causing hurt feelings and damaged relationships.
This course will give participants the tools that will help you resolve conflict successfully and produce a win-win outcome.
Getting Stuff Done: Personal Development Boot Camp
Why are there so many different organizational systems and time management methods out there? The answer is simple: it’s like any other personal challenge, like weight loss or money management. There is no simple, one size fits all answer. You must build a solution that works for you.
Over the course of this two-day workshop, we will explore various time management and organizational tools and techniques so that you can build a customized productivity plan for your personal and professional lives. At the end of the course, you will emerge with a plan that works for you, so that you can start regaining control of your life!
Getting Your Job Search Started
While looking for work can be an exciting time, it can also involve fear and discomfort about change and the unknown. Whether you are already in the midst of a job search or just thinking about it, this workshop will help you to determine what your skill set is made up of, the kind of work that is important and realistic to include in your search, and how to get started.
Today’s job market is not the same as it was even five years ago. Knowing where to go, who to talk to, and the opportunities that are available will help to shift you from someone who dreams about having a job, to someone who has the job they always wanted.
Giving Effective Feedback
As human beings, we often hunger for feedback. However, many people will tell you that when they do get feedback, it’s often because of something they have done wrong. This one day course is designed to help workplace leaders learn how to provide feedback any time that the message is due. Whether feedback is formal or informal, and whether it is provided to employees, peers, or someone else, there are ways that it can be structured to be effective and lasting.
This course will help participants learn why the way we deliver feedback is important, how to deliver a message so that people accept it and make changes that may be needed, and how to accept feedback that we are offered.
Global Business Strategies
Opportunities to take a regional business into the global market make it possible to strategically, smartly, and profitably accomplish more than you can by staying local. To prepare, you need to set your business up for success by being open to learning, to applying new ideas, and to continually reviewing how you can create success in the global market.
Topics such as trade financing, regulatory considerations, international business planning, sustainability, and much more are included in this three-day course. The materials here are well suited for small and medium sized business leaders as they prepare to take their company into the global marketplace.
We strongly recommend that participants complete our “Entrepreneurship 101” and “Basic Business Management” programs before taking this course.
Goal Setting
We all have things we want in life. The route to success is to take the things that we dream about and wish for and turn them into reality. This one-day workshop will lead participants through thinking, planning, and taking action on the things they really want. They will learn ways to ensure that they get where they want to go in life.
Growth Hacking
The new economy calls for a new way of attracting customers and sales.
Growth hacking is to the new economy what marketing was to the last millennium.
The goal is to share a message and make a sale. The difference is in how those customer connections are discovered, created, and nurtured.
This course will highlight the essentials of growth hacking — from learning the new growth hacking mindset and discovering the need your product or service can fill, through planning, delivery, and optimization — that will position your company to grow and thrive today and in the future.
Hiring for Success: Behavioural Interviewing Techniques
Interviewing sounds easy enough: you arrange for a conversation between you and potential candidates, and then select the best person for a particular position. But what if you could refine the process in such a way that you were confident that you are selecting the right person? How do you separate the good from the great, when they have similar work experience and strengths to offer? This workshop will give you the skills and tools to hire successful candidates.
Honing and Delivering Your Message
This one-day course will prepare participants to develop a message and remain on topic when they are presenting their message to the media and public without straying from the point, or points, they want to make. The final session will give students the opportunity to craft and hone a message of their own.
Human Resources Training: HR for the Non-HR Manager
In today’s fast-moving world, many managers and supervisors are expected to deal with some human resource issues. They may be asked to take part in developing job descriptions, take part in interviews, or take responsibility for discipline. This three-day workshop will introduce those managers to human resource concepts. We will walk you through the hiring process, from performing a skills inventory to conducting the interview; discuss orientation; and cover some issues that arise after the hiring (such as diversity issues, compensation, and discipline).
Influence and Persuasion
When we talk about influence and persuasion, we often talk about marketing and sales. However, we influence in many ways and with great frequency. If you want a raise, sometimes you need to persuade your boss. If you want to convince your team to adopt a change, help your staff make choices, or choose the best place for lunch, there is often influencing taking place. This workshop will help participants learn how to influence and persuade in a variety of areas.
Intermediate Project Management
Project management is not just restricted to certain industries, or to individuals with certification as a project manager. Lots of us are expected to complete assignments that are not a usual part of our job, and to get the job done well, within our budget, and on time.
This workshop is intended for those who understand the conceptual phase of a project’s life cycle, including setting goals, creating a vision statement, and creating the Statement of Work. Today will take you through the remaining three stages: planning, execution, and termination.
Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship has been described as a great way to make beneficial changes to organizations. People can choose to continue with the status quo, or they can work to make a difference in the lives of themselves and others within the company.
Who wants to feel empowered and recognized for their innovative and creative ideas? Who wants to make a difference? If participants answer yes to these questions, then this course will help them become energized and ready to push their ideas forward. After participants complete this workshop, they will have ways to get started and implement their plans.
Introduction to E-Mail Marketing
E-mail marketing is here to stay, and knowing how to do it well is essential for marketers as well as small business owners, coaches, and consultants. In this two-day workshop you’ll learn the essentials of planning, creating, and delivering exceptional e-mail marketing campaigns that support your overall marketing strategy. After this workshop, you will be able to reach more clients and potential clients through your efforts at being an e-mail influencer.
Introduction to Neuro Linguistic Programming
Your brain, thoughts, and behavior are at the core of everything that you do every day, even if you aren’t aware of it. In order to truly achieve the results that you want to achieve, you must master the art of bringing your unconscious thoughts to the surface, so that you can have real choice over how you interact with and respond to the world. Neuro-linguistic programming can give you the tools to do just that.
In this one-day introductory workshop, you will learn the basics of neuro linguistic programming. We will give you the tools to manage your thoughts, and thereby manage yourself.
Inventory Management: The Nuts and Bolts
No business can survive very long without an effective program of controls over the parts and materials that are used in producing or distributing goods and services of the firm. Like many other things that depend on human interpretation, “control” means different things to different individuals.
This is an introductory workshop for you, the warehouse or stockroom manager, the person in charge of what comes in and goes out of your company. You want a smooth and cost-effective operation, with enough products on hand to satisfy needs without stockpiling too much.
This course will discuss all aspects of inventory management, including common terms, the inventory cycle, how to maintain inventory accuracy, and what some of the latest trends are.