Empowering leaders, teams,
and organizations to greater
Empowering leaders, teams, and organizations to greater
- Work Well: Leadership Program
- Speak Well: Powerful Presenting + Leadership Presence
- Tell Well: Storytelling + Influece
- Flex Well: Leveraging Strengths
- Change Well: Change Management
- Push Well: Challenging Conversations
- Sense Well: Emotional Intelligence
- Bounce Well: Resilience Training
- Welcome Well: Safety + Belonging
- Manage Well: Influencing Effectively
- Listen Well: Listening as a Superpower
- Team Well: Modern Teamwork
- Coach Well: Coaching Effectively
In order to create fully engaged work environments, managers need specific tools that allow them to achieve high levels of performance. The latest research in psychology shows how a focus on employees’ strengths stimulates better performance, higher levels of productivity, and authentic engagement.
Explore signature keynotes and workshops below. When you’re ready to inspire your audience, book a free call so we can determine which workshop or keynote is right for your team.
Shannon in action
Lead Well Work Well’s founder, Shannon Polly, is a leadership development facilitator, coach, speaker, and author and has been selected as one of Washington DC’s top 20 executive coaches.
SIGNATURE WORKSHOPS and KEYNOTES
We tailor every program to your audience, your clients, and your event logistics.
In order to create fully engaged work environments, managers need specific tools that allow them to achieve high levels of performance. The latest research in psychology shows how a focus on employees’ strengths stimulates better performance, higher levels of productivity, and authentic engagement.
Explore signature keynotes and workshops below. When you’re ready to inspire your audience, book a free call so we can determine which workshop or keynote is right for your team.
Our Lead Well Work Well training program provides practical tools based on empirical research to transform your work environment into one that drives performance and improves well-being.
Lead Well Work Well is our flagship six month course for leaders. Complete with individual coaching and peer learning groups, the program has been implemented in both virtually and in-person settings at organizations like the World Bank and ScotiaBank.
In order to create fully engaged work environments, leaders need specific tools that allow them to achieve high levels of performance. The latest psychology and neuroscience research reveals the power of positive emotions and employees’ strengths to stimulate better performance, higher levels of productivity and lasting engagement.
Our Lead Well++Work Well program gives you and your team practical, simple tools based on empirical research to transform your work environment into one that drives performance and improves well-being.
Your Lead Well Work Well journey
Our Lead Well Work Well training program provides practical tools based on empirical research to transform your work environment into one that drives performance and improves well-being.
Lead Well Work Well is our flagship six month course for leaders. Complete with individual coaching and peer learning groups, the program has been implemented in both virtually and in-person settings at organizations like the World Bank and ScotiaBank.
In order to create fully engaged work environments, leaders need specific tools that allow them to achieve high levels of performance. The latest psychology and neuroscience research reveals the power of positive emotions and employees’ strengths to stimulate better performance, higher levels of productivity and lasting engagement.
Our Lead Well++Work Well program gives you and your team practical, simple tools based on empirical research to transform your work environment into one that drives performance and improves well-being.
The Lead Well++Speak Well leadership presence workshop has been facilitated in multiple languages in countries such as India, China, Canada, the Philippines and Brazil.
It’s a common myth that you either have ‘executive presence’ – that essence that helps you to command a room – or you don’t. Actors know that there are tangible techniques and exercises you can do to cultivate that presence… and that they can be taught.
The Lead Well Speak Well Workshop deviates from traditional presentation skills training and translates the skills of the theater to the office. The approach is from two vantage points – the external and the internal aspects of presence. Externally, we will address aligning spoken messages with unspoken ones in the workshop by focusing on the external aspects of presence: eye contact, gestures, movement, posture, breathing, voice, and body positioning. To focus on the internal aspects of presence, participants will discover their values and their goals and apply them to their presentation. All speakers need to know the entire message, verbal and nonverbal, that he or she is communicating in order to convey executive presence.
- Cultivate awareness of the internal and external areas of executive presence that affect your ability to communicate effectively
- Practice the areas of executive presence through giving presentations that accurately imitate the work environment of the participant (using videotaping and feedback)
- Receive individualized feedback on areas of strength and those that need improvement
- Identify core values around interaction with others and transform those core values into action
- Leave the workshop with tangible techniques for controlling presentation “nerves” and improving the communication of your message
Storytelling, though sometimes called by a different name, is a critical skill in today’s workplace. The human brain is designed to create and hear stories. People who use storytelling well can increase their organization’s effectiveness in advocating, educating, promoting, presenting successes, illustrating best practices, pointing out organizational environmental changes, and building community, etc. Internally with their organizations, effective storytellers can lead change management and explain complex processes, externally stories can inspire and lead clients to become long time partners.
In the Lead Well Tell Well workshop, participants will use The Story Spine model to craft persuasive stories to improve workplace communication. We’ll also share the 10 stories every leader needs in their back pocket (i.e. ‘well-rehearsed spontaneous stories’). Participants will get coaching from a professional actor and award winning playwright after telling their stories, as well as listen to stories of their colleagues and learn best practices for how to craft persuasive, powerful stories in their work.
- Identify components for good stories
- Assess the effectiveness of storytelling in various situations
- Learn the 10 stories every leader should have in their repertoire
- Learn and use The Story Spine model to craft a persuasive story
According to recent research based on survey responses from hundreds of thousands of employees and managers, teams that have the opportunity to use their strengths everyday report higher levels of profit, productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. In fact, organizations that focus on the strengths of their team members are 50% more likely to have low turnover, 38% more likely to have higher levels of productivity and 44% more likely to have high customer satisfaction ratings. The ability for managers to leverage strengths is no longer simply a nicety, but a critical skill for organizational growth.
- How to identify strengths in yourself and others using the StrengthsFinder™ and VIA Strengths™ online assessment tool
- Practical tools for leveraging strengths and giving strengths-based feedback
- How to apply strengths to overcome obstacles
- Powerful questions that build employee self efficacy around strengths
- The science behind why strengths-based managing works
Most change management workshops help managers deal with the aftermath of change. Instead, the Lead Well Change Well workshop provides an innovative approach to change specifically designed for managers and teams to approach future change in a whole new perspective. Get ready to inspire your people to move forward together.
- The Neuroscience of Change
- A powerful exercise to help your team understand what they have control over and what they don’t with strategies for dealing with both scenarios
- How to approach employees and team members to deal with the emotional state of change
- How to build resilience using a strengths-based approach and a case study
- Discovering strengths that make you more resilient using StrengthsFinder™ 2.0
- Envisioning and building a bright new future for the organization; moving people towards that new vision with hope
Every employee and leader faces challenging conversations. Conversations that are often high stakes because you have long-standing relationships with your colleagues. While many avoid and fear these conversations, Lead Well Push Well will give you the tools to handle these conversations successfully.
Conversations are the currency of management and performance. If we can leverage awareness of conflict styles and teach skills to have challenging and more open conversations, performance improves, team cohesion improves and there is greater trust and accountability. We will cover the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, how employees can effectively manage conflict and be heard without negative perceptions, the challenging emotions that lead to conflict, and how to prepare for challenging conversations with peers, superiors and external parties.
- Use the TKI assessment to discern your conflict style
- Learn the benefits of all of the approaches to conflict
- Practice a conversation model that will persuade others to change
- This program, complete with scientific background and practical exercises for leaders to take away with them. This training will improve team communication, encourage assertiveness, and assist leaders and teams to increase performance.
- Raise awareness of personal conflict style and how it can be strengthened and improved based on different contexts.
- Teach leaders how to manage their emotions in challenging situations.
- Teach leaders to prepare for challenging conversation in a way that doesn’t affect how they are perceived.
- Help leaders envision how their message is received by putting themselves in the recipient’s shoes.
Emotional Intelligence is a key skill set in today’s workforce. Shannon is certified in two of the top assessments depending on your organization’s needs – the EQi2.0 and the MSCEIT.
Outstripping its competitor, the traditional I.Q. test, EQ is now being taught all over the world and starts with children as young as 3. Science has shown that being able to regulate your own emotions and read other people’s emotions leads to higher levels of performance. In order to get work done and communicate effectively, managers and employees need to know the elements where they are strong in EQ and where they can work more deeply.
This interactive workshop is based on the EQ-‐i 2.0 model of emotional intelligence (EI). The Lead Well Sense Well workshop introduces participants to the key concepts and elements that make up emotional intelligence, what EI is, what makes EI important, and how it can impact people and the workplace. EQ-i 2.0 assessments are completed by each participant and self-‐development action plans are created. The workshop involves individual and small group discovery and discussion, videos, peer coaching, and role-‐plays.
- Define what Emotional Intelligence is and its importance
- Describe the key composites and elements of EI
- Understand how to interpret their EQ-‐i 2.0 assessment report
- Set out an action plan for development of self-‐selected EI elements
According to the latest brain research, our thinking is at the core of performance. Optimism has been attributed to higher performance and the achievement of higher-level goals. Yet most people spend an inordinate amount of time worrying and criticizing themselves, which does not support successful performance. This workshop is based on leading research from the University of Michigan in the field of positive psychology at work. Shannon has taught resilience to over 1,000 U.S. Army sergeants as part of the Master Resiliency Training program under Dr. Karen Reivich.
- How thinking and emotional patterns drive behavior
- Techniques for remaining optimistic and forward-thinking even when facing set-backs
- How to depersonalize and attribute failure to something temporary and specific
- Through the case study format, how other individuals have achieved resilient thinking
Psychological safety has become the buzz phrase in organizations but how do you actually embed that concept in teams? We’ll look at both Amy Edmondson’s research as well as Timothy Clark. We want all people in a company to feel welcome. We have a cadre of diverse facilitators who are skilled in diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging who will engage, education and enlighten participants in a safe way.
- Definitions: What is psychological safety and how do you measure it?
- Strategies to build safety among a team who has had challenges in the past
- How to create a safe space for people to share their concerns
- Strategies to practice vulnerability in a way that builds connection
Managing up, down or sideways is a key skill for employees in today’s workforce. Through our coaching we often find people have a block managing in one of these directions. In this three part session you will learn to ‘Deal Well’ with others, ‘Build’ relationships well and ‘Persuade well’. Some people also have an aversion to networking or self-promoting, even though that is a key skill in the workforce. Case studies will be customized to each client and we will look at how to go beyond ‘my work should speak for itself’ to offering your strengths in an authentic way.
- The tool for how to discern what you can change and what you can’t change
- A tool for building relationships and speaking about strengths authentically
- A tool for influencing others
Listening is like driving. Everyone thinks they are above average. Instead, most of us are thinking about our counter-argument, how your statement impacts me or what I’m going to have for dinner tonight. When we do give our attention to others, it is a gift. ‘Your presence is your present.’ People feel heard, validated and listening builds relationships which are the cornerstone of business interactions.
- The three levels of listening
- The three levels of listening
- A strategy for building with what you are given
- The distinction between agreement and acceptance
Work is increasingly accomplished through teams. Yet, teams, once formed, do not automatically launch themselves to heights of high performance. Unlike a person working alone, teams involved group dynamics. As soon as people are thrown together, the various expectations, needs, personal agendas and personal styles come into play. Communication channels are expanded and therefore the possibility of misunderstanding and confusion is increased. So, what does it take to build a high performing work team; what are the signals and steps involved?
Through a series of activities, group learning, reflection and discussion, participants learn how to lead team development in Lead Well Team Well. Participants assess their teams using simple, yet powerful models and explore tools for managing team performance, engagement and direction.
- Increase understanding of team dynamics, lifecycle and the leader’s role in team development
- Assess their teams current and desired performance states
- Learn and apply tools and techniques that build team alignment and performance
- Learn and apply tools and techniques that build team alignment and performance
Many research studies show that when we tell someone what to do, they are much less likely to do it than if they come up with the idea themselves. This is why most change processes fail. In Lead Well Coach Well, you will learn more than the standard GROW model of coaching. In small groups you will observe and try strategies to get others to come up with their own insights.
- A sustainable coaching model for working with all levels in an organization
- How to shift your mindset from telling to asking
- Building with what the other person gives you, rather than asking a list of ‘coaching questions’
- How to get someone to go beyond surface answers to deeper, more meaningful responses
