Soft Skills Training Programs That Are Anything But "Soft"
Our training programs help your staff members become better leaders, no matter their roles in the organization. They'll think more strategically. Communicate more effectively. Solve problems more creatively. Navigate conflict more adeptly. In short, they'll be better equipped to take on the challenges and curve balls thrown by clients, direct reports or industry disruptors.
Our training programs are designed so that people can put what they’ve learned into practice the very next day. The format of every session is highly experiential and participative. We know that time is at a premium, so our content is adaptable to fit busy schedules. And each program can be customized to your unique training needs.
Virtual Training Programs
Our virtual training programs allow your staff to improve their skills while they work remotely. The programs are conducted live and exclusively for your team, allowing us to customize the content to your organization’s needs.
Each virtual training program is highly interactive and includes group or individual exercises, homework assignments for multi-part programs, and real-time access to our facilitators throughout the engagement.
Onsite Workshops At Your Location
Our onsite training workshops offer practical and intensive training to help restore initiative and improve productivity, with the added benefit that your team members will be happier and more engaged at work.
We hold these sessions onsite at your location. Workshops are offered in half-day, full day and multi-part sessions, depending on the topic and your organization's unique training goals.
"Our agency couldn't get enough of Gary and his guided development tactics. He became one of us during our two-day workshop and helped us understand ourselves and each other better. According to the staff survey we took, we just wish we had more time with him."
— Gail Sheffler
Chief Idea Officer, Inspira
Training Topics
"Gary made the training sessions easily digestible, detailed, attentive and valuable. I've already begun attempting to action some of the lessons I learned from him. More importantly, I believe what I learned from Gary will actually aid me in the day-to-day management of my peers."
- Eric Jensen
Global Account Supervisor
TracyLocke
Delivering Great Virtual Presentations
Even if you’re a good presenter in person, giving a virtual presentation brings its own set of challenges. The good news is that everyone can give a great virtual presentation with the right amount of planning, technical preparation and practice.
Participants get a chance to try out what they’re learning in front of the group, with live feedback, in a supportive environment.
At the end of this three-part interactive workshop, participants have learned specific techniques to make their virtual presentations easier to prepare and more interesting. They’ve developed a style that translates well on video, so they are more credible and highly persuasive. Key takeaways include:
Mastering Management:
Virtual Edition
This multi-part virtual leadership program is designed for anyone who is new to supervising other people, or who could benefit from a refresher course in being a more effective manager.
Participants learn specific methods for keeping the team on track and they'll practice their new management skills using real-life scenarios. The workshop includes:
Client Leadership for Account Managers & Other Client-Facing Specialists
Cited by the 4A's as one of its top 3 most popular agency training seminars.
Account managers and client-facing specialists must lead their clients, not merely service them. The Client Leadership Workshop uses this as the guiding principle to help agency managers determine how to spend their time most effectively and productively.
This transformational workshop moves managers from “servicing an account” to “leading the client.” It’s based on enhancing critical skill areas, including:
Mastering Management 2.0
Designed specifically for managers who have completed the Mastering Management program, Mastering Management 2.0 builds on the concepts and management techniques introduced in the original training series. It’s both a refresher — revisiting key management concepts — and a deeper dive into several topics touched on in the first sessions. The program also introduces brand new topic areas such as leading remote teams and managing up.. The workshop covers:
Performance Coaching
For Non-Coaches
The most productive way to lead people is to provide ongoing feedback and coaching. Yet most managers aren’t born with coaching skills. However, any manager can become a more effective coach by learning and applying a few simple-to-use methods and techniques.
In this workshop, participants learn about the fundamental concepts of performance management (hint: it’s a shared responsibility between manager and employee), how to plan for different types of performance conversations and how to provide constructive feedback.
They’ll learn how to prepare development plans for direct reports and will practice their coaching skills during the workshop using real-life scenarios. Topic areas include:
Teamwork Building
In this set of two one-day workshops, people learn both how to participate effectively in teams and how to lead their own teams. Although the two days complement each other, they can also be taken as stand-alone workshops.
Workshop A: For Team Leaders
This workshop focuses on best practices for leading teams to a high performance level with maximum engagement.
Workshop B: For Team Members
This workshop focuses on how to organize and improve team performance. Participants will learn best practices for working with groups of people who bring different disciplines, mindsets and backgrounds to a project. They will reflect on their past team experiences and strategize how to make their current teams more effective.
This workshop is particularly effective for intact work teams who wish to improve their performance. In addition, they’ll learn how to:
Adaptive Leadership
The continually evolving agency business is increasingly complex, creating a volatile environment full of unknowns. Yet, agency managers need to embrace these realities and hone new adaptive leadership skills that optimize communication in the moment, motivate and engage staff members to move forward despite these challenges, all while mitigating stress and keeping a productive outlook.
This workshop introduces new approaches and techniques that can be used immediately by anyone who manages accounts and/or people, to better equip them in a business environment where change has become the only constant. Participants will learn:
Consultative Selling for Organic Account Growth
Even the best of clients are often reluctant to accept and try new ideas. Participants will learn how to recognize the signs that indicate a client is ready for change – and how to create that readiness by taking advance actions.
Skills learned also include a new way to listen deeply and how to identify the different levels of client need. Participants learn how to generate new ideas for clients using current social, technological and economic trends, and how to use communications styles for making their recommendations more enticing to clients. Areas we will focus on include:
Strategic Thinking "Muscle Flexing" for Non-Strategy Types
Strategy development isn't owned exclusively by those individuals who have "strategy" in their job titles. EVERYONE on the team needs to have a deeper understanding of strategy. Without such knowledge, marketing campaigns run the risk of being good marketing ideas but not necessarily good business strategy.
This workshop is designed for those team members who are new to the strategic planning process and who can benefit from exercises designed to help them develop their strategic thinking "muscles." Topic areas include:
Business Storytelling
More and more we realize that what moves and motivates clients are often the stories we tell to make our points. Being an effective storyteller in business takes discipline; we have to learn when and how to use stories, and to develop the stories that will be most persuasive.
At the same time, our stories must be short, memorable and – most importantly – demonstrate a key point.
In this workshop for anyone who is client-facing, people develop stories and practice telling them in a concise but compelling way. We also use improv to help people speak more extemporaneously, plus how to support each other in their storytelling.
Creative Thinking Skills
Today’s competitive environment essentially requires that everyone in the agency be a more creative thinker. Developing creative skills is not just for people who have writing or design talent; anyone can learn to make their brain more fluent in producing new ideas.
This highly participative workshop demonstrates why traditional brainstorming doesn’t work, and introduces people to a much more effective method – based on the latest research in brain science – for developing all kinds of ideas in the agency, for any department, and both with groups and individually. Participants will learn:
Business Writing Skills
We write proposals, reports, plans, creative briefs, emails and PowerPoint presentations every day. Almost every one of these messages is intended, directly or indirectly, to persuade someone to move toward “yes.” The style of our writing nudges readers toward or away from that goal, no matter how good the content.
Effective writing doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But everyone can follow simple guidelines to make their writing more persuasive. In this workshop, participants will constantly practice what they’re learning with short writing exercises they share with the group. The workshop includes:
Agency Financial Stewardship
Designed specifically for ad agencies, participants learn how the agency profits and loses money, how to protect the agency’s financial interests with clients, and how to increase income from the agency’s existing accounts.
It's designed for account executives, account supervisors, creatives, production managers, and any non-finance manager who has financial responsibilities. The workshop covers:
Download Our Training Guide
See all our training programs in a single PDF format.
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Fill out the contact form below and we'll follow up with you within 24 business hours.
If you prefer to give one of us a call, here's how you can reach us:
Gary Duke, Managing Partner & Chief Talent Officer: 202.746.6055
Sheila Campbell, Founding Partner: 301.587.4555
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