Most Frequently Requested Programs
How Outstanding Leaders Avoid Business Decision-Making Disasters
When was the last time you saw a business disaster, whether a minor mishap such as excessive team conflict or a major calamity that threatened bankruptcy? Behavioral economics studies show that most of these disasters are preventable and stem from one or more poor decisions. Pioneering leaders have recently begun integrating decision science into their decision-making processes to help the teams and organizations they lead avoid disasters. This presentation offers case studies and best practices from these pioneering leaders and provides clear take-aways to help you avoid disasters.
- Identify situations that might lead to business disasters
- Learn about problematic mental patterns (called cognitive biases) that lead to poor decisions
- Discover how pioneering organizations address cognitive biases to make wise decisions
- Adapt best practices on avoiding disasters from these organizations to your own context
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your organization to avoid disasters
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Outstanding Leadership Through Social Intelligence
You can become a truly outstanding leader through developing your social intelligence, the strategic ability to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and behaviors. Social intelligence skills will determine your success in cultivating valuable relationships, improving teamwork, managing conflicts, exhibiting executive presence, and guiding stakeholders to achieving organizational objectives. This presentation offers case studies on effective use of social intelligence-based strategies and provides clear take-aways to help you become an outstanding leader.
- Identify where your leadership skills can most benefit from improving your social intelligence
- Learn best practices for using social intelligence in leadership contexts
- Discover how truly outstanding leaders use social intelligence to achieve their leadership goals
- Adapt social intelligence-informed strategies from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Empower others in your organization to improve their leadership through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Achieving Organizational Goals Through Social Intelligence
Why do most organizations act as though people are driven solely by logic and reason? After all, extensive behavioral economics research shows that the large majority of our behavior is based on emotions. Failing to engage stakeholder emotions effectively undercuts motivation and engagement, and leads to turnover, internal discord, and toxic cultures. Pioneering organizations address these problems by relying on social intelligence, the strategic ability to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and behaviors. This presentation offers case studies from these organizations and provides clear take-aways to help you use social intelligence-based strategies to achieve your organization’s goals.
- Identify where your organization’s policies may be misaligned with people’s emotional drivers
- Learn best practices for using social intelligence in organizational contexts
- Discover how pioneering organizations use social intelligence to achieve their goals
- Adapt social intelligence-informed best practices from these organizations into your own context
- Incentivize others in your organization to follow these best practices
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who works in organizations of at least 25 people and has a role in shaping organizational culture.
Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion Through Social Intelligence
For you to achieve outstanding diversity & inclusion results requires strong social intelligence, the ability to evaluate and influence other people’s social interactions. Our evolutionary background has resulted in unconscious bias and other problematic mental patterns (called cognitive biases) that leads to tribal behaviors, undermining D&I initiatives. To deal with tribalism, pioneering organizations are applying social intelligence-based strategies to address the cognitive biases that result in tribalism and undercut D&I. This presentation offers case studies from these pioneering organizations and provides clear take-aways to help you achieve outstanding D&I results.
- Learn how our evolutionary background and cognitive biases undermine D&I
- Assess situations where these biases might impact your D&I efforts
- Discover how pioneering organizations use social intelligence to address cognitive biases in D&I
- Adapt these social intelligence-informed best practices into your own organizational D&I context
- Incentivize others in your organization to follow these best practices for D&I
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to improve diversity and inclusion in their organization.
Cultivating Trust for Competitive Advantage
Would you work with someone you don’t trust? Of course not. Trust is the vital if invisible glue holding an organization together, internally and externally. A lack of trust profoundly damages employee engagement, retention, and productivity, and severely hinders your ability to work with vendors and get customers. Fortunately, research on best business practices shows how you can gain a reputation for trustworthiness, internally and externally. This presentation offers case studies from organizations noted for trust-based cultures and provides clear take-aways to help you gain a competitive advantage by cultivating trust.
- Learn about the vital role of trust in organizations
- Assess the existing level of trust within your organization
- Discover best business practices for developing trust-based internal cultures and reputations
- Adapt best practices on cultivating trust to your own organizational context
- Incentivize others in your organization to engage in best practices for cultivating trust
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who works in organizations of at least 25 people and has a role in shaping organizational culture.
Leadership Success Through Emotional Intelligence
True leadership success requires outstanding emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-management of one’s emotions and intuitions. Our emotional reactions stem from our evolutionary heritage and are poorly adapted to modern professional environments. Successful leaders develop an awareness of when their emotions are leading them astray, and use effective strategies to steer their emotions into helpful channels. This presentation offers case studies from such leaders and provides clear take-aways to help you gain the emotional intelligence required for true leadership success.
- Identify where your leadership skills can most benefit from improving your emotional intelligence
- Learn best practices for using emotional intelligence in leadership contexts
- Discover how truly successful leaders use emotional intelligence to achieve their leadership goals
- Adapt emotional intelligence-informed strategies from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Empower others in your organization to improve their leadership through emotional intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
3 Secrets to Engaging Employees Through Meaning and Purpose
Your bottom line depends on your employees being highly engaged. Research on companies with highly engaged employees shows the importance of cultivating a sense of meaning and purpose in the workplace to increase productivity and teamwork, and decrease sick days and turnover. This presentation offers case studies from such organizations and provides clear take-aways to help you develop a workplace with meaning and purpose in a cost-effective manner that improves your bottom line.
- Learn why a sense of meaning and purpose is vital to employee engagement
- Assess the level of meaning and purpose in your own organization
- Discover 3 research-based secrets used by organizations noted for high meaning and purpose
- Adapt best practices from these organizations into your own organizational context
- Incentivize others in your organization to follow these best practices on meaning and purpose
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who works in organizations of at least 25 people and has a role in shaping organizational culture.
Should You Trust Your Gut? Leadership Myths Busted
You probably heard advice for leaders to go with their guts, stick to their guns, and be confident. Unfortunately, behavioral economics studies show that following these typical pieces of advice – and many similar ones – often leads to disastrous consequences for leaders, since our gut reactions and intuitions are a poor fit for leadership contexts. Groundbreaking research on best leadership practices forms the basis for this presentation, which busts leadership myths and offers clear take-aways to facilitate your leadership success.
- Identify where and when typical leadership advice is helpful and where and when it is not
- Understand why and when our gut reactions are a poor fit for leadership contexts, and when our gut reactions serve us well
- Discover how problematic mental patterns (called cognitive biases) lead to leadership disasters
- Learn the groundbreaking research on best leadership practices that busts leadership myths
- Develop a plan to integrate these practices into your leadership toolkit and teach them to other leaders in your organization
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Risk Management in Hiring & Promotion
When was the last time you saw a hiring & promotion disaster, whether a hire that did not work out or a serious lawsuit over perceptions of hiring & promotion discrimination? How do you avoid situations that lead to unacceptable risks in hiring & promotion? Behavioral economics studies show that most hiring & promotion disasters are preventable and stem from one or more poor decisions. Pioneering leaders have recently begun integrating decision science into their decision-making processes on hiring & promotion to help the teams and organizations they lead avoid disasters. This presentation offers case studies and best practices from these pioneering leaders and provides clear take-aways to help you avoid disasters in hiring & promotion.
- Identify situations that create unacceptable risks in hiring & promotion
- Learn about problematic mental patterns (called cognitive biases) that lead to unacceptable risks in hiring & promotion
- Discover how pioneering organizations address cognitive biases to avoid unacceptable risks in hiring & promotion
- Adapt best practices on avoiding unacceptable risks from these organizations to your own context
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your organization to avoid unacceptable risks in hiring & promotion
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role with responsibility over hiring & promotion.
Outstanding Selling Through Social Intelligence
You can become a truly outstanding sales professional through developing your social intelligence, the strategic ability to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and behaviors. Social intelligence skills will determine your long-term sales success by empowering you to cultivate valuable relationships with prospects through understand and satisfying their needs and wants, the emotional drivers that determine their buying behaviors. This presentation offers case studies on effective use of social intelligence-based strategies in sales and provides clear take-aways to help you become an outstanding sales professional.
- Identify where your sales skills can most benefit from improving your social intelligence
- Learn best practices for using social intelligence in sales contexts
- Discover how truly outstanding sales professionals use social intelligence to achieve their sales goals
- Adapt social intelligence-informed strategies from these professionals into your own sales toolkit
- Empower others in your organization to improve their sales skills through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who is involved in sales or oversees sales professionals.
Leadership Success Via Managing Risks, Avoiding Threats, and Seizing Opportunities
To succeed as a leader requires you to excel at managing risks by avoiding threats and seizing opportunities. Yet behavioral economics and neuroscience studies shows that the human mind is wired to make many poor decisions when assessing threats and opportunities in modern business environments. Fortunately, cutting-edge research has shown innovative strategies that help us make decisions in ways that optimize risk management and avoid dangerous judgment errors. Pioneering leaders have been integrating this research into their decision-making processes to notice and avoid potential threats while perceiving and taking advantage of unexpected opportunities. This presentation offers case studies and best practices from these pioneering leaders and provides clear take-aways to help you manage risks, threats, and opportunities successfully.
- Assess where you can most benefit from improving your leadership ability to manage risks by avoiding threats and seizing opportunities
- Learn best practices and cutting-edge research on avoiding dangerous judgment errors to make the best decisions around risk management
- Discover case studied of how truly successful leaders use pioneering techniques to help them make optimal decisions on avoiding potential threats and seizing unexpected opportunities
- Adapt risk management and decision-making strategies from these leaders into your own toolkit
- Empower others in your organization to improve their risk management and decision-making skills around addressing threats and taking advantage of opportunities
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60 minutes with time for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes to a half-day training with extensive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who is involved in risk management.
If you’re interested in having one of these programs customized to your audience, or if you would like us to create a special program to meet your needs by using his expertise in decision-making and emotional and social intelligence, get in touch today!
In-Depth Sample Program
3 Leadership Secrets to Avoiding Business Decision-Making Disasters
This sample program is designed for a 90-minute seminar. It can be shortened to a TED-style 20-minute keynote or expanded to a half-day or whole-day seminar as needed.
No one wants to see a disaster in their workplace, yet they happen all the time, from everyday disasters such as a new hire not working out to major crises that may lead to bankruptcy. The large majority of these disasters is preventable, and stem from one or usually a series of poor decisions. In hindsight, we can clearly see which decisions led to disaster: wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to predict these bad decisions in advance and avoid them? Fortunately, you can learn how to minimize everyday mishaps and major disasters through applying decision-making science.
The core activity for current and future leaders at all levels is leveraging their resources, knowledge, reputation, and organizational authority into pursuing their organization’s goals. To do so, leaders need to navigate a strategic environment of uncertainty, ambiguity, and change to coordinate multiple stakeholders with somewhat competing interests and differing personalities and thinking styles. All this involves a host of challenging and difficult decisions that require finely tuned decision-making skills.
Yet very few of us reflect on and strive to improve the process by which we reach our decisions – what is known as “meta-decision making.” This is despite the fact that making decisions forms the basis for everything we do in our jobs and in life more broadly, making skills in this arena vital to our success. Even fewer get professional development in improving their decision-making, resulting in a cycle of regrettable decisions and bad outcomes. Fortunately, studies show that training in decision-making, especially ones that integrate both intuitive and analytical thinking into a synergistic whole, can drastically reduce such disastrous decisions by individuals and teams. This presentation draws on research in decision-making and emotional and social intelligence as well as real-world case studies to help optimize the process of decision-making for leaders, teams, and organizations.
- Gain awareness of and escape the cycle of regrettable decisions, thus avoiding workplace disasters, big and small
- Identify a series of problematic thinking and feeling patterns – what scholars call cognitive biases – that cause us to make regrettable decisions
- Use recent research in behavioral sciences to deal with cognitive biases in the workplace through easy-to-use strategies for effective decision-making
- Combine intuitive and analytical thinking to help you make the best possible decisions in an environment of uncertainty
- Help yourself and your team implement these strategies thoroughly for optimal decision-making processes
- Exert influence effectively on team decision-making from any role in the team, while helping maintain trust, engagement, and commitment among team members
- Identify the competing interests of multiple stakeholders, especially in a context of uncertainty and transition, and coordinate them to achieving the organization’s goals
This presentation will thus help you make and implement wise decisions in all areas of your organization, to help you and your team avoid losing money, time, experiencing stress, and hurting your reputation and morale, thus minimizing the possibility of either small mishaps or major disasters.
- 5 minutes to solicit recent major decisions that those in the room are considering and what challenges they think they might face in the decision-making process
- 30-minute mini-lecture on the science of decision-making and thinking errors to avoid, with case studies informed by the needs of audience members, including some integration of decisions that those in the audience brought up in the first 5 minutes
- 10-minute Q&A on the science of decision-making and how it applies to the decisions those in the room are considering
- 10-minute mini-lecture on the premortem exercise, a research-based strategy that helps address in advance ways that major decisions might go wrong
- 20-minute group activity where audiences members go through the premortem in groups, with each individual having an opportunity to share about an upcoming major decision and get feedback from group participants about things that might go wrong and how to avoid them
- 5-minute discussion of what the premortem exercise helped audience members realize about how to address the problems in their upcoming decisions
- 10-minute Q&A on the whole talk
- Our emotions are central to decision-making, but they may steer us into disasters in systematic, predictable, and avoidable ways
- We must learn our own problematic thinking and feeling patterns to avoid disasters through combining intuitive and analytical thinking
- Team decision-making is most effective for making the best decisions, but needs to use systematic decision-making to prevent disasters