One-Day Workshops

Accentuating the Positive through Constructive Controversy

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive exercises to help the participants: recognize that conflict is essential to creativity, assess the pros and cons of five conflict management options; determine whether or not their characteristic response to conflict is appropriate and effective; review the four steps to constructive conflict management; assess the impact of prior conditioning on managing conflict; apply three problem finding techniques to determine the root cause of a conflict; identify the mutual interests of the parties to a conflict situation; and generate options for mutual gain.

Active Listening Skills: Now Hear This!

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist employees and managers in improving their ability to actively listen on the job. It will provide information regarding the characteristics of good listeners and active listening skills. It involves interactive exercises that give the participants an opportunity to analyze and improve their poor listening habits and identify techniques to ensure that their communication needs are met so that they minimize their inclination not to listen. The workshop includes an analysis of irritating listening habits to determine the benefit and consequences of those behaviors, as well as case situations and role playing to provide practice in applying active listening techniques.

An Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Strategic Planning

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help participants experience how the appreciative inquiry dialogue process results in enthusiastic sharing, community building, and commitment generation. The workshop will model the stages in the process, so that the participants can see for themselves why it is effective in creating teamwork and commitment. They will also have an opportunity to plan how they can use this process to increase the level of teamwork and commitment in their own organizations.

Assertive Communication

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist employees who want to improve their ability to be assertive in job-related situations. The participants will identify the difference between assertion and aggression, examine assertiveness concepts, analyze and address the roadblocks to assertiveness, obtain the prerequisites for assertive behavior, recognize when assertive behavior is necessary, follow the steps in assertive problem solving, and use an assertive communication strategy. The workshop uses interactive exercises, case situations, and simulations to allow the participants to experience how to assume control of their work lives.

Balancing Work and Home

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help employees, supervisors and managers who need to reconcile their conflicting professional and personal needs and expectations. Using interactive exercises, the participants assess the role that personal value systems, self-concept and self-image play in establishing uncomfortable and often impossible life imperatives. The premise of the workshop is that adults make choices that have consequences and they need to learn how to recognize, accept, and live with them. Using interactive exercises and personal assessments, the participants will learn how to create options, take action, and create a new more comfortable and realistic balance point in their lives. The workshop will include discussion of the skills necessary for this integration, including time management principles and assertiveness techniques.

Basic Academic Quality Management for Medical Training Institutions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help the staff involved in administering and providing academic services learn the steps to take in order to ensure that their students receive a quality education for the mutual success of the students and their training institution. Participants: explain the elements of a quality academic program; discuss the importance of evaluating students for readiness and ability; review resources for assessing the competence of potential instructors; discuss key curriculum design principles; assess a learning plan format; practice creating a learning plan; experience a student-directed comprehension-checking activity; analyze potential screening check off lists for classroom audits and evaluation; and create an academic quality management action plan.

Basic Facility and Records Management for Medical Training Institutions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help the owners and management staff of medical training institutions recognize the importance of maintaining all of their facilities, both training and hostel buildings, to ensure an attractive, clean and safe learning and living environment for students and staff. They will also learn the value of having a computerized record management system to increase records organization and accessibility.

Basic Budget Management for Medical Training Institutions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help the owners and staff of private medical training institutions learn how to create operating and capital budgets, and how to set student fees and control costs for the purpose of sound financial management. The participants: describe the elements of an operating budget; analyze an operating budget; make revenue projections; construct an operating budget; analyze a capital budget; determine costs and calculate fees; discuss how to control costs; and explain how to conduct a cost management audit.

Basic Financial Management for Medical Practices

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help business owners and their staff will learn: the importance of a good financial record-keeping system; the value of income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements; and the relative advantages and disadvantages of different external financing options so that they can maintain a positive financial situation. The participants: assess their current financial record-keeping systems; discuss the components of an effective financial record-keeping system; identify the financial records their businesses should keep; explain the purpose of different financial documents; analyze an income statement; determine the value of a balance sheet; review a cash flow statement; plan questions to ask their bookkeeper/accountant on a regular basis; address objections to borrowing money; define and distinguish internal and external financing options; debate the pros and cons of different financing options; and assess how to meet funding needs.

Basic Human Resource Management for Medical Training Institutions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help staff with human management responsibilities develop or strengthen their ability to attract, hire, manage and retain qualified staff so that the new hires and their businesses will be successful. The participants: analyze what employees need to be successful on the job; explain why managing human resources is essential for a successful business; write a job description; describe how to recruit and select staff; determine what should be included in staff orientation; review a performance management process; create performance standards; plan how to move employees from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation; and assess the reasons for staff turnover and determine remedial actions to address them.

Basic Marketing and Stakeholder Management for Medical Training Institutions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help the owners and management staff of medical training institutions how to create a customer service marketing strategy so they can attract and retain their target students. They will also learn how to assess and strengthen their relationships with their stakeholders so that both sides will benefit from the relationship.  Participants: define what students want in their medical training experience; create a profile of the ideal student they would like to attract and retain; assess the effectiveness of their current marketing strategies; review basic educational service marketing concepts: examine a variety of marketing strategies; state their current challenges with their stakeholders; identify the key stakeholders in their institutions; explain the impact that each stakeholder can have on the success of the institution; describe how to establish and maintain relationships with key stakeholders; and create a personal Marketing and Stakeholder Management Action Plan.

Building Consensus on Sticky Issues

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop provides a six-step model for reaching consensus on sensitive issues. It uses interactive exercises so that the participants can experience the group problem solving and decision making techniques necessary to depersonalize a real job-related issue, determine objective concerns, generate acceptable options, and make a group decision.

Building Effective Interpersonal Communication Skills

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to improve their ability to communicate effectively. It provides information and practice with the prerequisites for effective communication, strategies to meet the different communication needs of four personality types, and an interpersonal communication formula predicated upon the four R's: rights, respect, responsibility and resolution. The participants analyze their personal barriers to effective communication in order to identify techniques to overcome those barriers. The emphasis of this interactive workshop is to increase sensitivity to assume greater control over interpersonal communications to accomplish intended results.

Building an Effective Management Team

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses participative exercises to enable the participants to learn and experience the five essential elements for productive team functioning: (1) positive interdependence, (2) individual accountability, (3) face-to-face interaction, (4) collaborative skills, and (5) group processing. The workshop also focuses on the use of quality improvement group problem finding and decision making techniques to identify and initiate a process to address issues.

Building Employee Skills to Prevent Sexual Harassment

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive exercises, self-assessments, case studies, and simulations to enable employees to accept their responsibility for avoiding and preventing sexual harassment in their work groups. The employees are given the opportunity to: define what constitutes sexual harassment, assess their own myths and biases, and clarify when and how they should intervene when they become aware of an actual or potential sexual harassment situation. When they complete the workshop, they should have a clear understanding of the organization's policy prohibiting sexual harassment and their performance expectations as employees to follow this policy through word and deed.

Building Respectful Work Relationships

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to enable participants to recognize that if they want to work in a comfortable and cooperative environment, then they need to realize that they can "teach" people how to treat them. This begins with learning to respect and accept themselves- because if they don't, why should anyone else? Then, if they want to be treated with respect, they need to model the interpersonal behaviors that they want others to use with them: (1) listen well; (2) express thoughts and feelings clearly; (3) constructively handle negative feelings; and (4) be authentic. This participatory workshop will give participants an opportunity to develop and practice these behaviors, so that they can create healthier and more respectful working relationships.

Building Self Esteem

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to improve the self-esteem of the participants. It will provide information about the role that personal value systems, self-concept and self-image play in establishing uncomfortable and often self-defeating life views. The premise of the workshop is that adults can assume greater control over their lives once they recognize that they have value, rights, and options.  Using interactive exercises and personal assessments, the participants will learn how to develop a more accepting and supportive view of themselves and their abilities, so that they will feel empowered to see options and take active control over their lives.

Coaching for Success

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to coach experienced and novice supervisors and managers in developing and practicing coaching skills, and becoming more comfortable with their coaching role. Using interactive exercises, participants: define coaching; discuss the benefits of coaching to the employee, supervisor and organization; explain when to coach;- and when coaching is inappropriate; determine how to address coaching challenges, including self confidence and employee defensiveness; practice active listening techniques; develop a coaching plan using the DO COACH model; and practice coaching.

Communicating Non-Defensively

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop guides the participants through the five skills of non-defensive communication. Using interactive exercises, the participants: recognize the negative impact of defensiveness on effective communication; identify the signs of defensiveness in themselves and in others; explain the common causes of defensiveness; discuss how to break a defensiveness chain; and practice communicating non-defensively.

Conflict Management Strategies

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to improve their ability to manage conflict. It will provide information and practice with the positive and negative attributes of conflict, as well as the appropriate and inappropriate use of the five different conflict management strategies. A four-step approach to conflict management will be introduced: (1) define the situation, (2) depersonalize the interaction, (3) identify the real problem, and (4) build on mutual interests. The participants will have an opportunity to apply the four-step approach and experiment with different conflict management strategies in a simulated conflict situation.

Coping, Surviving and Thriving: Handling Difficult Customers

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help employees learn how to handle difficult customer interactions and remain calm and courteous during those stressful situations. The participants strengthen their ability to stay calm in difficult situations and use active listening to manage and redirect angry customers. The participants also have an opportunity to assess the scope and effect of stress in their lives, and then practice methods to prevent, reduce, and/or manage their stress on the job.

Customer Service and Regulatory Control: Combustible or Compatible?

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist regulatory staff to become more sensitive to the importance of customer service in ensuring better quality, consistency, and compliance. The workshop uses interactive exercises that allow the staff to experience the impact of poor customer interactions, develop more effective customer service skills, and build a greater sense of organizational teamwork so that one department is not contracting another department's policies and procedures. The workshop also includes a strategic planning session in the afternoon in which the participants develop quality standards both for customer service as well as for intradepartmental teamwork. All work session papers are compiled and distributed to the participants after the session.

Enhancing Interview Skills

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help employees develop or improve their interview skills and strategy so that they are more likely to be successful in hiring interviews. The participants learn how to: prepare an interview strategy, anticipate interview questions, minimize anxiety in interviews, and improve their self- presentation during an interview. The participants also have an opportunity to practice their interview skills in a brief mock interview that is videotaped to give them the most complete feedback regarding their interviewing strengths and challenges.

Dealing with Difficult People

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help staff who want to improve their ability to manage stress, be assertive, and resolve conflict at work and in personal interactions. The workshop uses interactive exercises and simulations to allow the participants to experience how to retain control of themselves, maintain their professionalism, and communicate effectively in difficult situations. It will demonstrate how to use an instant calming sequence to retain their composure in the most stressful of circumstances; how to depersonalize situations by understanding different personality types; and how to use a win-win communication strategy to resolve disagreements.

Financial Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Develop an Operating Budget

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners and managers learn the importance of having and monitor their operating budget as part of sound financial management. Participants: define what an operating budget is; describe the elements of an operating budget; analyze a budget; discuss how to construct an operating budget; make sales projections; and create an operating budget.

Financial Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Manage Payments and Collections

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners and managers learn that the key to helping their practice stop losing money is effective upfront payment and collections management. Participants: discuss why private medical practices lose money; identify the steps involved in effectively managing payments and collections; determine the key components of an upfront payment and collections policy; explain the staff training necessary to implement the policy; propose how to educate patients regarding their financial responsibilities; assess the value of a financial assistance program; and review how well their practice handles the steps involved in managing insurance claims.

Financial Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Manage Your Cash Flow

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners and managers learn how to work with cash flow statements to determine the financial health of their businesses. Participants: define key terms related to cash flow and profit; explain the difference between cash and profit; describe the categories in a cash flow statement; interpret a cash flow statement; create a cash flow statement; create cash flow projections; and identify strategies to improve cash flow.

Financial Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Understand Costs and Profitability in Your Medical Practice

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners learn that they need to notice and manage their costs if they want their practices to be profitable. Participants: explain the difference between costs and expenses; describe the two types of costs; analyze costs and cost drivers; discuss how to control costs; define profit; assess how cost adjustments can affect profitability; and explain how to conduct a cost management audit.

Finding, Selecting, and Retaining Employees

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help participants identify and plan how to meet the three criteria that must be met to ensure a quality hiring decision. Using interactive exercises, the participants: explain the steps in an effective recruitment and selection process; perform a task analysis; determine the most effective recruitment strategies; create a pre-screening device; develop a structured interview; discuss how to avoid illegal questions; identify eight ways to increase new employee retention; and practice applying seven motivational tools.

Getting Past No: How to Negotiate with Difficult People

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to learn a five-step strategy for handling negotiations in difficult situations. Using interactive exercises, the participants practice naming, defusing, and reframing three typical negotiation tactics: stone walls, attacks, and tricks and lies. (A second day can be added to provide time for the participants to practice using the five-step strategy in a simulated job-related negotiation situation).

Group Problem Solving and Decision Making Techniques

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals new to group problem solving and decision-making techniques or a refresher course for individuals with moderate experience. It will provide information and practice with group-centered techniques for finding and defining problems, generating alternatives, and making decisions. The workshop demystifies common quality improvement tools such as "Ishikawa diagram," "pareto chart," and "nominal group technique" so that the participants know what they are and when to use them effectively. The exercises are tailored to give the participants an opportunity to test the techniques on issues relevant to them.

How to Conduct a Performance Appraisal Interview

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist managers and supervisors in improving their abilities to conduct both formal and informal performance appraisal interviews. The workshop provides general information regarding the purpose of performance appraisal interviews and the steps involved in preparing for and conducting the interview. The workshop includes interactive exercises and case situations which give the participants an opportunity to identify barriers to effective interviews and steps to eliminate or minimize them, as well as an interpersonal communication strategy to ensure effective results from the interview. Emphasis is placed on encouraging the employee to assume responsibility for improving performance, as well as learning how to handle a defensive employee.

Internal Consulting

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed for employees and managers who operate as internal consultants for other programs within their organizations. Using interactive exercises, the participants will: define the goals of an internal consultant; discuss the steps in the consulting process; relate the rational problem solving/ decision making model to the consulting process; explain how to initiate a consulting process; analyze the steps involved in contracting; identify group facilitation techniques; and identify strategies to overcome consulting barriers.

Interpersonal Communication Strategies

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to improve their ability to communicate effectively. It provides information concerning the prerequisites for effective communication, strategies to meet the different communication needs of four personality types, and an interpersonal communication formula predicated upon the four R's: rights, respect, responsibility and resolution. The participants analyze their personal barriers to effective communication in order to identify techniques to overcome those barriers. The emphasis of this interactive workshop is to increase sensitivity to assume greater control over interpersonal communications to accomplish intended results.

Leadworker Training: If You Lead, Will They Follow?

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals new to the role of leading work or project teams or a refresher course for individuals with moderate experience. The workshop uses participative exercises to allow the participants to learn and experience the skills necessary to effectively build a team, delegate, motivate, and communicate with different personality types. Based upon their workshop experiences, the participants will ultimately define the role of a leadworker.

Lightening Up for Creative Management

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to provide opportunities for the participants to experience different techniques that move thinking into the open, more creative mode for more effective problem solving and decision-making. The workshop closes with an opportunity for the participants to apply what they have learned to generate creative options to address typically closed mode work-related situations.

Making the Most of Your Mentoring Relationship

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to develop mentor skills and provide the starting point for creating a constructive mentor-mentee relationship. The morning is devoted to providing practical skills for mentors in how to draw out the mentee's needs and goals, and support the mentee's learning. The afternoon focuses on the cooperative development of a mentoring plan and schedule by the mentors and mentees, following a twelve-step checklist.

Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Management of Medical Records

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help medical staff learn that they need to ensure that their patient medical records are complete, well organized, legible, secure, and easy to retrieve and that the records are periodically audited for data completeness and documented quality of services so that their patients will receive the best quality of care. Participants: propose the patient information and forms that should be included in outpatient medical records; recommend how an outpatient medical record can be organized; assess the content of their current medical records; assess their current medical records policies and procedures; design a checklist for auditing the completeness of medical records; design a peer review checklist for auditing the quality of medical records; and assess their current medical records management.

Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Management of Medications and Medical Supplies

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help medical staff learn best practices for managing medications and medical supplies to ensure that they are adequately stored and audited for quality and effective date prior to dispensing them to patients. Participants: identify the types of medications and medical supplies they keep on hand; discuss the importance of the first-to-expire, first out (FEFO) procedure; explain how to record stock items; describe their approach to conducting an inventory; list the indicators of product quality problems; propose how to prevent damage and contamination; and decide how to handle issues related to medications and medical supplies.

Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Understand Quality in Your Health Practice

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health care owners learn that there is an expectation and necessity for their practices to provide quality health care by implementing and adhering to clinical, fiscal and administrative quality standards of performance in order to ensure that their practices provide a high quality of care that can help to attract and retain clients. Participants will recognize that quality is not just the right thing to do, it makes good business sense.

 Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Risk Management in Your Health Practice

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health facility owners learn that the potential for risk permeates all aspects of health care so that they will take proactive risk management actions to identify and address risks before they occur. Participants: define risk management; assess the need for telephone protocols; create a credentialing checklist; review the consequences when the "Six Rights" of medication management are not fulfilled; describe their privacy and confidentiality practices; and discuss the relationship between risk management and quality improvement in a health practice.

Managing Change: Riding the Waves

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist supervisors and managers in improving their abilities to manage employees' emotional and behavioral responses to organizational, programmatic and procedural changes. It provides information regarding the sources of resistance to change and techniques to address and overcome that resistance. It also uses interactive exercises to teach the steps in the change process and give the participants an opportunity to plan, script and role-play action steps they can take to implement the changes in their work situations. The workshop includes an analysis of the participants' personal response to the changes they must implement and administer, so that they can be aware of their biases and minimize the effect of their own biases on their change management strategies.

Managing, Understanding and Motivating Employees

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help the participants, through interactive exercises: define leadership; explain the steps in the leadership task; analyze four types of personalities and how to meet their different communication and trust needs; apply a mutual problem solving approach to communication predicated on the 4 R's: respect, rights, responsibility, and resolution; review the tools in the manager's motivational tool kit; discuss techniques and prerequisites for establishing an effective work team; and plan to apply the six keys to effective performance management, using a standard-based performance evaluation system.

Marketing Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Analyze Your Market

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners recognize that their customers are not just individuals seeking health care; they are paying customers and organizations. The owners need to know why their customers come to their practices and what their needs, wants and expectations are if the owners want to continue to have customers and grow their practices. They will also learn how to be competitive in their health care market.

Marketing Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Fund Your Health Practice

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners recognize that if they want to grow their business, they will need to consider external financing options- so they should understand the relative advantages and disadvantages of each option. Participants: address objections to borrowing money; define and distinguish internal and external financing options; discuss the pros and cons of different financing options; assess the best way to meet funding needs; and select financing options.

Marketing Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Market Your Health Practice

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners learn that promoting their business is necessary and can be accomplished by developing and implementing marketing strategies appropriate to their customers, the type of practice they own, and the products/services they have to offer. Participants: define the difference between marketing and advertising; explain why it is always important to promote their health practice; describe different marketing strategies; and assess which marketing strategies would be most effective for their health practice and their customers.

Marketing Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Price Your Products and Services

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health practice owners learn that there are many ways to set prices, but they need to consider their customers and costs when they set prices in order to create and maintain a sustainable practice. Participants: discuss their current price-setting practices; identify their pricing objectives; explain different price-setting strategies; define key pricing terms; debate the value of uniform versus differentiated prices; list the number of different ways to price a product or service; conduct a break-even analysis; practice setting prices; and analyze how varying prices can benefit a health practice.

Negotiation Skills: How to Work It Out Without Working Each Other Over

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to improve their ability to handle interpersonal interactions. It provides information and practice with win-win negotiation, emphasizing how to: (1) separate the people from the problem; (2) focus on interests, not positions; and (3) generate options, rather than assuming there is a "fixed pie." The workshop uses interactive exercises and simulations to give the participants an opportunity to analyze and solve negotiation problems. It also provides a win-win approach to constructive feedback.

Optimizing Leadworker Effectiveness

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed for supervisors who have leadworkers or team leaders under their direction. The workshop uses participative exercises to allow the participants to: define the five functions of a leadworker, review how they currently use their leadworker, clarify how to delegate effectively, assess why they do not delegate to their leadworker, plan how to manage different leadworker personalities, and prepare a delegation plan to more effectively use their leadworker. Ultimately, they define the role that they want their leadworker to play.

Persuasive Communication Techniques

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help individuals who want to improve their ability to communicate persuasively. It provides information and practice with the prerequisites for effective communication, strategies to meet the different communication needs of four personality types, and an interpersonal communication formula predicated upon the four R's: rights, respect, responsibility and resolution. The participants analyze their personal barriers to effective communication in order to identify techniques to overcome those barriers. The emphasis of this interactive workshop is to increase sensitivity to assume greater control over interpersonal communications to accomplish intended results.

Pre-Supervisory Training: So You Want to Be a Supervisor?

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals who are interested in becoming supervisors and brand new supervisors. It assists them in exploring their ability to define problems, generate solutions, and make the often difficult decisions that supervisors face. It includes information regarding the role and responsibilities of a supervisor, the importance of communication, team building and conflict management skills, and a six step supervisory model. The intent of this workshop is to provide a situational experience for the participants so that they can not only define and explore the skills they need, but also determine their personal ability and comfort level in using those skills. The content of the workshop is structured around those roles or responsibilities identified by the participants as most difficult for them. The workshop also assists the participants in identifying the skills in which they may need additional training to better prepare them to function in a supervisory capacity.

Preventing Sexual Harassment: A Proactive Approach

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive exercises, self-assessments, case studies, and simulations to enable supervisors to accept their responsibility for detecting and preventing sexual harassment in their work groups. The supervisors have an opportunity to: define what constitutes sexual harassment; assess their own myths and biases; and clarify when and how they should intervene when they become aware of an actual or potential sexual harassment situation. The supervisors also build the skills they should use in addressing and handling an individual whom the supervisor has observed harassing an employee, regardless of whether or not that individual is a subordinate, a non-subordinate employee, a peer, or a manager. When they complete the workshop, they should have a clear understanding of the organization's policy prohibiting sexual harassment and their performance expectations as supervisors to enforce this policy through word and deed. They should have the skills to approach sexual harassment as a work-related issue rather than a personal one. They should also be familiar with disciplinary procedures and when and how to initiate disciplinary action.

Providing Quality Customer Service

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to sensitize participants to the "moments of truth" when clients come into contact with the organization and form their impressions of its quality and service. The workshop uses interactive exercises to help the participants identify: how it feels to be a customer, what gets in the way of good customer service and the degree to which the participants can affect these barriers, and techniques to improve customer service.

Quality Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Ensure Quality at Every Stage of a Patient's Experience

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health professionals learn how to implement and maintain a high quality of health services in their practice by defining expectations at every step (before, during and after) of a typical patient consultation and making sure that they are met on a consistent basis so they are "good enough for your mother." Participants: reconstruct and review every step related to a typical patient consultation in their practice; determine how well their practice currently handles every step of a patient consultation; practice using the quality improvement cycle: Plan –Do- Check -Act; plan how to use the data from the Incident Reports and the PDCA cycle to improve the quality of services; and summarize quality assurance and improvement techniques they can use in their practice.

Quality Management Basics for Medical Practice Owners: Establish a Patient-Safety Culture

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help health professionals learn that if they want to ensure patient safety, they need to establish an Incident Reporting System where they and their staff can learn from adverse events that affect patients, visitors and/or staff so that they do not occur in the future.

Staffing Meetings: Pulling the Strings from Behind the Scenes

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals new to staffing meetings or a refresher course for individuals with moderate experience. An employee in this capacity has to manage the meeting from the sidelines or from behind the scenes, in order to keep the agenda on track without insulting the meeting chair. The workshop will provide information and practice with: the roles people play in groups, the five sources of individual power, the basic barriers to staff effectiveness in meetings and how to overcome them, interpersonal management strategies, and a win-win approach to conflict management.

Strengthen Your Business Management Skills

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help management staff learn the essential business management competencies they need to have and build specific management skills so that they can increase their effectiveness and contribute to the success of their businesses. The participants: assess themselves against key business management competencies; describe the characteristics of an ideal business administrator; analyze the communication and motivational needs of different personality types to increase their interpersonal effectiveness; discuss decision-making criteria; evaluate the pros and cons of different management styles; review time management tips; and assess their time management choices.

Successful Group Facilitation

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive exercises to allow the participants to: define their facilitative role and identify necessary facilitation skills; clarify the purpose and desired end results of the facilitated discussion sessions; discuss ten steps for establishing a climate for open discussion; analyze effective group facilitation techniques; recognize when specific facilitation tools are applicable; and plan how to deal with conflicts, blocks and polarization in the groups they facilitate.

Successful Selection Interviewing Skills

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist supervisors and managers in improving their abilities to conduct an effective selection interview that protects them from the "professional interviewee" who shines during the interview but tarnishes quickly once on the job. The workshop provides information ad practice in how to: clearly define the job; identify the skills, knowledge and abilities necessary to perform the job; create questions that screen for these prerequisites; and develop benchmark answers for each question. The workshop also discusses the purpose and stages of a selection interview, general interview principles, the role of open-ended and probing questions, and appropriate opening and concluding statements.

Supervisor-Friendly Performance Management

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals new to the role of supervising less effective employees for improved performance or a refresher course for individuals with moderate experience. The workshop includes an analysis of the reasons that motivate poor performance, as well as degree to which the participants' characteristic response to poor performers is effective. It assists the participants in identifying what employees need to be effective performers and then provides the skills and techniques to meet those needs. The workshop incorporates interactive exercises and simulations to give the participants an opportunity to learn and apply a six-step performance management strategy to their specific employee problem situation.

The Supervisor's Motivational Tool Kit

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist supervisors and managers in improving their abilities to get employees to want to do what they want them to do. The workshop provides practical information and practice with the two major factors that have an impact on employee motivation: (1) their personal motivators and (2) their need for a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Using interactive exercises, the participants will learn when to use the seven tools in the supervisor's motivational tool kit to accomplish desired results. They will also learn a six-step performance management process.

Supervisory Tools

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to be an introductory program for individuals new to the role of supervisor or a refresher course for individuals with moderate experience. It will provide information about the basic skills a supervisor needs to fulfill basic responsibilities to plan, guide, assign, train, evaluate, hire, fire, and serve as the first step in the grievance process. The workshop uses interactive exercises and case situations to enable the participants to learn the underlying theory and practical techniques relating to interpersonal communication, listening, time management, team building, delegation, motivation, and conflict management.

Taking the Pain Out of Delegation

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses an interactive participatory approach and practical work examples to help participants: identify why supervisors should delegate: explore why they don't; and explain how to delegate effectively. As a result of this workshop, the participants will be more comfortable making delegation decisions and will leave with a specific delegation plan to implement back on the job. This program is unique in using a self- analysis module, in which the participants identify and attempt to address any assumptions or beliefs about themselves as individuals and as managers that can get in the way of their willingness to delegate.

Team Leader/Facilitator Training

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive exercises to introduce the participants to the three R's of team leadership (respect, responsibility and resolution) and provide practice in techniques designed to implement and achieve them. The participants will: define the ideal team leader/group facilitator; describe current facilitation challenges that underscore the need for strengthening their group facilitation skills; assess facilitation strategies to set their groups on the right path; explain facilitation tools to keep the group discussion on track; review how to address people issues; analyze how to best intervene and manage conflict; and discuss how to recognize interim and ultimate successes (scoreboard, project process map, celebration of group's choice.

The Secrets of Business Success

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is design to help business owners learn that there are specific steps they can take to help their businesses be successful. The participants: analyze a situation in which a business was unsuccessful because of an owner's actions or inactions; identify the challenges that their businesses face; determine who has primary responsibility for meeting those challenges; draft a strategic vision for their businesses; create a list of organizational values for their businesses; draft strategic goals for their businesses; define their businesses' core operating principles according to the SMAC recipe; and create a personal business management action plan.

Teaching Best Practices

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop uses interactive
exercises to introduce the participants to the UCLA Mastery Teaching Model.
The participants analyze teaching best practices within the three decisions 
that teachers make: learning content, student activities and teacher
 activities that facilitate learning. The participants will also: analyze the 
key components of effective instruction; conduct a self-assessment; discuss
 challenging instructional areas; create a mastery teaching lesson plan; and
evaluate lesson plans using the lesson plan checklist.

Transforming Anger into a Positive Tool

This skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help participants learn how to gain control over their anger so they can communicate their needs and desires in a non-defensive and constructive manner and ensure that: issues are resolved in a mutually acceptable fashion, and relationships remain cooperative and professional.

Understand the Impact of Personality on Business Decisions

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help business owners learn about the five-factor model of personality in order to assess the impact of their staff's and their own personality on their business decisions and operations. Participants: review the five factor model personality factors; determine their five factor model personality profile; assess the impact of their personality on their business decisions; analyze personality trait similarities or differences that contribute to misunderstandings on an individual and business team basis; and recommend how to improve communication in those situations.

We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This!

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to assist supervisors and managers in improving their staff meetings. It provides information and practice in how to: recognize the spoken and unspoken purposes for meetings, diagnose a meeting, and deal with people problems in meetings. It also uses interactive exercises to teach the leadership functions and techniques to produce meetings that are more productive. The workshop includes an opportunity to apply the techniques learned in the workshop in a simulated staff meeting, which includes planning, conducting, and assessing the meeting.

What It Means to Grow Your Business

This one-day skill-building participant-centered workshop is designed to help business owners recognize the pros and cons of growing their businesses, determine the type of growth that is important to them, and make plans to start working toward that. Participants: discuss what it means to grow their business; identify the pros and cons of different types of growth; assess the wisdom of growth in specific situations; define the desired size and scope of their business; recognize potential growth opportunities; and assess if potential growth opportunities are good for their business.