An administrative assistant is a key contributor to coordination and productivity on a team.  You know this but others do not always get it.  In “Professional Productivity for Administrative Assistants,” you will learn how to work as a business partner with your supervisor and anyone who relies on your services.  The course will help you increase your credibility, productivity, and efficiency, and focus on getting through your workload. You will learn how to manage and lead interactions with others, negotiate appropriate work boundaries, prioritize, and deal with difficult people and situations.

The increasing demands of clients and time-pressed lawyers require an increased capacity to think critically, solve problems, manage stress and work with difficult people. In the “Dynamic Legal Assistant” you will develop skills in solving complex productivity and people problems in the challenging area of legal practice.

“Raising the Bar: Delivering Excellent Customer Service” will develop a deeper awareness of the need, value and  requirements for improved customer service. We will put the customer service skills and the overall impact to the business into the context of your company. You will identify your individual and department challenges, review customer service “Best Practices” and determine how to take action to improve individual customer relationships and service outcomes in your role. You will practice key skills and behaviours using sales and service scenarios and develop strategies to integrate these into your interactions with customers. 

As a leader and manager, you set the stage for enabling your staff to exceed expectations and WOW your customers.  In “Managing WOW Customer Service” you will learn how to hire the best people, develop and measure your service culture and create motivate high performance  service delivery.  You will leave the workshop with a specific plan on actions you can take to raise level of your service and WOW your customers. 

Clients and customers are real people. Some are comfortable and easy to deal with. Others are not. Selling to them is a challenge and pleasing them once you have sold your product or service can seem almost impossible. The key to mutually productive and profitable relationships with all your customers is the ability to adjust interaction and delivery style to match the customer needs and expectations during the selling and the delivery process. In “Meeting the Challenge: Managing the Difficult Client” you will learn how to diagnose delivery style expectations and differences and adjust your sales and delivery process to meet even difficult customer requirements. The final outcome is an understanding of what actions you need to take in your job or business to increase your ability to meet divergent customer requirements.

Today's workplace is filled with complexity. Problems are rarely clear-cut and simple. Critical thinking will enable you to develop the confidence and skills you need to solve complex problems.  You will improve your ability to make decisions in situations where the needs of a variety of interest groups and policy changes must be balanced with your personal experience and your personal and professional values.

The ability to deal effectively with differences is a key requirement in today’s organizations. The pace of change, the stress of balancing work and personal life, and the diversity of personalities all create situations that give rise to conflict.  In “Resolving Conflict,” you will develop increased awareness of the factors that affect conflict resolution. You will become more aware of your own personal style and how you can more effectively work with others whose style may be different from you own. You will learn how to apply communication skills in conflict situations, whether the conflict occurs in a one-on-one situation or in a group.

This workshop is designed to give you the knowledge and skills you need to lead in an environment of uncertainty and change. You will learn how to inspire and motivate today's diverse and challenging workforce. You will be able to achieve the results you need to stay ahead in a competitive market workplace. This workshop will provide you with practical skills and tools you can apply right away to make a difference in the performance of others

In “Coaching Fundamentals,” you will practice the skills needed to coach and develop employee performance. This includes how to set expectations, monitor performance and train employees in job-related skills. You will prepare and deliver a “mini” coaching session in a job-related skill.

Attraction and retention are key issues in all organizations in today’s overheated job market. Demonstrating a commitment to providing growth and challenge, especially to young workers is critical to retention. Mentoring is the key way to do this. It also enables the transference of important knowledge from experienced to inexperienced employees and ensures that long-term employees leave a legacy of skill with the organization when they leave.

The demands on each of us are increasing daily. We are asked to do more with less and deal with a wide array of increasingly demanding stakeholders. Paper work and reporting is increasing and adding to an already heavy load of supervision in a tight labour market with cost and safety conscious management. Has your management suffered because of work and information overload?  Have your workplace performance, relationships, and health suffered because of stress? “Increasing Personal Resilience” will help you get a handle on your own response to the challenges, identify the weakening patterns that keep you from achieving higher levels of personal satisfaction, and provide you with techniques to conquer them.

Your time is precious.  It is an invaluable personal and business asset and managing it well leads to greater productivity, increasing your sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction.  This workshop will teach you how to develop better habits of self-management so that you can get more out of the time you have and feel more in control.

• Learn how to identify your personal barriers to managing time
• Make the most of time management tools and methods
• Identify methods to improve your workflow and coordination of activities
• Break time wasting habits
• Apply simple strategies for taking stock of your time
• Get more out of the most important roles in your work and personal life
• Learn strategies to manage your workload more effectively and reduce stress 

In this valuable workshop you will develop strategies to help you manage challenging employees, co-workers, or clients with confidence. If difficult work relationships are causing you stress and disrupting your productivity, learn constructive strategies that solve rather than escalate problems.

• Recognize those with whom you will most likely clash
• Identify what makes people behave badly
• Recognize the classic profiles of difficult people
• Employ specific strategies to deal with different types of behaviours in the moment
• Learn effective prevention strategies
• Confidently get back to business and stop losing time

Hiring and Retaining Top Talent is key to personal and organizational success. You will learn how to employ strategies to attract, interview and hire top quality employees. You will learn how to identify the key results areas for your positions, the technical and behavioral competencies you need for success, and how to develop and ask behavior-based interview questions.

As older experienced workers retire, it is critical to develop and retain a high performance employees.   In retaining you will learn how to use research proven training and development strategies to retain and develop top quality employees that will deliver outstanding business results. You will also learn how to create an environment where people want to stay and develop a successful career and employee development strategies that challenge, motivate and increase retention of young and/or high performance employees.

Maximizing Employee Performance and Productivity is an ongoing supervisory challenge. In "this workshop you will learn how to set the foundation for excellent performance and how to maintain it on an ongoing basis. You will learn how to make plans that engage and motivate, how to work the plan and monitor progress, how to provide ongoing support and how to use performance reviews to motivate higher levels of performance using the power of rewards and recognition.

Managing Problem Performance is perhaps the most difficult challenge for any supervisor. You will learn how to identify, address, and discipline employees who display difficult behavior. You will also learn about the causes of difficult behavior, effective techniques to prevent difficult behavior in the workplace, and proper communication methods to build better relationships with difficult employees. The focus is on resolving conflict and you will learn strategies for giving corrective feedback  and how to approach discipline and dismissal in a professional, objective manner.

Your success as a supervisor or manager depends on your ability to get work done through other people.  In Managing People you will develop the skills you need to develop and motivate employee performance. You will learn how to delegate work in ways that develops the skills and motivation of your staff. You will learn how to develop positive work relationships using advanced communication skills, to plan and review employee performance and develop your ability to coach and train others.

Many people think that creativity is an inherent skill and you either have it or you don’t.  This is a myth.  Creativity and innovative thinking are skills to be learned.  In this workshop, you will practice a variety of creative thinking strategies.  You will learn techniques and practice thinking skills that increase your creativity and the quality of your thinking.

Change is no longer simple, predictable, planned and in line with the strategic plan. It is simultaneous and multi-layered. The ability to respond to the market and a myriad of external changes defines a successful company, work team and individual. In “Managing and Leading Change,” you will learn how to understand and adapt to change initiated by others, manage changing work, support others during change, and build personal resilience to change.

This course will help you deal effectively with the ever-increasing complexity of work. Using a range of thinking tools and practices, participants will gain an understanding of how to use systems thinking to analyze and deal with complex problems and opportunities. Applying an understanding of how to create system change, they will identify actions that they can take to positively affect the culture and deal with increasingly complex issues.

In “Building Productive Relationships” you will review and develop strategies for building productive relationships and networks with customers (internal and external), suppliers, peers and senior managers.

In “Developing High Performance Teams” you will develop key skills related to building a high performance team. This includes setting team norms, facilitating group problem solving, managing conflict, and developing team plans. Using the “Group Development Model” you will identify the specific needs of your team and make plans to take action.

This course will help you develop your ability to build rapport and to listen actively to others. You will expand your skill in using listening to build relationships, increase your influence and empower employees. You will focus on developing assertiveness skills that will help you take action on difficult issues with respect, flexibility and openness. You will consider your personal assumptions and judgments about others, about yourself and about your personal power and influence.

This course provides a systematic way of developing operating policies and procedures which support the intent of governance polices and how programs/services are designed, consistent with the requirements of relevant legislation and/or client requirements. It will provide you with practical processes, tools and techniques to help develop policies and procedures that are client-focused, ensure accountability, facilitate coordination within the company and with partners and are focused on achieving results.  You will be provided with a range of Operating Policy & Procedures development techniques and processes that can be adapted your specific needs.

This course examines Strategic and Operational Planning in the Public Sector from management and practitioner points of view. These models, while often adapted, do not fully capture the complexity nor the focus on public policy and service in public sector planning.  This course is designed to provide a toolkit of Strategic and Operational Planning approaches and processes that reflect the realities and requirements of the public sector. It includes templates that can be adapted for your use.

Losing one’s job can be devastating experience or it can be the turning point to a better job or career path. This course provides individuals the tools and supports to make their recent job loss a positive experience and helps them start on a job search and/or career path that is right for them and their unique circumstances and strengths.

Have you found yourself stressed and a ‘poor fit’ for your work, your team, your organization?  Have you felt like a square peg in a round hole or struggled to understand what makes others tick?  This may be because you lack understanding about your true self or about others.

The “Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator”© (MBTI), is the most widely researched, enduring, personality indicator instrument used throughout the world and across cultural groups.  This fifty year old instrument, with 2 million administrations annually, helps you as an individual or team member to identify and maximize your innate tendencies.  The MBTI© helps you to answer questions such as: How and where do I renew and direct my energy?  What information do I primarily pay attention to: day-to-day reality or future possibilities?  What guides my decision making?  Am I systematic and pre planning or spontaneous and open to change?  And, how does this impact my work and life choices?

Self understanding can help you to increase your effectiveness individually or within a team.  It will help you to align your choices with the ‘real you’ so that your strengths can shine, a very important key to your success.

People who are energetic and healthy are usually more productive and satisfied in their professional and personal lives.  Working shifts increases fatigue and puts you, the shift worker, at a higher risk for developing acute and chronic health problems, substance abuse, relationship problems, and isolation.  For your employer, these problems translate into increased medical costs and WCB premiums, reduced productivity, turnover, errors and accidents.

The “Shifting to Wellness©” program, offers opportunities for you to assess your current practices, choices and attitudes. You will learn practical health and lifestyle strategies that will motivate and help you to reduce your work-related fatigue.  This allows you to do your job more effectively, improve your health and enjoy your personal life as well. 

The Insights® model recognizes and celebrates the fact that each person in an organization is unique, with different styles, needs and expectations. In these differences are great strengths; using Insights Discovery helps us to recognize and make the very best of them.   The foundation of the workshop is the Insights Discovery® Personal Profile, a 20-page personal development tool. Feedback from clients confirm that Discovery is the most accurate and dynamic personal profile in the world, and provides the best possible assistance for individuals in gaining a detailed understanding of their working style, how this impacts their relationships with others in the business environment and how they might develop to improve their effectiveness both as a person and as a professional. 

In a lively and interactive manner, this workshop will increase your self awareness and your ability to relate to others. Team members will enhance their ability to work more effectively with each other. 

The rules of grammar can seem complex and indecipherable.  “The Grammar Game” is a one-day intensive refresher that will make it all seem simple, including a game show style interactive team competition that will have everyone laughing.

Being able to write effectively can make the difference between career and business success or failure. In this valuable workshop, you will learn how to write for your audience and how to plan and organize your technical documents to achieve the results you want.  You will also learn the principles of plain language and tone and how to revise and edit. The skills presented in the course will enable you to write with power and influence.

Doing more with less is a requirement in today’s organizations. Meeting this demand can take a toll on your personal health and happiness and actually reduce your productivity. 

In “Developing Personal Productivity, you will learn how to use your time and energy more effectively to achieve personal and organizational goals. You will apply effective practices of time and stress management to solve your time and stress challenges. 

Presentations done well enable you to achieve your goals and increase your personal credibility and influence. Giving presentations can be stressful – but  it is a skill anyone can develop.  In "Powerful Presentations" you will learn tips and techniques that will transform your ability to plan, deliver and achieve results when you give presentations. You will be able to make your preparations efficient, your organization effective, and your delivery dynamic.

Some people seem to have an edge on success.  They know what they want and hope to get it. In "Building Personal Power and Influence" you will learn the mental and physical behaviours of truly successful people. Using a personal assessment of your influence strategies your will learn how to increase your power and influence with others and achieve your personal goals or the business results required of you.

An effective safety program requires the active participation and commitment of each employee. It is more than rules and training. Behaviour Based Safety is a research proven method of not just reducing incidents but of changing an organization’s or workgroup’s approach to safety.  Behavioural science principles and information on the actions and reinforcement that precipitate accidents are used to change attitudes and behaviours.  It is a powerful tool in building a zero incident safety record. Learn how to apply BBS to improve the safety results in your safety program. 

An exceptional record in Health Safety and Environmental management does not happen magically. It takes the commitment skill of every employee. Leadership is key to motivating workers to not just comply with company and legal requirements but to be proactive in preventing problems.  In this workshop you will learn what motivates unsafe behaviour, what you and other leaders do that encourages unsafe behaviour and how to influence and motivate employees to take responsibility for being proactive in preventing incidents. You will learn how to use key of leadership and Behaviour Based Safety tools  to change your team and company safety culture.

Effective project management enables exceptional project results. In "On Time, On Budget: Delivering Project Results" you will learn how to apply project management best practices. You will learn how to develop a project charter, monitor and measure project work and results, recognize and deal with the organizational dynamics surrounding projects, and build commitment for project results.

A meeting is a public forum for your leadership effectiveness. In "Masterful Meetings you will learn how to: 1. Develop and use an agenda to lead discussion of the meeting's key objectives. 2. Recognize the politics and dynamics of meetings with subordinates, peers or superiors 3. Manage a variety of challenging meeting behaviours and 4. Encourage participation and develop ownership of meeting decisions.