Training

Teaching has been a central focus of my career. It teaches me many things but it is patience and an acceptance of people for who they are that are the greatest gifts I have received from this journey.

Having begun in the high school system, I graduated to businesses and organizations in 1994. I have developed a series of workshops that I enjoy delivering because they speak to some of the ideals I've developed during my life: 

 Personality Dimensions

Being effective with others is enhanced when you are clear abour you - your preferences, needs & values. When you know, understand & appreciate you, you naturally extend the same courtesy to others. The result: enhanced relationships, more effective communication, easier and more effective working relationships, a more flowing relationship with your team, etc.

Personality Dimensions (PD) (Registered) is a personality assessment instrument providing an easy-to-use tool for analyzing & understanding ourselves and others. It sees the human personality as consisting of 4 styles identified with the colors orange, blue, green and gold. Each color represents a completely different set of human values, behaviors, strengths, needs & stressors. As individuals we learn that we favor 1 or 2 of these styles over the others. By understanding personality, we understand the innate value system that drives our behavior and motivates our thinking. We grow in respect for the fact that not all people value the same things and that this is OK.

This information can be applied to a number of different areas.

  1. Communication: When we communicate with people, what we value in communication, what we decide is 'effective' communication, how we communicate, what we value in a relationship - these all differ markedly between styles. We can learn to be more effective communicators when we understand personality and begin to adapt our behavior, our messages, our delivery to meet the needs of others. Personality also affects how we built rapport with people; knowing what they value allows us to create that 'unseen' connection that makes communication much easier and more flowing.
  2. Coaching/Managing People: Helping another to learn, grow or perform is enhanced when you understand personality. It helps you to motivate others in ways that are meaningful to them. It helps you select methods to teach them new skills so that it fits with how they learn the best. And as a Manager, it helps you to create a work environment that is motivating. It also helps you to understand their strengths and how they work so that they can perform 'well' within the team. Managers and Coaches become much more aware of the innate strengths & weaknesses of their people.
  3. Teambuilding: Teams can learn to value one another 'more' once they understand the differences that are natural and OK. The personality that they didn't understand now becomes more clearly understood. They learn why people operate the way they do and how to best work with them. They learn how to appreciate the differences found on their team and use them to build strength overall.
  4. Career Development: Your personality affects the kind of work that will suit you the best. Understanding you makes you aware of your natural strengths, the kind of work you prefer and the type of work environment that will allow you to flourish. It is with this information that you can begin making wise decisions regarding your career. Combined with an assessment of your interests & passions, it becomes an awesome tool for making really excellent career decisions.
  5. Train-the-trainer: If you desire to have this resource available within your organization, I am a certified Level II Trainer of PD licensed to train other people to deliver these workshops.

Personality Dimensions is a Registered product of Career/Life Skills Resources Inc., 116 Viceroy Road, Unit B1, Concord, ON L4K 2M2 www.clsr.ca. Only certified trainers are permitted to deliver these workshops. All materials are copyrighted by Career/Life Skills. 

Coaching

'Our chief want in life is someone who will make us do what we can' - Emerson

Coaching skills helps Managers empower their people to achieve the remarkable that they may not have believed possible. A Coach's greatest asset is their ability and willingness to listen, and their greatest strength, their ability and willingness to help people find and generate their own ideas and solutions.

First participants are taught how to facilitate Coaching discussions. The nub of facilitation is the ability to 'draw out of' people what they already know. It takes time and practice to master this skill but the journey is well worth taking. Most people approach Coaching as if they are the 'experts' who need to 'download' their truth and information into their Coachee. This is indeed a part of the Coaching function; however I challenge you that it's not the heart of it. Helping another to find their own answers is as critical a component of Coaching as the information that they are taught because it builds confidence and self-reliance.

Second, Coaches are teachers and as teachers we have an unspoken curriculum - teaching others so that they become independant of us. They need to trust themselves; they need to value themselves; they need to know how to find their own answers; and they benefit most from knowing that they are worthy and worthwhile. There is an art to this and in this workshop we learn how to do this.

Third, we learn to become active listeners. Participants are taught that listening is an action, not a non-action. And when you are listening actively you are gaining all sorts of insights that help you in your work with others. My success as a Coach depends on me doing this.

Effective Presentations

Your success as a presenter begins with the creation of your presentation. In this workshop participants learn how to build a presentation from the ground up. We look at the 3 stages of presentations - planning, preparation and performance. And we focus upon:

Participants practice their skills through their own mini-presentation at the end of the day.