Services

Criticism Coaching (Presentation Coaching)

Individual

Do you have employees that are exceptionally talented who just can’t seem to communicate their ideas effectively? Working with a certified criticism coach, your employee experts will receive the verbal abuse they deserve for not polishing their presentation skills years ago. Our coaches will provide them with incisive commentary designed to highlight their inadequacies to make them feel uncomfortable which in turn, will make them care about improving. We work with each employee until we know they have unleashed their personal communication potential.

Team

The adage you’re only as strong as the weakest link is really unfair when you have a team presenting a proposal to win a job or get funding. Our certified criticism coaches will identify the weak links and work them over until they can compete with the rest of the team.  No team should be dragged down because one person is afraid to speak or gets nervous when looking at an audience. We have methods to reduce anxiety quickly and effectively (without a prescription) which gives the team a fighting chance to achieve their goals.

Bottom Line: We do not sugarcoat or provide feedback sandwiches - positive, negative, positive. We know the professionals we work with want to get the feedback they need so they can continue to excel.

Ironic Training (Workshop Facilitation)

Our team utilizes a methodology of Demotivation that is memorable and impactful. So often it is easier to see the negative than the positive.  Our team takes advantage of this perception bias by focusing on all the ways you can make things worse.  Topics include:

Radical Demotivation (Managers and above)

This management training program teaches leaders how to create a culture of demotivation and elucidates the underlying benefits of demotivation that so many are afraid to face. You will learn how to recognize the nine signs of employee demotivation and the benefit of each. Through intensive coaching and practice you will leave with the confidence to manage like never before.

Winning in Conflict

Why are there be so many books about how to effectively handle conflict and so few that show you the steps to win? Let’s face it, when emotions are high and the stakes are high, we want what we want.  In this workshop, you will learn how to identify signs in conflict that will give you an edge so you can employ tactics to get what you want. It may require that you discuss feelings or even listen sometimes, but ultimately this will work to your advantage.  

The Myth of High Performing Teams

Jeffrey Polzer, a professor at Harvard University stated that "lots of teams are less than the sum of their parts" (2013) which is a refreshing statement given all the hype surrounding the benefits of teams. This workshop breaks down the myth of producing high performance and sheds light on the reality of mediocrity inherent in most teams. Creating false hopes of high performance that is never realized is disappointing for everyone involved. 

Lexically Illiterate

Are you tired of writing that is filled with misspellings and incorrect use of homophones? Do you ever shake your head in disbelief in the lack of professionalism and clarity in employee writing? If yes, then this workshop is a must. We will cover the most common mishaps that occur in business writing and spend time showing you how to strategically confuse your audience with poor sentence structure, no organization, and using words that can only be found by right clicking and using the synonym finder.

Presentation Skills that Bore and Confuse Audiences

Too many employees are trying to impress audiences today with SmartArt graphics and Prezi. Let's shut that down. It's time to get back to the popular death by bullet point format. We will show you how to design and deliver a presentation that will frustrate your audiences.  On the plus side, it will be memorable. If you want a show, bring a professional speaker, but if you what the expert information from your top employee, pay attention because what she is saying is important! It is often cited that 93% of the meaning of what is being said is interpreted through nonverbal communication - that's a lie! Even Albert Mehrabian, the researcher behind the famous 1972 study agrees.

Bottom Line: We don't sell you a feel good workshop.  We provide you the reality of what happens when communication fails and then we show you, step by step, how to mitigate poor outcomes.