No two organizations are exactly the same...
and my presentation style reflects this. The list of topics listed below are fully customizable to the audience size and the needs and culture of the organization.
To keep up with the needs of our clients we are always developing new topics. If what you’re looking for isn’t here, contact us, we will let you know if there is something new that hasn’t been posted yet, or maybe we can point you to another speaker who has what you need.
How can we help you?
Presentation Topics
Have You Stretched Today?
With our focus on health and wellness today, we spend a lot of our resources discovering and engaging in ways to move and stretch our bodies. It’s easy to forget that there needs to be a balance, and that it is just as important to stretch our minds.
What do we need to stretch our minds? Learn the process of building your communication skills, and your leadership style in order to see SHIFT happen. We can’t move forward with success without intention, which is the compass we need for success. Come to learn how to be open to something different and create a new vision of how things can be done.
Who does this apply to? Pretty much everyone. Think about today’s top leaders and how they are stretching their minds, taking risks, and thinking outside of the box to envision new and better ways to accomplish their goals and achieve success. During this talk you will learn how to stretch YOUR mind, and the positive effects it will have on your communication and leadership skills both personally and professionally.
​
Objectives:
-
Understand the impact of open communication and its effect on your leadership style
-
Understand why stretching is important
-
Learn to set your intentions
-
Learn to apply the STRETCH model to any personal or professional Stretch Goal
​
Strategic Thinking
During this session attendees will practice strategic thinking.
We answer the questions:
-
What is strategic thinking?
-
What are the steps to thinking strategically?
-
How can thinking strategically increase our chances of achieving our objectives?
Attendees will walk away from this session:
-
Identifying the key components of strategic thinking
-
Understanding the steps to being strategic
-
Using strategic thinking in our approach to conversations with decision makers.
Effective Communication
Power in the Language
How easily do team members connect with each other? People often find it difficult to listen with purpose when others are speaking. This presentation teaches participants how to better connect with others through the use of thoughtful language.
When we communicate with others we need to be mindful of the words we choose to use as well as the delivery and tone. We are in a time where virtual presentations, email, social media, texts etc are increasingly dominant methods of communication. So, how do we adjust to that? How do we make an impact and connect with others so that they want to listen to us despite life’s multiple distractions? This discussion shows you how.
​
Objectives:
-
Learn how to use the components of Emotional Intelligence
-
Identify your people skills and the source to your connection conundrum
-
Learn how to build powerful connections
​
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a key component to being successful in business. It helps you to be a better communicator, collaborator and leader.
In this program, you will learn the four key components of Emotional Intelligence: Self Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management. You will also learn how to assess your EI, improve it and utilize it to be more successful.
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
Identify your level of Emotional Intelligence
-
Learn how to actively and deliberately use your EI to improve your communication skills
-
Learn how to use EI to manage work relationships
Leading Without Authority
This interactive presentation walks through ways attendees can lead without authority. In both our personal and professional lives there are times when we are called on to lead teams and accomplish tasks without having the “authority” to enforce consequences for poor performance. How do you lead others without official authority? There is another way. Leading with Influence easily replaces leading with “authority” as the better way to guide a team to accomplish goals.
During this session, we discuss what it means to Lead with Influence, how one garners influence, maintains it and uses it without abusing it.
Attendees will walk away from this session with:
-
Tips for increasing their influence
-
The 5 questions leaders ask that help them maintain their influence
-
Techniques to get to know people and build trust
Active Listening
Listen to Your Senses
How well do you communicate with others? How well do you listen? Do you know that listening skills have a major impact on job performance, as well as the quality of your relationships with others? To be an active listener, individuals need to use all 5 senses. This presentation will allow participants to learn just how to do this.
Research suggests that we remember between 25 and 50 percent of what we hear. So, does that mean when we are speaking to our colleagues and customers that they are only listening to less than half of what we have to say?! That’s a powerful awareness. How can we shift that and speak with our audiences and teams and not to or at them? What will inspire them to learn to listen to the words that we speak?
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
How your listening skills can impact your job performance
-
How becoming a better listener can improve productivity, the ability to influence, persuade and negotiate.
-
How becoming a better listener will help to avoid conflict and misunderstandings.
Step Into Your Power
Discover, connect, show up. How hard can it be, right? Sometimes it just feels impossible. When is the last time you stepped into your office and did what you were good at? Shared your voice regarding the outcome of a major project? Shared your feedback or recommendations with your manager? The power is in your voice. The power is in you.
People who have stepped into their power are more likely to see increased productivity. They are more inclined to confidently share their ideas and unique perspectives, contributing to team unity and new innovations.
By the end of this workshop attendees will be increasingly aware of their voice, step into action and experience the benefits of being their best selves.
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
How to recognize and develop your sense of power in the workplace?
-
Discover how to know ‘when’ to step into your voice (power) with your colleagues and management.
-
Learn what the Be-Do-Have-Give model can do for you and how you can utilize your tools to develop and implement your personal power, your confidence.
-
Understand the connection between stepping into your power and improved productivity
EI and DEIB
(Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging)
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging are key areas of focus for top-performing companies. DEIB fosters innovations, process improvement, and employee loyalty. This is an area that companies must consistently strive to learn, develop and implement best practices, to best serve their company's goals and meet the needs of their workforce.
At the core of DEIB is EI (Emotional Intelligence). Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management, the 4 key components of EI are the same abilities that allow us to understand our own biases, both implicit and explicit. They give us the ability to live up to our own standards of behavior while understanding the different experiences and perspectives of others and taking these into account to effectively collaborate, communicate and build relationships.
In this program participants will:
-
Gain insight into the 4 components of Emotional Intelligence
-
Learn how Implicit Bias and Microaggressions can be managed through Emotional Intelligence.
-
Discover how to use EI to foster a DEIB environment
-
Take accountability for turning awareness into action
Finding Your Purpose
Organizational Culture and High Performance:
Connecting With Your Purpose as a Team
Why are we doing what we’re doing? And why are we doing it this way? Variations of these questions are frequently asked by employees (most often amongst themselves). The fact that these are such oft asked questions, shows that:
-
There is a strong need to have an understanding of the motivations of one’s organization
-
Most organizations do a terrible job of conveying their intent, motivation and purpose to their employees
The desire to know why an organization is doing what it’s doing isn’t just idle curiosity, it is directly tied to a person’s core needs. Most people want to know that their work has meaning. That the actions they are being asked to take have a purpose and contribute in some way to the greater whole. When people understand the deeper purpose behind their work, they are likely to be more satisfied, more invested and more productive.
This presentation aids teams and managers in:
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
Identifying how to determine your team’s purpose.
-
Ensuring that the purpose of the individual and the team are in alignment with the overall purpose/goals of the organization
-
Understanding how defining a team’s purpose helps to deliver results
Owning Your Story
Be. Do. Have. Give
Often we find ourselves in a cycle of negativity. Rehashing with friends, loved ones and sometimes co-workers the trials and hardships that we face on what can seem to be a daily basis. Flat tires, delayed projects, difficult clients, raising teenagers. No matter who we are or what stage we’re in, life is constantly throwing challenges at us. What we can sometimes forget is that we own our own narrative. Our life’s story is ours to own, direct and share. How we narrate our story affects us, the people around us and the very space in which we reside.
In this session, you will learn that by owning your story, you have the opportunity to shift your perspective and take advantage of the opportunities that come along with the challenges you face. You will learn techniques you can use every day to gain something valuable from your experiences and even use what you’ve learned to help support and guide others.
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
Learn to implement the Be-Do-Have-Give model
-
Learn techniques to shift your narrative to one that benefits you and those around you
-
Learn to see your experiences from different perspectives
Smarter Together
How Emotional Intelligence Fosters Diverse Workplaces
Think about the people you work with for a minute. Is everyone more or less the same? Does everyone have similar backgrounds, strengths and weakness? The answer is likely a resounding “no.” Our identities are comprised of innumerable experiences, informed by complex elements like race, gender and spirituality which shape the experiences we bring to our professional lives, impact the jobs we take and how and why we perform. Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to how well we handle ourselves and our various relationships in an age where we are more connected than ever before with people with whom we might not share histories or experiences. While the term EI has been around for a few decades, it has become increasingly important for workplace success as we continue to see the workforce diversify. Studies have shown that the most high performing organizations are those that encourage emotionally intelligent interactions and an interplay of perspectives (Harvard Business Review).
With the rate of change and complexity in today’s organizations, EI is evidently more important than ever. With a wealth of experience in professional development, communications, and consulting, Sonal will lead you in identifying your level of EI and start a conversation about building human connections through improved self-awareness.
Key takeaways from this talk:
-
Identify your level of Emotional Intelligence
-
Develop areas of communication that can help foster emotionally intelligent conversations
-
Learn to apply the Be-Do-Have-Give model
Sonal’s goal is to provide tools and resources to help work through the Be-Do-Have-Give model of EI to identify “how we show up” (Be), manage our strength and weaknesses (Do), reap the benefits through social awareness and relationship management (Have) and be present enough to do for others (Give).
Leading from Where You Are (Keynote)
Each of us have our areas of strength, and whether we hold the title of "leader" or not we still retain the ability to live our lives, lead by example and move ourselves forward personally and professionally. Frequently what holds us back is fear, a poor understanding of our own motivations and a failure to understand (and own) our strengths and weaknesses.
​
In this presentation we:
-
Take a look at both what motivates you to push through obstacles and what sometimes keeps you from taking initiative and moving forward
-
Identify the most common reason people resist change and how to overcome them
-
Learn how to build our adaptability muscle, so that we get increasingly better at figuring things out and circumventing obstacles
Participants are introduced to skills and tools that make them more self-aware and able to accept and navigate changing responsibilities, team structures and professional environments.
Lead with Executive Presence
How we show up impacts how others see and respond to us, more importantly, it impacts how we see and respond to ourselves. As leaders we have a responsibility to understand and manage what we put out to others. Not to appear perfect, but to be authentic. To have a solid understanding, and ownership, of our strengths and weaknesses and to use that understanding to lead effectively.
In Lead with Executive Presence attendees will:
-
Gain an understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and leadership style
-
Identify areas of growth and next steps to develop in those areas
-
Learn how to use the STRETCH process to keep improving