WORKSHOPS
So many choices…
What’s on the menu?
Hiring us is a little like asking a waiter for menu recommendations - and our menu is packed with rewarding offerings.
Whether you’re looking for ways to improve your leadership acumen, facilitate effective meetings, help your team develop a more positive culture, or effectively manage change, we’ve got you covered. (Kind of like a waitperson trying to help you figure out the best IPA to pair with your gourmet grilled cheese.)
Our workshops are interactive, engaging and extremely practical. Your people will walk away with dozens of sustainable, ready-to-use skills customized for your organization's specific needs, time frames, and budget. Combined, they are the perfect ingredients to help make your workplace rock.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for below, just ask: our ‘chefs’ are always ready to whip up something special.
Workshop Menu
Managing with Mind and Heart
A 6-PART MANAGEMENT SKILLS WORKSHOP SERIES
For over two decades our signature workshop series, Managing with Mind and Heart, and the sustainability efforts both before and after, have been instrumental in helping leadership teams and organizations achieve sustained improvement through the consistent practice of best-practice management skills. These six days are interactive, practical, fun, and sustainable.
DAY 1: THE MANAGER’S MINDSET & EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Here we explore how managers can effectively create healthy workplaces (whether on-site, remote, or hybrid) by focusing on workplace morale, emotional IQ, and psychological safety. We also introduce the Top 15 Management Skills for building healthy, highly engaged organizations and begin the journey of developing and practicing a set of specific adaptive skills, such as the ability to receive feedback non-defensively and listen so others feel heard.
Skills and Learnings:
Discover the importance of employee morale (it isn't "touchy-feely!") and how to get more of it
Discuss personal growth for managers and why it matters so much
Learn crucial adaptive skills (a.k.a. emotional IQ skills) for managers
Practice receiving feedback without showing defensiveness
Master the art of listening so that others truly feel heard
Explore ways to create and maintain psychological safety at work
Examine the "power differential" and learn how to use it for good and not evil
Preview the Top 15 Management Skills for building healthy organizations
DAY 2: WORKPLACE CULTURE: LAYING THE FOUNDATION
In this workshop, we’ll continue our journey through the Top 15 Management Skills and explore the challenge and the privilege of building and maintaining a professional and positive workplace culture. From dealing with destructive gossip and negativity to the art of effectively dealing with organizational issues and employee concerns, this workshop provides leaders with the skills necessary for fostering employee buy-in and an effective and enjoyable workplace environment.
Skills and Learnings:
Learn how to truly connect with and engage employees through regularly scheduled one-on-one conversations
Explore ways to combat gossip and negativity in the workplace
Dig into “systems thinking,” and learn the Waterline Model, a practical tool for understanding organizational issues
Learn and practice five strategies for effectively responding to employee concerns
Discuss the important “dance” between HR and managers
Find out what the “half-open-door policy” is and why it matters
Discuss ways to advocate for employees – and how not to over-do it
DAY 3: UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
This fun and interactive workshop explores the four spectrums of human behavior and reveals how leaders can use Behavior Styles Theory, combined with a growth mindset, to increase their own self-awareness, build greater trust and respect in their work group, and improve their effectiveness as leaders.
Skills and Learnings:
Discover and gain an appreciation for your own behavior style (i.e., why you're so awesome)
Understand your impact on others as a manager and/or co-worker (i.e., when others don't recognize your awesomeness)
Learn the importance of adjusting your style to better meet the needs of others
Identify different behavior styles among employees
Recognize signs of stress and burnout by noticing an individual's behavior style cues
Use Behavior Styles theory to enhance meetings, decision-making, and communication
Choose three custom-fit growth opportunities you can begin practicing right away
DAY 4: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Managers provide feedback in hopes of getting employees to do more of what's working and less of what's not. But let's be honest: that doesn't always happen. Efforts to provide feedback, even if well-intentioned, can easily backfire and cause hurt, confusion, and apathy among employees. This workshop equips managers with techniques that maximize the effectiveness of workplace feedback and coaching.
Skills and Learnings:
Explore the ways accountability builds and maintains morale
Discuss the manager's role as mentor and coach
Practice the art of giving feedback in a way that communicates clearly and keeps you connected relationally
Learn how to have that second and third conversation, when the first one doesn’t do the trick
Master the art of building relationship while giving challenging feedback
Learn the ten tools for coaching employees toward improved outcomes
Practice performance management skills for coaching employees toward success
DAY 5: WORKPLACE CULTURE: BUILDING FOR SUCCESS
In this workshop, we will start out the day by digging into some important information about the brain, human needs, and the psychology of workplace culture in our continuing journey toward management excellence. We’ll learn why we need to turn our 15 management skills up to 11 in a hybrid work environment and discuss strategies for achieving fairness, autonomy, employee involvement, reliability, and connection.
Skills and Learnings:
Learn the SCARF model as a way to increase psychological safety and achieve employee engagement
Navigate the challenges of managing in a hybrid work environment
Explore ways to build and maintain a fair and equitable workplace
Discover new ways to provide autonomy to your employees
Practice using “by-whens” as a way of building trust through reliability
Learn the six decision-making styles that increase employee buy-in and ownership
Find out what SPA is and why you really need more of it
Explore the positive power of providing employees with recognition and appreciation
DAY 6: COMMUNICATION & SUSTAINING CHANGE
In this final workshop, we will tackle the all-important management skill of effective communication in terms of information distribution, the use (and not over-use) of email, how to become an “information curator” for your team, how to make it more likely that everyone gets pertinent information (and feels acceptable for that information), and how to achieve meetings that are both effective and enjoyable.
Finally, we’ll turn our attention to the vital topic of sustainability and how to avoid the “flavor-of-the-year syndrome” in terms of applying The Top 15 Management Skills to your workplace. Our goal is to work with you to help ensure that you and your fellow management team members implement and sustain the skills from this workshop in order to achieve long-term success.
Skills and Learnings:
Work on improving your organization’s communication and information distribution practices
Create a new set of norms for email use
Learn how to plan and prepare meetings that really work
Become a facilitation rock star for running enjoyable and effective meetings
Learn to effectively sponsor change and create long-term commitment
Plan strategies for sustaining the leadership skills learned throughout this workshop, thereby creating long-term success
Managing With Mind and Heart: Phase 2
SUSTAINING CHANGE
80% of Nash clients who engage in the Managing with Mind & Heart series follow up 12-24 months later with our Phase 2 workshop as a means of sustaining change and avoiding the “flavor of the year” syndrome. This series is custom-fit to each organization to ensure sustainability where it’s needed most.
Topics & Skill-Building:
Creatively review and dive deeper into the most important concepts from the first series to make sure they “stick”
Add some new best practice management skills, based on your organization’s needs and goals
Check in to see what’s working and what needs support or fine-tuning
Review and reimagine sustainability, custom-fit to your organization
Common Commitments:
A Positive & Professional Workplace Culture
GET EVERYONE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION ON THE SAME PAGE
Geared toward leadership teams or front-line employees - or both, the Positive Workplace Culture series is about getting everyone in your organization on the same page around best practice skills that promote a culture of high morale, collaboration, accountability and engagement. With a range of topics to choose from, your team members will leave this workshop with practical skills that promote a healthy, effective, authentic, respectful workplace and high functioning teams.
While the series is built to be three parts, we will work with you to customize modules that will be most helpful to your organization.
PART 1: THE TEAM MINDSET
VOLUNTEERING YOUR HEART AND YOUR BRAIN
You can’t pay employees to contribute to a positive workplace culture—each person ultimately makes that choice for themselves. This workshop helps team members see their part in creating an excellent workplace and taps into their personal “why” in bringing their best self to work every day.
Topics and Skill-Building:
Workplace morale – what it is, why it matters, and your part in creating it
Adaptive skills and emotional IQ – building trust and respect
Learn to listen so others feel heard
Giving and receiving feedback with clarity and non-defensiveness
Discover the five healthy ways to deal with workplace triangulation and negativity
PART 2: UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
AND THE ART OF PERSONAL GROWTH
This fun, interactive workshop explores the four spectrums of human behavior for the purpose of increasing trust, respect, and morale in the workplace...as well as improving our own effectiveness as team members.
Topics and Skill-Building:
Discover and gain an appreciation for your own behavior style (why you're so awesome)
Understand your impact on others (when others don't recognize your awesomeness)
Learn the importance of adjusting your style to better meet the needs of others
Use Behavior Styles theory to enhance meetings, decision-making, and communication
PART 3: COMMON COMMITMENTS
BECOMING A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TEAM
Highly engaged teams can be the difference between a thriving organization and one that's stuck in less effective methods and mindsets. An important key to engagement and effectiveness is a positive team environment where deep trust and mutual respect are part of the culture's DNA.
One of our favorite strategies for building a healthy team is our Common Commitments exercise. This process results in a set of guidelines that support the practices of accountability, decision-making, teamwork, respect, trust, attention to results, and more.
The focus and content will vary depending on the needs of the group, but typical topics include:
Team and trust building (Note: This is not a “touchy-feely” process involving trust falls or hugging. It’s about real commitments to and training in authenticity and trust)
Brainstorming the ingredients of highly effective teams - the behaviors we want to see as part of our team and those we don’t
Work on “disagreement styles” and training in how to discuss, debate, compromise, and decide
A deeper dive into Adaptive Skills and emotional IQ, focusing on the ways we “show up” and our impact on others
Theory and practice in how to hold an excellent team meeting, including decision-making, supporting decisions after the fact, facilitation, authenticity, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” trust, conflict, and much more
Discussion of “group elasticity" (The ability to let go, forgive, and move forward)
Commitments around avoiding triangulation and negativity in the workplace, and the five healthier ways to deal with workplace angst.
This training module culminates in a group consensus on a shared set of commitments and a discussion about sustainability to help avoid the flavor-of-the-year syndrome.
Effective (and Enjoyable) Meetings
EFFECTIVE, PRODUCTIVE (AND EVEN ENJOYABLE) MEETINGS
“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason the human race has not achieved and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
-humorist, Dave Barry
Effective meetings are vital for a healthy and thriving organization, and believe it or not, it is possible to run GREAT (and enjoyable) meetings!
Meetings are a microcosm of your organizational culture. And this is good news, because by improving meetings you can in many ways reengineer your organization’s culture. When you make sustainable improvements in how meetings are run (including in areas such as decision-making practices, authenticity, power differentials, creativity, psychological safety, trust, reliability, accountability and more), you actually improve your overall organizational culture.
One of the keys, of course, to great meetings is the skill level of the people in your organization who facilitate meetings. Facilitating a meeting well is an art. You need to be able to air traffic control the meeting, be engaging, manage people’s airtime, follow the agenda, ensure effective decision-making, and much more.
In this workshop, attendees will learn how to:
Plan and prepare for excellent meetings
facilitate artfully and effectively
Maintain engagement, participation, and positive energy
build in commitment and accountability
use a tried-and-true decision-making model for meetings
Create psychological safety so that meetings are creative, productive and (dare we say) fun
And let’s not forget remote and hybrid meetings! You will learn how to hold effective virtual meetings, but how to make them downright enjoyable for everyone involved.
Change Management
CHANGE IS HARD
Studies have indicated that as much as 85% of major change efforts in the workplace fail. One of the main reasons for this is that leaders often focus solely on communicating the change and neglect the art of ensuring that the people impacted by the change are on board, actively engaged, and empowered.
Our change management philosophy is that leaders must plan well, communicate generously, tend to the emotions and needs of those they are asking to change, understand the change from others’ perspectives, and involve the people being asked to change as much as possible.
To put it simply, change must be managed with mind and heart.
In this workshop, we will help leadership teams learn to manage change in a way that enhances collaboration, builds resilience, boosts morale, fosters participation, and creates deep levels of trust and respect throughout the organization.
Additionally, this workshop often includes creating a real-time change management plan based on an actual organization-specific need, complete with action items, checkpoints, and clearly defined roles.
Nash Consulting’s approach to change management is systemic, actionable, skill-based, and relationship-focused. It can be tailored for senior leadership teams, change teams, or frontline managers.
Some of the topics explored in Nash Consulting’s change management workshops include:
Recognizing resistance and emotions. It’s human nature to resist change. So how do we help people accept and invest in a change effort?
Practicing empathy. Effective change doesn’t happen without empathy at every stage.
Providing lead time. It’s critical to give others and yourselves enough runway to process, understand and effectively communicate the change.
Involving others. Change is easier to accept when it happens with you rather than to you. How, when, and from whom should we ask for feedback and input about the change?
Effectively communicating change. Communicating change with clarity, transparency, and tact is an art. How can we communicate in a way that speaks to people’s hearts and minds?
Providing skills and support. Helping people develop the skills and providing them the support needed to make and sustain a change is foundational to any change effort.
Sponsoring change. One of the main reasons change initiatives fail is a lack of proper sponsorship. What is the role of the sponsors, what skills must they develop, and how can they effectively support the change in a way that enhances morale and investment?
Emotional IQ, Empathy and Adaptive Skills
LEARN AND IMPROVE YOUR EMOTIONAL IQ
You’ve heard it before: Emotional IQ, as compared to intellect (IQ), is the key to our holistic success in life. In fact, according to experts, the balance between EQ and IQ in terms of which contributes more fully to our success and well-being in life is not even close – it’s a 70/30 ratio in favor of EQ. And that’s actually great news, because guess which one you can actually do something about?
Yup! While adaptive skills are those skills you brought with you from childhood and that make or break your success in almost every part of your life, the good news is we can learn and improve in these important life behaviors and attitudes! We’re talking about skills such as the ability to receive feedback without punishing the other person with defensiveness, listening so others feel heard, the art of giving feedback truthfully yet respectfully, showing empathy, dealing with your own stress without having it leak out on everyone around you, and so many more. In this workshop we’ll learn the mechanics behind improving our adaptive skills/emotional IQ, we’ll work on some specific skills (including empathy*), we’ll practice in real time, and we’ll make commitments to build sustainability.
*Speaking of empathy: so much magic happens when teams (and leaders!) develop a shared understanding and appreciation for empathy in the workplace and learn practical empathy skills for their colleagues, their employees, their customers - and themselves (which, by the way, is called “self-compassion”).
Psychological Safety
and the Science of Trust
BUILD AND MAINTAIN A SAFE WORKPLACE CULTURE
How do you create a workplace culture characterized by authenticity and psychological safety? Is it possible to build and maintain a culture where feedback is given gracefully and truthfully and received non-defensively, where deep respect is the norm, and where creativity, open discussion (including disagreements!) and collaboration are deeply embedded in the culture?
Here we’ll explore the building blocks of psychological safety, including feedback skills, trust, how to manage the power differential, the ins and outs of healthy conflict, the brain science behind why and how we work so hard to keep ourselves “safe*” in social/work settings and more. This workshop focuses on the practical expression of psychological safety in the workplace, complete with plenty of personal insights, sustainable personal action plans, and group commitments.
What tends to get in the way of creativity, collaboration, and engagement? Science tells us that the brain interprets everything as either a threat or a reward. As part of this workshop, we’ll dig into the SCARF model, which describes five domains of social experience (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness) that activate a threat or reward experience and learn how leaders and team members can use the model as a roadmap to foster a proactive, collaborative, engaged workforce.
Conflict Resolution
HELPING OTHERS WORK IT OUT
If successful teamwork involves bringing people together to work toward a common goal, then the ability to effectively manage and resolve conflict is crucial for success. People naturally show up in the workplace with different and often competing needs, perspectives, and goals. A successful team will have among its members people who are skilled at helping others work through the inevitable conflicts that can arise.
This workshop will equip participants in:
Understanding the dynamics of conflict, including a deep dive into the five “conflict styles” with which people approach disagreements and interpersonal challenges
Curiosity-based interview skills, as a way of digging into the moving parts of any specific teammate conflict situation
Third party conflict resolution skills designed to guide conflicting team members from a set of destructive mindsets and behaviors to ones that are constructive, restorative, and enduring.
Effectively utilizing the T.H.RE.A.D. model (Talk, Hear, Relate, Admit, Decide) to help conflicting teammates successfully communicate, listen, empathize, own their own part in conflict, and collaboratively create action plans designed to sustain a healthy working relationship.
Coping With
Uncertainty
COPING WITH UNCERTAINTY: THE PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE PLUS TOOLS & RESOURCES
A Webinar Featuring Dr. Anna Gibson, Licensed Psychologist and Consultant
Whether it’s an epidemic or your company is making sweeping changes, we all navigate disruptions to our personal and professional lives, leaving us in need of coping tools and strategies. In this important webinar, your team will gain some tools and strategies to help recognize and navigate the body’s natural stress response, identify and manage difficult emotions, and much more, including further resources to aid in personal growth. This is a 1.5-2 hour webinar.
Behavior Styles: Understanding People
UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
This fun and interactive workshop explores the four spectrums of human behavior and reveals how leaders can use Behavior Styles Theory, combined with a growth mindset, to increase their own self-awareness, build greater trust and respect in their workgroup, and improve their effectiveness as leaders.
Skills and Learnings:
Discover and gain an appreciation for your own behavior style (i.e., why you're so awesome)
Understand your impact on others as a manager and/or co-worker (i.e., when others don't recognize your awesomeness)
Learn the importance of adjusting your style to better meet the needs of others
Identify different behavior styles among employees
Recognize signs of stress and burnout by noticing an individual's behavior style cues
Use Behavior Styles theory to enhance meetings, decision-making, and communication
Choose three custom-fit growth opportunities you can begin practicing right away
Performance Management made easy(er)
WORKPLACE FEEDBACK AND COACHING
Managers provide feedback in hopes of getting employees to do more of what's working and less of what's not. But let's be honest: that doesn't always happen. Efforts to provide feedback, even if well-intentioned, can easily backfire and cause hurt, confusion, and apathy among employees. This workshop equips managers with techniques that maximize the effectiveness of workplace feedback and coaching.
Skills and Learnings:
Explore the ways accountability builds and maintains morale
Discuss the manager's role as mentor and coach
Practice the art of giving feedback in a way that communicates clearly and keeps you connected relationally
Learn how to have that second and third conversation, when the first one doesn’t do the trick
Master the art of building relationship while giving challenging feedback
Learn the ten tools for coaching employees toward improved outcomes
Practice performance management skills for coaching employees toward success
Designing Performance Reviews
CREATE A CUSTOMIZED REVIEW PROCESS
Let us help your team create a customized, highly effective performance review process that aligns employee behaviors and competencies with your organization’s values, goals and expectations. In our hands-on workshops, we will work together to identify your organization’s most highly valued behaviors and skills, then translate them into a performance management process that actually does what performance reviews are intended to do: Improve performance, morale and overall organizational success.
In this workshop we will:
Take a systems approach to goal setting by aligning performance goals with your organization’s mission, values and culture
Reverse-engineer your performance goals by identifying the behaviors and competencies that matter most
Ensure that your people-leader evaluation processes include the stuff that matters: Leadership and management skills
Learn to measure progress through performance indicators, effective reviews, check-ins and effective accountability practices
Create a customized review process that includes the right content, cadence, timeline, and communication strategy for your organization
[Can be combined with the “Delivering Performance Reviews” workshop]
Delivering Performance Reviews
MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES TOWARD EXCELLENCE
As leaders, we give feedback to employees in hopes of creating commitments to doing more of what's working well and less of what's not, as well as creating a sense of buy-in, understanding, and dedication. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon in organizations to see efforts at providing feedback backfire and create hurt, confusion, and apathy. In this workshop, you will learn to maximize the effectiveness of evaluations and learn best-practice skills for motivating employees toward excellence.
In this workshop we will explore:
The heart of effective performance reviews: Morale, trust, and respect in the workplace
Proactive relationship building: Connecting with employees in regular one-on-one meetings
Beginning with the end in mind: Identifying and communicating the all-important “net message”
How to give feedback while reducing defensiveness - at the same time
What not to bring up: How and why to filter out certain performance-related feedback
Strategies for effectively dealing with employee resistance
Action plans: Goal setting, commitment, coaching and accountability
[Can be combined with the “Designing Performance Reviews” workshop]
Interdepartmental Collaboration
LINKING SILOS: IMPROVE COOPERATION & COLLABORATION
Organizational success and positive workplace culture depend on the ability of managers and departments to collaborate, communicate, and have each other’s backs. This workshop leads participants through the development of action plans to improve cooperation and collaboration between departments and introduces strategies to ensure that our employees are working collaboratively with other departments within the organization.
Drop us a line.
(509) 630-0841
Interested in inviting us in to serve up one or more of these workshops…or maybe you’d like help with something not listed on our menu? Send us a message and one of our team members will be in touch with you very soon.