Speaking and TrainingsSeminars and Workshops
Every OnCourse seminar and workshop is tailored to the demographics of the audience. Jim works closely with the event organizers to understand their goals for the event and how the seminar or workshop can best complement those goals.
Duration: Half-Day or Full-Day
Abstract :
This customized training will enhance your skills in building and sustaining authenticity within your work teams.
The workshop draws on Jim’s extensive work with CEOs and their executive teams. The workshop is 40% teaching and 60% experiential. You’ll have the opportunity to practice on “live” issues in your business or personal life.
The workshop will cover the following areas:
- Inspirational leadership – encouraging and directing others to execute on plans and initiatives.
- Team collaboration – sharing challenges, and brainstorming approaches.
- Taking responsibility for your life. Noticing when you drift into debilitating drama. Tools for shifting back into a mature leadership position. Specific tools for shifting out of blaming and complaining, or rescuing and enabling.
- Surfacing and addressing difficult topics and conflicts. This is a foundational skill for all small group and work team environments. It is fundamental to authentic relationships. Participants will be coached in how to deal cleanly and directly with any issues that drain energy from the team or mire the organization or individuals in the past. In particular we’ll focus on how to initiate and conduct difficult conversations.
- Making clean agreements and repairing broken agreements.
- Offering and receiving feedback, criticism, advice. The primary take-home skill is the ability to receive all forms of feedback with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
- Appreciating and inspiring team members. Most work teams do an excellent job of criticizing and challenging, and a poor job of appreciating and celebrating. When a goal is reached, they briefly acknowledge the accomplishment, and then they set the bar higher. The result: a demoralized team where “nothing is ever good enough.” Appreciation, gratitude, and fun are a way of life for inspiring leaders.
This full-day training interweaves all elements of Jim’s Authentic Relationships model, tailored specifically to the workplace.
Duration: Full day
Abstract :
The morning session will focus on how to lead with clarity and courage, especially during times of crisis. Jim will share the stories and concepts that form the foundation of his recent book on life transition, Facing Pain—Embracing Love: The Map to Authentic Living.
After this entertaining and eye-opening plenary session, participants meet in small groups for experiential, high-impact sharing of their lives.
The afternoon session is a blend of life-sharing, experiential exercises, culminating in small-group discussions on the major issues we face as leaders today. These issues include (1) connection with our sense of calling or destiny, (2) connection with the key people in our lives, (3) connection with ourselves.
The day will offer varying tones, from serious self-discovery and group-level authenticity, to playfulness and creativity. Look for a high level of participation and interaction vs. passive “learning from an expert.” Prepare to be stretched.
Duration: Full day
Abstract :
In working with over 2,000 CEOs in confidential retreat settings, the following themes dominate:
- What do these terms mean: purpose, mission, vision, fulfillment, calling, destiny?
- How do I make a difference in the world, outside of the business arena?
- How do I move from disillusionment to destiny; from achievement to stewardship; from success to significance?
- What legacies, beyond wealth, do I want to leave my children; my grandchildren?
- I’ve known what it’s like to be “in the zone.” How do I get this feeling back?
- What is blocking me from stepping into my destiny, and how do I get through these blocks?
- When all is said and done, what is my life for?
You have always been an achiever. Your philosophy of “short-term pain for long-term gain” has paid off. Your accomplishments have met or exceeded those you contemplated some twenty-odd years ago when you launched your work life. It’s been a great ride and you feel you’ve had an impact. You’re pleased with most of the elements in your life, and you appreciate your tremendous good fortune.
But you still have energy. Regardless of chronological age, you’re young. Your peak is still in front of you. The relentless, burning “need to achieve” has you searching for ways to have an even greater impact. With your life at its midpoint, it’s a natural time to think about the past and plan the future. You may or may not be at a key “transition point,” such as a career change, the end of your marriage, or your youngest child leaving home. Regardless, you can’t stop wondering if “more of the same” will continue to deliver contentment and fulfillment in your life. By any measure you’ve been successful. But in your heart, mind, and soul, you ponder a greater calling, a sense of destiny beyond your current success.
We’ll explore these issues and yearnings in a full-day experiential workshop. We’ll share, explore, discuss, and learn about the opportunities and issues surrounding Life’s Second Half.
