Re-Designing Leadership and Team Success for the New Era

Much of what we’re doing today just isn’t working. It’s clearly seen in the data and across leadership teams and firms regardless of size, discipline, or geographic location.

Amongst the massive change we’ve collectively experienced and continue to work through, there have been several major “shifts” that have fundamentally changed the way we must lead and develop our teams and organizations.

Understanding and being able to lean into and through these shifts is the key to attracting, retaining, and getting the best from our talent today without burnout. This, however, requires a much different leadership skillset and mindset. Leaders and leadership teams willing to both think and act differently will continue to enjoy clear advantages and greater prosperity in today’s evolving workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space – regardless of firm type and location.

In this session, you’ll learn:

1. The four major “shifts” that have fundamentally changed the way we must lead and develop our team and firms.
2. The new framework critical for new era growth and success.
3. Why creating capacity within us and our teams is the key to driving burnout-free growth – and how to do it!
4. Why high standards, winning, and performance matters more than ever.
5. The “team success ecosystem” and why it’s the lynchpin to our near and long-term growth and prosperity

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Leading Growth and Preventing Workplace Burnout Post-Pandemic

Burnout was an increasing problem well before the pandemic, particularly for leaders and high achievers. Since then, however, professional burnout has skyrocketed, and it’s affecting more of our firms and our ability to attract and retain great talent and serve clients.

Burnout is now a leadership problem to solve, and one with added urgency given the continuing ‘great resignation’ and the amped-up ‘war for talent’. If left unresolved or to chance, burnout (and its related side effects) will limit our ability to grow and prosper.

Growth’s relationship to burnout is more complicated than causal. If purposefully designed with the new era in mind, our growth can become an antidote for burnout and a catalyst for next level success in the post-pandemic workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space.

In this session you’ll learn:

1. How the pandemic has forever changed both burnout and employee engagement
2. How to recognize the signs and prevent and reverse the Burnout-Disengagement Cycle
3. Our greatest individual, team, and organizational development gaps and their effect on burnout and growth
4. Why purpose, impact, and time management matter more than ever
5. How better designed growth can solve our burnout problem and lead to greater long-term and sustainable success

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

How to Attract and Retain Top A/E Talent – The Data and the Insights Behind the Quit, the Pivot, and the Thrive

Most all AEC firms want to grow but the “Great Resignation”, work stress, and burnout is putting that growth at risk.

At the same time, some AEC firms are growing, prospering, and attracting and retaining all the talent they need.

To help firms navigate this opportunity and challenge, ActionsProve, LLC and the Engineering Management Institute have conducted research specifically designed to explore key workplace issues by age, gender, role, and years of experience.

The research also points to how employers can better attract and retain top talent amidst the Great Resignation, “quiet quitting”, and increasing workloads – and do so in ways that can prevent burnout and help you and your firm grow and prosper.

This presentation will dig into the Present and Future of Work in Engineering and Architecture Reports and data collected since to help you learn:

1. The workplace trends most impacting the AEC industry.
2. The gaps that exist between roles, genders, and generations, why employees are choosing to leave, and what they’re looking for from new employers.
3. What “people-first” organizations do differently and why they are preferred.
4. The type of training most requested and most likely to yield the biggest (and most immediate!) return on investment.
5. How firms can create more futureproof, dynamic, and human-centered workplaces.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Effective Strategic Planning and Execution for the New Era

Effective strategic planning is vital to our long-term success. And with all the major changes continuing to swirl and mount in the workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space, effective strategic planning is a vital tool – if not a gift – that can help ensure our success. Yet, despite the importance, the vast majority of strategic plans fail or fail to be fully or successfully implemented. Why is this the case and how can we avoid this fate?

This session is designed to help position you and your team to think, plan, and act differently to help yourself and your firms realize a better future both faster and more effectively. You’ll learn:

1. The benefits of strategic planning
2. The typical scope and timing for plan development
3. The biggest issues and opportunities facing AEC firms today
4. Critical mindsets and next level thinking for the new era
5. The many points of failure, including the top 10 reasons strategic plans languish and fail
6. What’s needed to achieve great results
7. How to design for healthy balance, tension, and pressure
8. Why having clear roles and goals matter
9. The must-have “progression” needed for strategic and tactical success
10. Essential models and frameworks necessary to move forward faster and more effectively

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

Next Level Leadership & Management for the New Era

Major changes continue to swirl and mount all around us, but which ones are permanent? Which ones can we take the time to evolve with, and which ones do we need to better understand and get ahead of in order to differentiate ourselves and stay on top?

We know that the “next normal” settling in will never be as it was, and neither will the type of leadership and management needed to move our teams and organizations forward.

Next level leadership and management is about having a higher level of understanding of how business and society has changed and having a clearer and more compelling vision for the future. It is also about initiating a series of actions to inspire greater employee and client engagement and create greater growth and value through better alignment and systems design.

Next level leadership allows us to leverage all of the 4P’s: projects, profits, people, and purpose – some of which hasn’t and won’t change, and some of which requires a major shift. Making the right adjustments will be key to standing out and winning in the workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space.

This session is designed to help position you and your team for greater success now and moving forward. You’ll learn:

1. How the “next normal” is different in the eyes of both your talent and your clients
2. Why next level leadership demands more than just a better business strategy
3. The reason most organizations struggle with change and change management
4. How to better understand and leverage each of the 4P’s, including the 3 types of purpose
5. The 5-step I.M.P.A.C.T. process: Inventory, Mission, Plan, Authenticity, Capacity, and Trigger, designed specifically to help you succeed

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

“Leadership is Everything – How to Successfully Lead Your Team and Firm Through Crisis and Change”

Special Leadership and Management Development Series

Program Overview:  There are four key elements needed for success today: Projects, Profits, People, and Purpose. This program is designed to focus on a number of the most important “People” aspects.

Goal: Especially during this time of significant crisis and great change, provide essential tools and insights to current and aspiring leaders and managers to improve our individual and collective success, growth, and resiliency.

Module 1 – Critical Awareness

Being aware is fundamental to having a high level of emotional intelligence, which is a cornerstone of great leadership and management. In this session, we cover:

• How the purpose and expectations of leadership, business, and organizations have changed.
• The power and loss of emotional intelligence.
• How behaviors, not our personality or words, drives our culture and our success.
• How to become aware of how you are seen (i.e., your brand) as an individual, team, and organization.

Module 2 – Essential Self-Care to Improve Focus and Prevent Burnout 

Leaders and managers are called upon to “feed” others, but too often don’t take the time to be “fed” themselves. In this session, we cover:

• How to prevent burnout and avoid the Burnout-Disengagement Cycle.
• The four key relationships needed for a full life.
• The need for margin.
• How to design your “To Be” list.

Module 3 – Engaging and Inspiring Others

The best leaders and managers are able to engage with and inspire others. In this session, we cover:

• The target logic model for work today.
• The three types of purpose.
• True employee engagement and engaging for the “seasons”.
• Designing for transformation, not “experience”.

Module 4 – The Need for Growth

Personal, professional, and organizational growth is essential for success. In this session, we cover:

• New Era organizational growth.
• The S-curve phenomenon, season-shifting, and re-defining goals.
• Coaching, peer-to-peer learning, and avoiding the “lonely at the top” and other common traps.
• The need to ACT before IMPACT.

Additional Learning Objectives can be integrated to meet specific needs.

How to Successfully Engage, Grow, and Prosper in the New Era:

For most professional firm leaders, our careers have been driven by projects. Along the way, we have also learned to understand and become better at business. Although essential, what we do and earn alone is not enough to win today.

We live in a new era – and this is especially true as we proceed through the COVID-19 crisis. Our ability to win in the workplace, marketplace, and recruiting space requires a greater focus on both people and purpose. The presence of people skills and better talent development at all levels, especially at the leader level, is what drives both project and business success today.

The new era has also redefined winning.  Top talent today wants to win at both work and life while making a positive difference at the office and beyond. Top clients want the same.

Leaders and organizations who are able to recognize this shift have a distinct advantage over those content with the status quo or too busy and consumed to take the new actions necessary to engage, grow, and win today.

This session is designed to help position you, your leadership team, and your organization for greater success both today and moving forward.

You’ll learn:

1.  How the COVID-19 crisis and specific demographic and societal shifts affect our work environment today.

2. Why most firms struggle with employee engagement and sustainable growth.

3. How employee engagement and corporate impact fits within both traditional and new era A/E/C firm growth models.

4. The three different types of purpose.

5. Why seeking only greater employee and client “experiences” falls short.

6. The 5-step IMPACT process that leaders and organizations can use to differentiate themselves: Inventory, Mission, Plan, Authenticity, Capacity, and Trigger.

Additional Learning Objectives are integrated to meet specific needs and opportunities.

How to Better Engage, Excel, and Win in the New Era:

Excelling and achieving success requires commitment.  It can take 10, 20, 25 or more years to master our craft, make a name, and build our platform.  Although what it takes to excel has not changed over time, the work environment has – particularly over the past two to three decades.  During this period, we have also seen major demographic and societal shifts in how top talent views work and life.

The AEC and professional services industries are not immune to the growing epidemic of burnout and disengagement – especially among top talent.  More and more professionals are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.  Many are also pivoting away or shifting their discretionary efforts… and this is at a time when employee recruitment and retention is the #1 issue facing most professional services industries.

As high-achievers and leaders, we need to understand all the factors lead to burnout and disengagement.  Understanding our work-life seasons and ongoing shifts are key to designing personal and organization-based solutions to remain fully engaged and growing while eliminating the threat of burnout.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the specific demographic and societal shifts that affect our work environment today.

2. Understand the Burnout-Disengagement Cycle and how to reverse and prevent it.

3. Understand our four distinct Work-Life Seasons, when we shift from one to another, and how our seasons either compliment or conflict.

4. Understand how employee engagement fits within both traditional and new era AEC and professional services industry growth models.

5. Learn how to keep yourself and your top employees engaged with your firm and its mission.

Additional Learning Objectives are integrated to meet specific needs and opportunities.

How to Attract and Retain Top Talent and Clients with Advanced Impact Design:

Does your organization truly stand out from the crowd when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent?  In order to do so, leaders need to invest in cultivating a culture of employee engagement that champions the advancement of the organization’s goals while making a positive social impact.  And this is especially true if you want to be an employer of choice in a tight labor market.  Having a business strategy rooted in impact is what will.

Beating the competition for the talent you need means more than great projects, perks, pay, and stability.  True engagement, the kind that the best contributors seek, centers on systems and supervisors that help employees make a strategic and effective social impact, enhancing both their own and their employer’s brands.  An organization’s social impact strategy also addresses a cross-generational desire for more meaningful work and connections both inside and outside of the office.

Despite convincing data that well-designed social impact programs have a high return on investment, barriers still exist for many leaders and organizations. Understanding work-life seasons and ongoing demographic and societal shifts are key to eliminating these internal barriers and making your organization highly attractive to the candidates you need to hire, the talent you need to retain, and the clients you want to serve.  We’ll look at both the data and ways to overcome those barriers this session.

You’ll learn:

• Why most firms struggle with employee engagement and sustainable growth
• How effective social impact fits within both traditional and new era AEC and professional services industry growth models
• How to make performance-based employee engagement and social impact initiatives work in tandem
• The four archetypes your organization can model: “shareholder maximizers”, “corporate contributors”, “impact integrators”, and “social innovators”.
• Principles and practices for asset-based community development.
• The 5-step IMPACT process that leaders and organizations can use to differentiate themselves: Inventory, Mission, Plan, Authenticity, Capacity, and Trigger.

Additional Learning Objectives are integrated to meet specific needs and opportunities.

When people are exposed to human need or poverty and all that surrounds it, many are moved to want to help. Meeting urgent needs is essential, but a distinct strategy is necessary for the successful long-term development of both people and their communities. This presentation will share the experience gained in serving locally here in the U.S. and abroad.

Impactful community engagement and development projects will be shared.  Projects include those designed to build both awareness and support, as well as, projects designed to build the capacity of others – both the servers and the served.

The presentation will highlight the challenges and opportunities of serving today in general, as well as, the challenges and opportunities of serving in specific contexts where needs exist. The presentation will also reveal the important role an asset-based community development strategy plays in project outcomes, the distinctions between relief, rehabilitation and development efforts, and convey how professional skills can be leveraged in the process.