Developing High Performing People

People-Focused Strategy & Alignment

Guided by our expert faculty, you and your fellow nonprofit executives will be challenged to examine your personal values, and explore how to understand emotional intelligence and the role it plays in having difficult yet effective conversations.

You'll learn how to develop and align your organization with a people-focused strategy, how to inspire others to grow professionally, in challenging times and how to prepare the organization for the inevitability of transition in both full-time and volunteer leadership. Leave equipped to make an even more positive impact on the people you lead and serve your organization's ability to fulfill its mission.

Key Benefits

• Think strategically about the people resources of your organization
• Learn to communicate your values to all stakeholders
• Understand the importance of a leadership succession plan for the paid and volunteer leaders of your organization

Program Content

Seeking to Understand: The Leadership Essentials for Developing High-Performers

Leadership practices and access to knowledge greatly influence workplace performance and success. High performance is dependent on clarity and trust in the leader’s vision. It is the leader’s job to foster trust, manage expectations, make the mission meaningful and invite the employees in to the conversation. Empowered performers increase ownership, in turn, enhancing performance.

• Discuss your own organizational and leadership barriers to high performance
• Explore the common leadership practices which will inspire confidence
• Analyze your role in “knowledge accessibility” within your organization
• Learn how to ensure that performance is employee-driven and employee-owned
• Ask clarifying questions about your own team: who has the “decision rights?” Who does the “heavy lifting?”
• Define and plan your “psychological contract of work”

Influence without Authority

• Explore the ethical implications of influence
• Develop new approaches to influencing others
• Apply concepts to current influence initiatives

Engaged: The Art & Science of Sustaining Motivation

• Gain keen insight into how to motivate people to do their best and keep their heads, hearts and hands engaged once they’ve come onboard
• Learn by leveraging insights from the social and behavioral sciences to offer strategies for how to prevent demotivating talent
• Discuss how to drive sustained engagement at every level of the organization
• Know how to transform your organization’s culture into a competitive advantage in the competition for top talent

Difficult Conversations

• Understand what makes confrontations in the work place difficult
• Master strategies for approaching confrontation, instead of avoiding it
• Practice and perfect your style of handling difficult conversations
• Learn to shift perspectives to a learning conversation