The Performance Solutions Group
Training Catalog

Leadership Development Series

The most effective way to understand and apply leadership principles is through a programmatic approach which facilitates skills and competencies over extended sessions and provides participants with the opportunities to apply in their own world and then return to class for reinforcement and support. We provide leadership development programs for every level of leadership in your organization.

Executive Development Program                                                                             4 Sessions

The Performance Solutions Group Executive Development Series provides participants with enhanced capabilities to create optimal value through organizational assessment, mature communication, cross-functional collaboration, and by understanding more effective ways of creating growth and accountability in mid and front line managers and throughout the organization. This process utilizes a unique combination of four executive development group sessions plus a series of individual coaching opportunities to create a unified, yet distinctly individual experience that moves executives toward change, effectiveness and creating the greatest level of value. Each module establishes an understanding of a specific leadership responsibility and how executive leaders carry out and execute on this responsibility across the organization and in their own departments to create optimal results.

The Total Leader Development Program                                                                 6 Sessions

To be successful in today’s dynamic business landscape, organizations must gain optimal value from each component within the organization. Every employee must be moving toward top performance, every process should be operating at maximum effectiveness and every resource should be mined for top payback based on investment. The fact is that none of this can happen without solid leadership in the mid and front lines of the organization. An effective leader is so much more than a functional expert; the Total Leader knows how to create top performance and engagement in employees, how to collaborate across the organization with key partners and peers to get results, know how to spot gaps, solve problems, make value-driven decisions and proactively create solutions to the challenges that surface daily. PSG’s The Total Leader is a six session development program that provides managers with the tools and skills to deliver optimal value and results from their unique set of people, processes and resources.

From Survival to Success: Developing the First Time Supervisor                           6 Sessions

In most cases, organizations choose their front line supervisors from the employee line population based on a demonstration of functional expertise, tenure, or a demonstration of commitment to the organization. While all of these are important considerations, the reality is that the great majority of first time supervisors do not bring a strong set of leadership and managerial skills with them into their role. This six session course is designed to provide the supervisory level with the basic skills to be successful, including modules dealing with the roles and responsibilities of a front line leader, learning to employ a mature communication style, managing performance, building strong cross-functional relationships, the legal issues of management and other critical management issues. 

Single Session Leadership Course Offerings

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Leader                                                                       

The role of a leader is demanding, with many twists and turns. This course provides participants with the insight and abilities to maneuver through the many expectations placed on them by the organization, their managers, peers, employees and customers. Participants will first gain an understanding of how ordinary leadership and organizational behaviors lead to stalemates, silos, miscommunication and paralysis within the organization. Participants will then learn how to deal with the reality of competing forces and how to transform them into supporting forces which allow them to create maximum value for the organization. Participants will also understand how to avoid the “victim trap”, identify their own default Leadership Style, and the need to flex to meet the challenges of each situation they face.

Using Mature Communication and Emotional Intelligence to Create Value                 

In order to create maximum value, leaders must learn and apply a set of communication skills that allow them to build bridges and cultivate relationships with employees, peers, managers and customers. In this course, participants will learn the tools to become “Mature Communicators” who clearly articulate their messages, listen for understanding, deal with difficult people, and build dialogues that result in mutual understanding, trust and value creation. Participants will also learn the principles of Emotional Intelligence and how it must govern their action and reactions with every person with whom they interact.

 Creating Outstanding Performance:

Developing, Coaching, Inspiring and Building Accountability                            

This course helps participants understand the ingredients of successful performance and the partnership that must develop between direct manager and employee to ensure the highest levels of productivity. Participants will be introduced to the “Human Performance Triangle”, a dynamic management tool that will help them set clear, specific performance expectations, coach employees to achieve those expectations, and how to motivate employees, gain commitment and establish accountability for their performance.

Building Effective, Value Driven Employee Teams                                                          

This course helps participants to understand the power of building customer-focused employee teams that take pride in achieving their greatest level of results. Participants will learn the skills to create a sense of ownership and engagement among employees and how to motivate those teams to build collaborative “win-win” relationships with other critical partnering teams. The course includes tools that will help participants with conflict resolution, group motivation and the sometimes subtle differences between group communication and individual communication.

Creating Effective Collaboration across the Organization                                         

To gain maximum effectiveness, individuals and departments must be able to create solid communication across functional departments. This course will introduce participants to the Collaboration Continuum, a powerful tool that will help them measure the level of trust and collaboration between themselves and other key players in the company, and will challenge them take proactive steps to solidify these important relationships.

Fundamentals of Process Change and Proactive Problem Solving                                 

In order to create the greatest level of value for the organization, leaders must be more then technical functional experts. They must think beyond the task and proactively create and maintain processes that are effective, efficient, cross functionally sound and ultimately target the needs of the internal or external customer. This module presents a problem-solving methodology that will allow leaders to identify and fix gaps that appear in those processes. Participants will be introduced to the “If-Then” method of decision making, a quick and easy model that will provide the skills to understand the total impact of their decisions

Value Driven Time Management                                                                                  

Time wasters can eliminate bottom line profit and frustrate people across the organization. Yet managers and other typically become entrenched in activities that fail to produce the greatest level of value. In this course, participants will learn the principles of Value Driven Time Management which will help them prioritize and focus their time and efforts on the critical issues that create or drain value and eliminate or delegate other responsibilities. Participants will learn how to create a personal calendar that helps them actively monitor their time and activities and judge which one are value driven and which ones create little or no value.

Conflict Resolution for Managers                                                                                   

While any organization wants legitimate disagreements to surface and be discussed in honesty and openness, when personal agenda and personality issues get in the way, the ensuing conflict can cause a great loss of value. The answer for many managers is either to sweep the disagreements under the rug or create an environment where people never talk about their differences. This course teaches managers skills and methods to eliminate the fallout of the unhealthy behaviors of conflict that threaten to disrupt, while at the same time ensure that tough issues get discussed and solved in a mature, open environment.

Inclusion/Diversity for Managers                                                                                   

Most organizations today recognize the incredible value of building a culture of Inclusion that creates respect and openness for all of its constituents. However, many organizations do not understand the critical role that the behaviors of their managers and leaders play in either creating or disrupting this culture across the organization. This course provides leadership at all levels with the mindset and behavioral awareness and skills to enhance, support, and embrace Inclusion/Diversity in their own departments and in their dealings across the organization. PSG will work within the context of your company’s Inclusion/Diversity initiative to customize this training.

Harassment Prevention for Managers                                                                          

Every year companies across the country pay out millions of dollars in damages as a result of harassment claims in the workplace, and this does not even include the costs in human damage and workforce motivation. Many times these harassment claims could be prevented by more proactive management behavior. This course provides a two-pronged solution. First, it provides participants with the awareness of what constitutes harassment under the law and how to avoid harassing behaviors themselves. And second, the class instructs managers on how to identify and/or deal with harassing behaviors within their span of control. PSG will work with your company’s HR Team to ensure that the issues that are most important to your organization are included in the program.

Conducting Effective Meetings                                                                                 

Organizational meetings are high on the “time waster” list for most managers and employees. However, with some simple skills and techniques that build both good organization and participation into meetings, they can actually become value builders. This class provides participants with some solid suggestions on how to build agendas, encourage discussion, set timelines and move issues toward action and resolution. Participants will build an agenda for their next meeting and use their new skills to demonstrate how they will create the greatest level of value in that meeting.

The Legal Side of Management                                                                                

The management world today is full of legal land mines and traps. And to add to the complexity, the courts have rules that anyone in a management role, be they supervisor or executive, actually represents the company in their dealings with employees. This course provides participants with the knowledge and skills to navigate the legal terrain with a new awareness of what is both legal and effective in the areas of HR Law, safety and other legal issues that a manager faces. PSG will work with your company’s HR Team to ensure that the issues that are most important to your organization are included in the program.

Recruitment and Behavioral Based Interviewing Skills for Managers

Organizations understand that in order to make each new hire a success, the hiring manager must be closely involved in the entire recruitment and interviewing process. This course provides managers with the skills and competencies to add value to the recruitment process and engage in interviews that are effective, legal and on target with their own goals for the hiring process. The course provides participants with opportunities to create their own Behavioral Based questions based on departmental positions and to practice interviewing techniques with class partners. 

Behavioral Development and Improvement for All Employees

 Inclusion: Integrating Diversity and Self-Accountability

Diversity is a fact of in today’s society and today’s business landscape. However, few organizations position themselves to take advantage of the tremendous “value-add” that a diverse workforce can offer. That value is unleashed when leaders and employees alike understand the principle of inclusion and the self-accountability that it demands. PSG offers Inclusion courses for both leadership and employees that challenge participants to look at their own convictions and beliefs and how they must work to align to their behaviors to create harmony and support in their work relationships.

Harassment Prevention Training

Every year companies across the country pay out millions of dollars in damages as a result of harassment claims in the workplace, and this does not even include the costs in human damage and workforce motivation. Many times these harassment claims could be prevented by more awareness on the part of all employees across the organization. This course provides a two-pronged solution. First, it provides participants with the awareness of what constitutes harassment under the law and how to avoid harassing behaviors themselves. And second, the class instructs employees on what steps to take if they feel they are being threatened by harassing behaviors.  PSG will work with your company’s HR Team to ensure that the issues that are most important to your organization are included in the program.

Interpersonal Skills for Non-Managers

Communication is the lifeblood of every organization. However, the question is: how effective are your people at actually doing it?  While it is important that people communicate in a way that creates good will and cooperation, the importance of effective communication goes much further than avoiding hurt feelings or building relationships. Your people must be able to communicate both to create and receive clear and complete understanding. This course provides participants with the Mature Communication skills that help them send value-driven messages, employ active listening techniques and separate the message from their emotions when necessary. 

Business Communication Skills

Business Communications impacts all aspects of our lives. This course provide participants with the skills to communicate in a clear, courteous, concise, complete and correct manner whether they are communicating in a verbal, written, or technology-based platform. The class will also cover active listening skills and the importance of completing communication/feedback loops. The overriding goal is to provide employees with a solid base to communicate effectively to their organizational partners.

Conflict Management

Navigating through disagreements and the natural conflicts that occur in the business environment is tough enough. However, when style differences and personalities cause increased disruption it can create an environment that can become intolerable and drain value. This course helps employees to understand the differences between healthy debate and damaging behavior that stifles open, honest dialogue. Participants gain insight into how their own and others’ styles/personalities can contribute to value draining conflict and offers steps on how to make adjustments to avoid unnecessary arguments and confrontations.

Public Speaking/Presentation Skills                                                                                 

Fear of public speaking and lack of public speaking skills are two of the most universal pitfalls in organizational life. However, simple truth is that with a few critical skills and some practice, most people can overcome the stigma associated with speaking in front of a group. This course provides participants with skills, techniques and motivation to take a renewed look at the way they approach public speaking, overcome their fears and focus on the building blocks of an effective presentation. Participants will be asked to share brief presentations during this class. 

Sales Training and Customer Service Training

Creating Engaged Customers (Call Center Version)                  Customized Program Length

This course provides Call Center Representatives with the behavioral skills to build engagement and loyalty focused relationships with their customers. This program not only involves training for CFEs themselves, but also development that provides their immediate supervisors with the leadership skills to coach, develop and create appropriate expectations and accountabilities for the CFEs. In addition, the PSG program includes a four hour “Planning and Alignment” session that helps senior leaders understand how the their own support and the organization’s culture must work together as factors in the customer loyalty process. The program is fully customized to meet the cultural, process, metric and product differentiators in each Call Center environment.

Creating Engaged Customers (Field Version)                              Customized Program Length

This course provides your organization’s Customer Interfacing Field with the behavioral skills to build engagement and loyalty focused relationships with their customers. This program not only involves training for CIEs themselves, but also development that provides their immediate supervisors with the leadership skills to coach, develop and create appropriate expectations and accountabilities for the CIEs. In addition, the PSG program includes a four hour “Planning and Alignment” session that helps senior leaders understand how the their own support and the organization’s culture must work together as factors in the customer loyalty process. The program is fully customized to meet the cultural, process, metric and product differentiators in each environment

Activity-Based Selling

This course provides both managers and sales people with the skills to focus on the right activity to produce a quality sales pipeline. Participants will learn what the sales pipeline is and how it benefits them. They will learn to set sales goals by focusing on the activity needed to hit their sales quota. Once each participant understands their entire sales process from prospect to closed business they are more capable of reaching their goals.

Inside Inbound Sales Training

Inbound sales people will learn that three quarters of the sale is complete when the customer calls them. This training incorporates their current sales model and trains specific skills and behavior to bring the sale the last quarter distance to close the sale.

Cold Calling Success

Participants will learn cold call prospecting skills are different from selling skills. They will learn specific tools and techniques and gain practice using their new prospecting skills.        Participants will also look at the barrier to cold call reluctance.

Negotiation Skills

The process and timing of Negotiation are often confusing. Actually, Negotiation starts only after the sale is completed. In this course, participants learn how to fight the temptation to negotiate before the sale is complete. In addition, participants will learn how to negotiate from an interest-based position rather than a position based position. 

Development and Growth for your HR Department

Transitioning from HR Generalist to HR Consultant              Customized Program Length

This intensive 3-day course equips HR Generalists with the dynamic and effective consulting skills that will equip them to build business partnerships with their diverse client base. Participants will engage in interactive facilitated lectures, take part in exercises that provide practical experience with each skill, and create accountable action plans that will ensure application back in the real world.

Transitioning from Recruiting to Talent Acquisition               Customized Program Length  

This program introduces recruiters to a proactive model that keeps job candidates in the pipeline and focuses on the value driven activity that is necessary to put the right people in the right jobs. Participants will learn sourcing techniques that include cold calling, activity-based recruiting and other innovative steps to ensure that your organization taps into the very best candidates. The course includes hand-on exercises, self-accountability checks and rigorous action planning. An optional Cold Call Reluctance assessment is also available.

Effective Training Skills                                                              Customized Program Length   

There are many situations that require an HR professional to provide training for an organization, including various forms of legal compliance training, new employee orientation, benefits programs and more. Frequently, HR professionals lack the confidence and skill set to make these presentations engaging and effective. This course provides the HR professional or other employees in your organization with the competencies to make the transition from a “presenter” who reads a Leaders Guide to an effective “facilitator” who confidently delivers high-powered session that hit the mark every time.

Developing Effective Employee Orientations                            Customized Program Length

An organization’s employee orientation can sometimes evolve into an “information dump” that where employees receive mounds of paperwork, but very little insight into how to understand and navigate the company’s culture. In this course, those who own the orientation process will gain an understanding into the possibilities that an orientation can provide for new employees that include, but go well beyond the normal parade of benefits, policy and compliance issues. Participants will learn how to develop an orientation program that begins the on-boarding process effectively and works toward engaging the employee from their very first days with the organization.

Strategy and Organization Development Programs

Mission and Vision Development

Many organizations have had the same mission and vision statements for years and both leaders and employees do not even know or understand what they mean anymore. Every few years is a great idea to dust off the old vision and mission statements and take a fresh new look at just exactly what it is that drives the organization in its strategy and operations and creates values for shareholders. Performance Solutions Group will work with your organizational leaders and other constituencies to take a new look at both your vision and mission and determine whether it still captures the essence of your organization’s desire future state, competencies and high level objectives. This program works equally well for newer organizations that are just starting to build vision, mission and strategy.

Strategy Development: Capturing Optimal Value  

Performance Solutions group understands the importance of the Strategic Development process and how vision and strategy define the value that an organization brings to its customers and key stakeholders. Senior Leadership teams must work together to create a results- driven strategy that ensures the success of their organization for both the short and long term.  PSG works with senior leaders to capture the organization’s optimal value future state , create a comprehensive plan to “get there from here”, then transition that plan into a  results oriented vision and strategy statements that allow organizational partners to connect the dots.

Performance Management: Vision to Results

Once strategy has been developed, it must then flow down into department goals, ultimately reaching ownership at the individual employee level. In other words, strategy remains static and elusive until it is played out in team and individual performance across the organization. The PSG Performance Management program builds total alignment from top to bottom through a unique process which converts an organization’s strategy into metric focused department, team and individual employee performance goals. The end game of Performance Management not only yields individual performance expectations, but also a sense of employee engagement, ownership and accountability where each worker has a full understanding of how their daily work and interactions add value to overall organizational strategy and success. 

Collaborative Teambuilding: Breaking Through Organizational Silos

Silos and cross-functional breakdowns can be the most pervasive value drains in multi-layered and/or multi-location organizations.  Anytime information is not conveyed openly and freely, anytime people choose non-collaborative behaviors, or anytime cross-functional leaders fail to consider the issues and challenges faced by their organizational partners, the silo walls gain strength, teams hunker down in the safety of their own agendas, and the organization loses. This two day workshop utilizes fast paced exercises and practical tools to help your leaders solve real life challenges from your organization and learn important principles of teamwork and collaboration. 

90 Days to Accountability

In most organizations there is an instinctive belief that a lack of accountability is causing a drain in value, but no one can seem to get their hands around how to build it. What most organizations do not realize is that accountability must be both behavioral and systemic. Lack of accountability is a result of a string of unhealthy organizational behaviors, but it is also the result of not taking “organizational planning” to its most logical degree of completion. This program offers organizations a custom blueprint of how to create accountability from the senior levels of leadership through the mid management team and onto the front line and staff employee population in one quarter, given the organization’s specific industry, culture and structure. Performance Solutions Group will help your organization understand how accountability must be planned, strategized, systemized and implemented with intent throughout your company’s entire system, using three types of accountability: organizational accountability, managerial accountability and personal accountability. 

Business Process Review

Performance Solutions Group helps organizations take a look at their processes and systems to ensure that they are both efficient (meeting time, quality, cost and safety standards) and effective (accomplishing what the internal or external customer needs). We approach a business process review by using an evaluation matrix that measures a department’s people, processes and resources against economy, efficiency, effectiveness and best practices. Key elements of this approach include: interviews and focus groups, review of internal data points, systems and controls (strategic goals, KPI’s, reports, scorecards, financials, policies and procedures, etc), external data points. We then evaluate the data collected, identifying and measuring gaps and risks. Our final executive report will provide the organization’s executives with a comprehensive analysis of the structure, technology, workflows and reporting as compared with identified best practices, with suggestions for short, mid, and long term solutions.

Customer Touchpoint Mapping

Sometimes an organization can build layers of operational procedures and processes and, quite unintentionally, forget just exactly how all of these lead to better customer service. In fact, sometimes the customer can get lost in the maze of conflicting processes between different departments. Performance Solutions Group offers a Customer Touchpoint Mapping program that ensures that the organization draws straight lines from everything they do to the valued customer. This program includes Interviews with key stake holders, documentation of key stake holders, interviews with front line employees, review and validation of touch points and gaps, development and documentation of Customer Touch Point Mapping, facilitation of Customer Touch Point Mapping sessions with employees, and deployment of Customer Touch Point Mapping.

Mentoring Program

A mentoring program is one of the most engaging employee processes that a company can offer.  If developed and implemented effectively, the mentoring process can do much to motivate and inspire both mentors and mentees. Successful mentoring programs include some common basic components, including an administrative plan (which defines the program manager’s role and the processes that articulate how the program will roll out across a given group), parameters for mentor and mentee qualification, selection and training, and a reporting protocol to monitor, measure and evaluate the effectiveness of individual mentoring relationships and the overall program. However, even though most mentoring programs contain these components, exactly what these components look like, how they are implemented and how they are ultimately measured and evaluated will, to a very large degree, depend on the organization’s culture, the nature of the groups involved, and what exactly the organization is trying to accomplish in the program. Performance Solutions Group will work with your organization to take the general mentoring framework and make it come alive in the context of your organization’s culture and objectives. We will work closely with key contacts from HR and other departments to guide you in putting together a program that makes sense and that creates the greatest level of value for the mentees, the mentors and the overall organization.

360 Degree Assessments

The Performance Solutions Group 360-degree feedback tool provides leaders with specific constructive feedback on their skills, strengths and development opportunities as perceived by a respondent group that is invited to participate by the leader themselves.  The respondent groups usually consists of approximately 10-15 individuals, including their own manager, peers, direct reports, dotted line reports and customers.  The feedback focuses on the leadership qualities and skills that are required for success as defined by the PSG’s copyrighted Leadership Platform.  The feedback received in the 360-degree tool is anonymous and comprehensive, in that participants will receive feedback from respondent groups on a wide range of skill dimensions.

Myers-Briggs Assessments

Performance Solutions Group is a certified provider of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment. The purpose of the MBTI is to understand how a person’s basic personality affects their behaviors in everyday situations based on their preferences to use perception and judgment By indentifying these preferences, the MBTI can target one of 16 distinctive personality types that help the individual understand how they are likely to make choices in the way they behave. The translation into effective behavioral implications for the workplace is immediate and real.

DISC Assessments

PSG facilitates the DISC assessment, which focuses on the behavioral styles and preferences of individuals working within a specific environment, such as a team or a department.  The assessment, which is taken either online or with pen and paper, determines the mix of four distinct dimensions of observable behavior: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. Each of these types are present to one degree or another in most people, however, most people have a primary and secondary feature. The data from each individual assessment is facilitated in a group setting so that the group as a whole can understand how the individual primary behaviors come together to create different dynamics among the group. By gaining an understanding of individual differences, it is possible for the entire group to better process the entire team’s behavior and position itself for greater success and value. 

Thomas Kilmann

PSG facilitates the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, known simply as the TKI. The TKI is designed to measure a person’s behavior in conflict situations, in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible. The instrument is not only effective in helping two people who are consistently in conflict, but also in the team setting where differing personalities may tend to dominate or compromise without reaching true value in varying situations. PSG facilitates the TKI in a group setting which allows teams to discover individual styles and talk through how the group can create an environment where conflict and decision making situations can create greater success and fulfillment.