Day Long to Multi-Day Workshops

Leadership Symposium

This workshop is tailorable to the needs of the customer and can include a combination of lectures that will all tie into leadership. Common sessions that augment the specific leadership lecture include communications & teambuilding, organization-specific break-out sessions and much more. The duration of this program can be from 1 to 5 days, depending on the needs of the organization. We have taught leadership sessions to many companies as part of their in-house training, for CPA State Societies and CPA Firm Associations. The Succession Institute has developed a brochure on their 5 day program that is downloadable from their website and is stored in the file cabinet called “SI Materials.” As a quick update to the 5 day program, the first two days utilize Paul Hersey’s Situational Leadership™ materials (to help people understand their leadership and management styles), and the final three days dealing with setting strategy, how to run a business, manage employees, emotional intelligence, teambuilding, meeting management, being a more effective communicator and advisor and much more.

Format of Session: Lecture combined with group dialogue and individual exercises
Typical Duration: 1-5 days

Management Symposium

This workshop typically includes a combination of lectures presented in the Keynote Speeches – Executives & Management section. The workshop can be tailored to each organization’s situation, but typically include topics such as strategic mismanagement, performance measurement, management and leadership skills and organization-specific break-out sessions.

Format of Session: Lecture combined with break-out groups
Typical Duration: 1 day

Facilitative/Advisory Symposium

This workshop is tailorable to the needs of the customer and can include a combination of lectures that will all tie into consultants being able to live up to being businesses’ most trusted advisor. Besides the foundation session of Moving from Expert to Advisor, other sessions might include developing a marketing plan, improving sales skills, organization-specific break-out sessions, and for CPA organizations, an update on the profession.

Format of Session: Lecture combined with break-out groups
Typical Duration: 1 day

Facilitative/Advisory/Sales Skills Program

Whereas the Facilitative/Advisory Symposium is training (1 day) on how to become a better advisor/consultant, this program (3 or 4 days) is a much more in-depth skill-building process that helps consultants move from the intellectualization of how to live up to being the most trusted advisor, to the unconscious delivery of that expectation. This workshop has been developed, refined and fine-tuned by working with hundreds of CPAs and consultants throughout the past 15 years. The training teaches those with client account management responsibility how to:

• maintain a 30,000-foot perspective and conversation long enough to easily identify that company’s concerns and/or opportunities;
• help clients quantify the value of taking action; and
• generate the sense of urgency that motivates them to literally ask YOU for the business.

This training is not about how to become a salesperson. However, by developing your facilitative and advisory capability, you will not only be able to provide higher-valued assistance to those you serve, you will also automatically generate more revenues for the firm.

Format of Session: Lecture, group role-plays and fish-bowl role plays (the other class participants watch as each individually role-plays the skills being taught, while constantly being coached through the exercises.

Typical Duration: There is a 3-day version of this workshop, and a 4-day version which includes presentation skills.
Video Option: Some organizations, in order to enhance the learning process, have the individual exercises video-taped. From this, video-CDs are created for each participant to help them gain a better understanding as to how they come across when interacting with their clients.

Presentation Skills

Your ability to professionally present yourself and sell your ideas is critical in today’s fast-paced information-overload business environment. Some people are born silver tongued devils and this skill is natural. But most people are not. Good presentation skills can be learned by anyone. And with most people … it takes just a little effort and they can rapidly advance their competency in this area. This session focuses on developing the skills to deliver a powerful presentation, whether that be to a customer, a management team, a board of directors or to an audience of hundreds. The tips and techniques covered will, with just a minimum of effort, significantly improve your presentation capability.

Format of Session: Lecture combined with break-out groups
Typical Duration: 1 day

Note: This session is often combined with the Facilitative/Advisory/Sales Skills Workshop to create the 4 day version mentioned above.