Please email Dr. Lily Blocker if you are interested in starting a project or scheduling a workshop for your company. These interactive workshops use the latest research to provide practical, evidence-based guidelines for a better workplace. See examples below, and please email a request for the full list of available workshops for both leaders and general staff.
I also welcome the opportunity to collaborate with businesses, government agencies, non-profits, teams, or individuals who would like to collaborate on research in leadership, innovation, or conflict management. You would receive a white paper describing the data we collect of your leaders, teams, and/or organization.
Some previous consulting and research project partners:
Why work with an external training partner?
Your company has expertise in what it produces – the product or service that you perfect over years of development. Similarly, an external partner can bring in highly specific expertise that can:
- Provide distinctiveness: Add value, efficiency, and excitement to your training programs that can give your team a competitive advantage.
- Make learning more efficient: Content expertise and specific teaching techniques that will make learning faster and more enjoyable.
- Reinforce your company mission: Align the workshop to add outside support for the goals of your company.
- Save staff time and energy: Internal training on new topic areas can have unforeseen costs and obstacles, and your staff could put that energy into other internal projects instead.
Workshop Overview:
Format: I have taught hundreds of professionals in business and non-profit settings. Interactive workshops are available both face-to-face and virtually. I typically request two hours per workshop, but can make each one longer or shorter depending on the needs of the organization. Workshops include a mix of discussion, team activities, and role play for a fun and informative experience.
People: Though I typically work with leaders, I can adapt many of these topics to general staff as well, since these principles can apply within teams or working with customers. It is generally best practice to separate managers and staff in separate training workshops so that they can discuss experiences more openly, gain support, and learn from each other.
Logistics: I take care of the registration invitation emails to provide you an attendance list, any pre-work exercises, host the workshop, and send a program evaluation that I share with you afterwards. My goal is for you to sit back and enjoy the process.
Workshop Topics:
Leading Teams for Innovative Performance
Innovation is the key to success in many industries, but leaders may be unknowingly inhibiting innovation in their teams in favor of producing short-term gains. Innovative thinking requires a break from the way things are typically done, particularly if current “safe bet” products are already performing reasonably well. For successful innovation, leaders need to create an environment that fosters controlled risk-taking and psychological safety.
Workshop Highlights:
• The specific, every-day leader behaviors that can enhance or diminish innovation
• Addressing setbacks and failures in innovative pursuits
• Creating a work environment that encourages innovation
Leading Change
Creating sustainable, novel, and useful change is important in every industry. However, change can create stress and uncertainty, that can inhibit your efforts. Leaders can be the force that transforms this natural trajectory by implementing the strategic guidance and motivation that are necessary for new initiatives to succeed. By developing a strong vision and creating buy-in from the team, you can successfully manage the change processes that are critical to your success. This workshop also includes an interactive role-play experience that enhances perspective-taking and improves understanding of key obstacles to change.
Workshop highlights:
• Developing a strong vision
• Understanding barriers to change
• Creating a strategy to successfully manage change efforts
Giving Effective Feedback
Giving feedback to employees is a key part of leadership, but it’s often something leaders avoid. One of the reasons is because leaders may feel like they don’t know how to give effective feedback, or feel that the feedback doesn’t change behavior anyway. Research shows that they may be right – one in three feedback sessions actually leads to a decrease in performance. This workshop describes evidence-based strategies for giving feedback that improves performance and enhances relationships between leaders and followers. It includes a role play exercise to practice these skills and develop a structure for effective feedback meetings.
Workshop highlights:
• Setting clear performance goals for feedback
• Practicing feedback language that improves relationships between leaders and followers
• Learning how to structure an effective feedback meeting
Successful Delegation Techniques for Managers
Time is one of the most valuable resources in your organization, and assigning and planning tasks are one of a manager’s greatest responsibilities. Often, managers are promoted into their roles because they were high performers themselves, and they are not used to relying on others to get their work done. They may end up taking on too much of the work themselves, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed and spending less time on other key tasks such as developing a strategy or motivating their team. Research shows that delegation builds confidence in team members and teaches them to take greater initiative and responsibility, but managers may not know how to delegate effectively. In this interactive program, we’ll discuss the common misperceptions about delegation and use evidence-based best practices for effectively delegating tasks and empowering employees to achieve them.
Workshop highlights:
• Evaluate how likely you are to delegate to others and barriers that may be preventing you from trusting your team
• Learn guidelines for effective delegation, including resisting “reverse-delegation” where managers still end up completing the work themselves.
• Practice delegation techniques and strategies for monitoring a task
Additional workshop topics:
Power, Persuasion, & Influence
Developing Presence and Charisma
Team Motivation and Rewards
Understanding Personality Differences
Decision Making and Critical Thinking
Managing Conflict and Difficult Relationships at Work
Leading Virtual Teams
Women in STEM
Want to learn more leadership skills?
Sign up to get notified when I launch my upcoming online course: I’m developing an online course for managers to build skills using a combination of short videos, slides, and activities. This evidence-based course would be completely self-paced and focus on practical skills. You can start and finish anytime. Get on the email list to be notified when it comes out here:
