Recent Offerings

1. Mental Health Coping Strategies for Working From Home

Dr. Berney’s summary — “When the world shifts beneath our feet, we all need a little extra support. With kids at home, worries about health, and the difficulties of quarantine, working from home is challenging—to say the least! This session focuses on tools to help you stay calm, manage your stress and keep your focus.”

In this session, participants will learn:

• Tips for structuring your day and workspace at home

• Self-care techniques to keep you centered and calm

• Work management tools (The Pomodoro Technique, Ivy Lee Six, Chunking) to help you focus

• Tips for disengaging from worry, conflict, and tension

2. Mental Health Coping Strategies for Returning to Work

Dr. Berney’s summary — “As restrictions ease and we begin to return to the workplace, many experience a host of different feelings that may include relief, unease, fear, and anxiety. We wonder how we can stay safe while at the same time re-engaging with people at work. 

Some are relieved to return to the familiar structure of the workplace and the company of teammates, while others are unhappy shedding their sweatpants and returning to a regular commute and a physical environment they fear will be unsafe.”

This session will address the many emotions and concerns that arise when returning to work, as well as offer strategies to help us to keep safe, feel calm, get engaged, and be productive. More specifically, participants will:

• Discuss your worries and concerns about returning to work

• Discern between facts and fiction around causes for concern

• Discuss health and safety guidelines in your organization

• Identify strategies to help you keep and feel safe

• Learn tools to minimize your worry and anxiety

3. Navigating the Uncertainty of Continuous Change

Dr. Berney’s summary — “We are living in a time when change is the norm. Not only do employees need to navigate all kinds of organizational change, from staffing to leadership changes, but they need to learn how to work virtually, to work in a home environment where children and others are around, and to cope with the impact of a novel virus is not well understood. Navigating these sorts of changes has become a critical competency for everyone -- both professionally and personally!”

 In this session, participants will learn:

• The difference between change and transition

• The three stages of the change/transition process

• How to identify typical reactions to change

• Specific strategies to help navigate change

• Strategies for addressing our fears and concerns

• Best practices for communication during change

4. Managing Virtually

Dr. Berney’s summary — “At no other time in the past decade is managing remotely and virtually a more important leadership competency. In addition to learning virtual management tools, practices, and processes, managers need to learn how to facilitate connection among their staff and to keep connected with their team members themselves in spite of being located remotely.”

In this session, managers will learn:

• How to establish clear goals and expectations for the work being produced

• Best Practices for communicating work progress, sharing information and, being accessible when working remotely

• Best Practices for daily and weekly communication with individuals and teams using online-shared messaging; online-shared management materials; and online meetings  both one-on-one and all-hands

• Best Practices for promoting and ensuring group-wide participation in online meetings

• Best Practices for maintaining and improving individual and team morale and productivity

5. How to Have Difficult Conversations

In this course, Dr. Berney helps participants learn how to have difficult conversations. Participants discover what their “go to” conflict style is by taking the TKI Assessment, and then they learn how to strategically choose the best style to use when conversations involve conflict. They also learn best practices for identifying both others’ and their own interests and goals, how to plan difficult conversations prior to having them, and how to listen actively in order to come to a joint agreement.

In the session, participants will:

• Identify their own conflict style, its strengths, and its weaknesses

• Learn how to communicate with others with different conflict styles

• Learn which is the best conflict style to use in a variety of different situations

• Identify unproductive thinking patterns and approaches to difficult conversations

• Learn how to actively listen to the other’s concerns without defensiveness

• Practice simple, proven strategies for entering and working through “hard to have conversations” and conflict situation.

6. Enhancing Emotional Intelligence at Work

Dr. Berney’s summary — “As the pace of organizational change continues to accelerate, the importance of emotional intelligence increases with it. Driven by competition, innovation, increased globalization and rapid technological change, leaders, managers and staff, now more than ever, must employ emotional intelligence to get the best from their people.

Studies conducted by The Center for Creative Leadership have shown that leaders with a high level of self-awareness significantly outperform all others. As a matter of fact, the competencies of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills have been found to be far more important than ever realized in staff at all levels.”

This high energy, interactive session will provide specific strategies and tools for enhancing The 5 core Components of Emotional Intelligence (EI).

In this course, participants will:

• Identify the different components of Emotional Intelligence

• Assess which components require further development

• Apply these components to real work situations

• Understand what triggers an amygdala hijack in you, and how to manage it

• Manage both yours and others’ resistance

• Demonstrate increased empathy toward others

• Apply the four key strategies for enhancing Emotional Intelligence