Services

Training

I deliver workshops on influence, negotiation, collaboration, and process design. These workshops are highly interactive; participants get out what they put in. They walk away with an understanding of their own tendencies and habits, and a plan for how to improve upon them. Training might look like:

  • A keynote lecture at a conference covering one aspect of influence, conflict, etc.

  • Workshops ranging in length from 3 hours to 3 days.

Facilitation

I manage processes within organizations that may be feeling ‘stuck’ or just want to set time aside to reflect on how well people are working with each other. Such facilitation might look like:

  • Designing and implementing a Strategic Planning or Change Management process.

  • Facilitating hard conversations between key stakeholders.

  • Facilitating gatherings, e.g., offsite retreats.

Coaching

I work with executives, elected officials, leaders, and people at all levels of an organization one-on-one to improve their collaborative effectiveness. This coaching might look like:

  • Ongoing sessions to understand the people landscape, develop an influence strategy, and practice it.

  • One-off sessions to accomplish a particular goal, e.g., prepare for a contract negotiation, map out a difficult conversation, etc.

My work focuses on empowering us to stick with it. And a key part of that influence resilience is the idea that self-awareness is fundamental to working with others. I push clients to assess how they show up to such interactions and conversations, and unpack the assumptions they make (and cognitive biases they may have) about their counterparts and how to engage with them.

I draw upon the latest research in social psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience, to customize advice that allows them to overcome the obstacles we often encounter when collaborating with others.

And I believe that practice is critical. If we don’t practice these skills in a deliberate, methodical way, we simply won’t improve. I set people on the path to developing their own practice, and improving over time.

The Ideas

Many of us have been raised with the notion that in order to get what we want out of other people, we have to form rock-solid arguments and back them up with data. We grow up thinking that our arguments alone will be persuasive to the person we need to influence, and that what has persuaded me in the past will persuade you. When those arguments fail, we throw up our hands, and blame our inability to influence them on their irrationality, or lack of education, or evil-ness.

The ideas I develop and share are rooted in the idea that the ability to influence others - whether by leading them, collaborating with them, or simply trying to talk with them at the dinner table - is a reflection of our own skill level. The more we say “this person is irrational,” the more we insult ourselves, and admit we don’t have the skill to have a more productive interaction.