RESEARCH
360 Feedback – Leadership Team
Leadership teams often work together closely on a daily basis and form perceptions and opinions of one another as a result. While perception may be reality, reality may not be perception.
Shift Worldwide works with leadership teams to help them understand one another better in order to create a more optimal level of performance.
Using both objective and subjective research techniques that are customized to each team’s culture, we help leaders gain insight into their own and others’ strengths and performance issues. We then facilitate a group discussion to help teams address issues and develop better ways of interacting with another and their organizations.
Client Opportunity Discovery
Conventional wisdom says that 80% of a company’s business comes from 20% of its clients. Of utmost importance to a firm, then, is keeping its best clients happy.
Shift Worldwide works with leadership and sales organizations to strengthen relationships with key clients.
We work with the firm to shape a third-party research program that not only elicits answers and delivers key messages, but also discovers opportunities as a part of an interview. Interviews are conducted with multiple influencers within the key account so that a comprehensive view of performance and opportunity is achieved.
Organizational Readiness
While working with one another to develop initiatives and a course of action, leadership teams sometimes fail to consider whether the organization is ready for significant, proactive change.
Shift Worldwide helps leadership teams understand whether the organization is ready for such a change, and if not, makes strategic and tactical suggestions on how to build buy-in.
We work with organizations to develop an approach that will deliver an unbiased view of the current culture. By interviewing informal leaders and negative influencers, we gain a view of opportunities and issues that may arise as a result of an initiative rollout. This information can serve as a platform to develop preemptive approaches to expected issues.
Qualitative Market Survey
Clients, non-clients and former clients are each incredible resources of information that are critical to business performance. They provide insights into current performance, unmet needs and approaches to improvement.
Shift Worldwide works with leadership teams and marketing departments to gain these insights, leading to reinforcement, strengthening or innovation in services and/or products.
We custom design questionnaires, source potential interviewees, initiate contact, interview and present compelling results…all in a way that will strengthen the firm’s brand. Our proprietary techniques result in a 20-30% response rate, guaranteeing a quick turnaround within a highly targeted environment.
FACILITATION
Building Buy-In
A process for change is important, but without the buy-in of the people, relying on process is a risky proposition.
Shift Worldwide helps individual leaders and leadership teams build buy-in before launching an initiative, thereby creating higher odds for success.
Using a proprietary “Building Buy-In” methodology, we help leaders identify, leverage and manage four types of people within the organization: Champions, Allies, Neutrals and Power Snakes. Through careful monitoring of shifts in perspective as well as tactical positioning and messaging, many initiatives that seemed impossible to execute are now merely challenging.
Ideation Cloud
Being “in the weeds” within your organization can lead to a lack of ideation and innovation, which can breed competitive disadvantage.
Shift Worldwide works with leadership teams and cross-departmental influencers within the organization to unleash new ideas in a highly experiential, non-judgmental way.
We perform extensive research before each engagement to gain a base of knowledge across competitors, within the industry and cross-industry and present it to teams prior to the group meeting. We then facilitate an enlightening conversation that focuses on solving problems in different ways, anticipating internal as well as external needs and creating a vision of the future where the firm is both dominant and joyous.
Group Cases
Dealing with challenging situations is a constant in every business, yet not everyone handles them in the same, effective way.
Shift Worldwide helps leadership teams, division and departmental heads and managers create an environment of learning by facilitating group discussions through cases.
We work with leaders to develop an understanding of issues, how they are handled currently and how they should be handled. We then develop challenging sample cases based on situations that frequently arise. Through facilitation, group discussion and introduction of best practices, optimal ways to handle situations emerge, thereby base-setting expectations of future performance.
Process Creation and Decision Making
Creating new processes to address emerging situations or making critical business decisions quickly can often be tricky, especially if maintaining and enhancing relationships is of importance to your leadership team.
Shift Worldwide helps organizations work in teams to facilitate the development of process solutions as well as make critical decisions quickly.
We work with the key leader to set the agenda, understand the issues and map the anticipated perceptions of each participant. Then, while over several hours or many days, we facilitate discussion and decision-making that results in momentum and the preservation and enhancement of relationships.
TRAINING
Initiative Rollout: Messaging and Communication
When rolling out an initiative to others in the organization, leaders are typically very heavy on process and very light on communication. Yet communication is the vehicle whereby everyone gains clarity.
Shift Worldwide works with leadership teams to develop appropriate messaging and communication programs related to initiative rollouts.
We work with solo leaders as well as large leadership teams to get everyone on the same page prior to the launch of the initiative with regard to reasoning, internal and external messaging and answers to frequently asked questions. We then help plan and manage the communications launch and follow through to ensure that the initiative sticks.
Leadership Training Program
It is said that leaders facilitate change and managers manage it. Many managers exist in every business, but relatively few leaders do.
Shift Worldwide works with organizations to identify to develop high-performing managers into leaders.
Using a proprietary program, we help shift the performance and perception of future stars within the organization by first helping them better understand themselves and their motivations. Upon identifying and addressing their strengths and blind spots, we then teach them to apply the model to others within the organization, helping them become “servant leaders.”
Organizational Integration Training and Communication
Whether through merger, acquisition, consolidation or optimization, parts of an organization that had not worked with one another previously are now asked to do so in an effective and efficient manner.
Shift Worldwide helps leaders and leadership teams develop training programs that help communicate the importance of working together as well as how to best work together.
We help classify and identify strong positive and negative cultural aspects for merging organizations and develop custom training to maximize performance. We then deliver the training in a highly experiential way that forces the positive development of relationships that organizations can build upon in learning how to best work with one another.
Satellite Office Teamwork and Sales Training for Law Firms
Law firms often have satellite offices in locations far from headquarters. This often results in very different cultures and a feeling of being “out of the loop.” Moreover, lawyers work fairly independently of each other, which limits cross-selling and local relationship knowledge sharing.
Shift Worldwide works with law firm satellite offices to help them find strength and momentum through teamwork.
Applying the concepts, tactics and best practices of Building Buy-In, Leadership Coaching and Sales Training to a legal satellite office environment yields surprisingly effective results, both in market penetration as well as enhanced internal relationships. Our approach is practical, tactical and immediately beneficial, even to the most skeptical attorneys.
COACHING
Communication Coaching
The stakes may be high when communicating to the board of directors, external stakeholders or internally to the organization. Often times, you only have one chance to “nail it.”
Shift Worldwide works with individual leaders to develop communication approaches that enlighten and persuade audiences.
Our consultants are experts in the arts of speechwriting, presentation creation, ghost writing, delivery coaching and audience power assessment. We work closely to coach our clients to ensure that the right message gets across to the right people at the right time, leading to enhanced perception and power.
Leadership Bootcamp
Leaders and managers often face struggles in performance unrelated to acquiring new skill sets through training. Many times, it is their own self-imposed limitations that are preventing leadership and organizational growth.
Shift Worldwide works with individual leaders and managers to identify and address performance issues related to inhibitive behavior.
Prior to the Leadership Bootcamp, we work with the leader’s superior to understand issues and expectations and gain insight by hearing relevant stories and reviewing past performance assessments. During an intensive one-day Leadership Bootcamp coaching session, our consultants create a confidential, revealing and secure environment in which performance is addressed, reasoning is discovered and remedies are created, leading to a dramatic improvement in performance.
Political Coaching
Politics are a part of every organization. Managing personalities, individual motivations and internal and external forces can be challenging, even for the savviest player.
Shift Worldwide works with leaders as a political soundboard, adviser and confidant to help maximize their power and limit surprises.
Relying on years of experience in organizational politics across multiple industries (including government), we are able to spot issues and help our clients create approaches that yield opportunity. Coaching over time helps create an environment where tactics can be developed and executed, which manifest as changes in behavior that enhance power.
Sales Coaching
In smaller organizations, those who sell services or products may not have a sales manager or leader to turn to for advice. Similarly, in larger organizations, the sales manager or leader may wish for an outside perspective to enhance their team’s performance.
Shift Worldwide helps those in sales boost their performance through strategic and tactical coaching.
Assessing the market, current clients, the mixture of talent and strengths of the team enables us to provide targeted, ongoing advice. All of our consultants have sold products or services in the past, resulting in an approach that is based in reality rather than in the ivory tower.
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