Leadership Development That Moves the Needle

Assessments are leveraged as an accompaniment to executive coaching, public talks, and team workshops, helping clients transform, versus as stand-alone products.

On their own, assessments are an excellent way to grow awareness, but the common belief is that this awareness alone will shift behavior.

I use many assessments strategically in conjunction with development work, to move clients forward.

Assessments, when used mindfully, are excellent catalysts to deepen development work.

Three client favorites include: B.A.N.K.™, D.i.S.C.™, and ENNEAGRAM™.

B.A.N.K.™: Fast, fun, educational, and interactive, this workshop provides easy-to-learn, B.A.N.K.™ communication and relationship basics. Participants leave with enough information and capability to be dangerous! This is an excellent topic for team building and/or communication workshops. B.A.N.K.™ cards are purchased separately and available on the SHOP page.

D.i.S.C.™: Highly engaging, interactive, and insightful, this workshop is ideal for team development. This segment helps participants communicate more effectively, and understand and resolve communication issues, while learning new skills and gaining self-awareness.

ENNEAGRAM™: The deep and complex Enneagram™ assessment is highlighted in this workshop. Interactive and introspective, participants gain a high-level knowledge of the tool, themselves, and their team.

People go to extremes to be who others want them to be. Imposter Syndrome, experienced by many, is a frequent outcome.

Not operating from the core, operating inauthentically, is often a blindspot.

We delve into the Authentic Self, where leaders learn to BE the real and best version of themselves, operate from their core, and address limiting beliefs.

Additional topics include trust, real and candid conversations, inspiration, and overall fulfillment and happiness.

When the Authentic/CORE foundational layer is healthy and strong, the likelihood of a successful operational and strategic layer implementation is also strong.

Every organization experiences change, so the big question is, does your organization have a change mindset?

Track 1: Leadership

Leaders who have been leading through remote work, process issues, engagement, and retention, while juggling relationships, teamwork, and healthy communication are exhausted!

This program is a call-to-action for leaders to shift their mindset. Gain new awareness and adjust perspective with game-changing techniques and exercises. As you manage and lead, create change acceptance, resilience, and maybe even excitement.

Track 2: Organizational Change Mindset

Even good change can cause anxiety. Sometimes it’s because people don’t feel heard. Sometimes it’s because people aren’t on the same page. And sometimes it is because differing personalities perceive change (and each other) differently.

Learn to handle resistance, perceptions, and lack of control. Foster real dialogue, build trust in the midst of change, and embrace an organizational change mindset.

Communication is a huge topic and at the root of many issues. The gap between what you intended to say, and what was heard (or not) is one of the core principles tackled in this segment.

If you vacillate between staying silent or blasting others with your opinion, often causing a rift, underdeveloped communication skills are most likely the cause …often compounded by communication confidence, emotional intelligence, and binary mindset.

Heidi incorporates your input and skill level into her design to deliver a program that takes you and your team to the next level. Outcomes include real and authentic communication, improved relationships (even the ones you’ve been avoiding!), real conversations, honest/tough feedback, clarity, and personality-type capability.

Anticipate an overall improved communication skillset and communication confidence.

How you move through and resolve conflict is career defining. For instance, accepting and ignoring a team member’s unacceptable behavior sends a message. Maybe that you are protecting a friend, don’t have the courage to handle the situation, or can’t hold a person accountable. Leaders often ignore the subtle pre-conflict indicators, thinking everything is okay…until it isn’t.

Whether it is toxicity, avoidance, false perceptions, or a conflict resolution style mismatch, enhancing your skills to handle disagreements proactively puts you in the leadership driver seat, and helps you protect those in your charge.

Stand up to conflict so it doesn’t stand in your way!

Whether intentional or not, your organization has a culture, and your team has an identity. It is defining. But is it how you want to be defined?

Maybe it is time to be intentional. Culture definition and identity work provides a framework for decision making in the absence of clarity.

This foundational topic is critical for business success. How does your organization/team define itself? What do you stand for? Is the team on the same page, “rowing in the same direction”? Is the vision energizing? Can the organization move forward without constant supervision?

Without a clear target and defined execution tactics, the end goal is allusive, and people flounder.

As teams build trust, intentionally define themselves and the culture, identify their purpose, and anticipate their barriers to success, they build a team rich in creativity, problem-solving, collaborative relationships, and laser-focused execution.

IQ gets you in the door, but EQ (emotional intelligence) determines how successful you are once you’re inside. EQ impacts most everything …how you are perceived, your relationships, your reviews, promotional opportunities, and most everything in-between.

It’s not IQ or EQ, it is IQ and EQ. Especially at the higher leadership levels, there is an expectation for both.

Interestingly, the more dominant an individuals’ reliance on IQ, the more likely their resistance to working on EQ …the “silly soft stuff”. Why? Working a lethargic, atrophied, not-used muscle is uncomfortable. The good news is, this muscle can be strengthened. Everyone benefits from an EQ workout…and it can be fun. What are you waiting for?

Most leaders dread annual reviews. They are time-consuming and challenging. Writing (and delivering!) a review that is accurate, honest, courageous, and kind, requires much fortitude, and is why leaders stall.

Avoidance often sends a subtle message that the person receiving the feedback isn’t important (I know, because this is a common complaint!). Ultimately this causes unnecessary stress, and loss in work product quality.

Feedback resistance prevents leaders from learning, adjusting, and growing. Constructive feedback is difficult to hear, yet necessary. Receiving feedback allows people to shift perspective, hear what is truly being said, see the benefit of the feedback, clarify, and use it for the greater good. The goal is BE-ing the best version of YOU! Are you ready to get out of your own way?

Both giving and receiving feedback are important parts of leadership, whether a leader of yourSELF or a manager/leader of others. Learn to give and receive feedback in a constructive, non-ego triggering, balanced way!

If you are a leader of people, or a leader of yourSELF, it is important to keep those leadership muscles toned. Have you stopped working out? Have you gotten leadership lazy? If so, you’ve probably reverted back to a not-so-beneficial go-to default style …which is probably not in the best interest of you or your team.

A few sample leadership questions to consider: Have you connected your team’s goals to the organization/corporate goals? Have you communicated the connection? Do you mostly lead down? Are you leading in a true 360° way? How are your critical thinking skills? Are you getting the best out of the people who follow you? Are you bogged down by people problems? What are you modeling to your team? Are you emotionally intelligence in your interactions? Are you operating from your foundational layer of authenticity?

If you are a success-oriented but out-of-shape leader, it might be time to hit the gym. Heidi can help you with your workout and is available for executive coaching, corporate events/keynote address, public motivational talks, and team workshops and programs.

p.s. There are many leadership subcategories, call to explore the best options for you, your team, and/or your event. (i.e. awareness, candid/courageous conversations, engagement, perspective, sales, strategic thinking, team identity, team meeting optimization, and so on).

The heartbeat of an organization is represented by the many people who synergistically work toward common goals at the operational layer. This layer is tangible—you can see it in action! This is the layer where the organizational culture lives and breathes. When the authentic layer is not fit or healthy, people problems and/or execution issues result at the operational layer.

The Operational Leader™ (healthy or unhealthy) touches many organizational topics including accountability, communication, conflict resolution, engagement, goals, management, mentoring, performance, recognition, systems, team dynamics, teamwork, and trust.

Which is why leadership fitness at the Operational-Self layer is critical. Working out and developing the Operational-Self is key to a Whole Leadership™ strategy.

Organizations cannot thrive without trust, and people cannot build trust when they do not fundamentally understand each other. With little common understanding, there is minimal alignment, and the result is stagnation, disengagement, and conflict.

The key to unlocking many organizational issues (especially people problems!) is understanding personality tendencies. More than an exercise in self-awareness, the “big win” is other-awareness—learning about the personality and behavioral tendencies of others, understanding what makes them tick, and ticked off.

In this workshop topic, people learn how to bring out the best in each other, and the worst. With a sigh of relief, renewed confidence, and sense of power, they (finally) play nice in the sandbox. The result is trust. Quickly followed by engagement, synergy, productivity, and growth.

The Strategic Layer is the fun layer, where most leaders want to play. And if honest, they do not actually spend a lot of time here. Most leaders are imbalanced, and spend much of their time “in the weeds”, micro-managing and in the middle of people problems.

A strong foundation (in the Whole Leadership™ model), frees leaders up to focus their energy on actual strategic endeavors like the vision, critical thinking, creativity, the big picture, and idea generation. By staying out of the weeds, leaders (at the top of the organization, over a business unit/department, or individually), create new space for proactively identifying opportunities, gaps, leverage points, and strategic solutions.

The Open 360° Feedback Process™ is the #1 most positively rated team transformation exercise of all the UPwords Inc./Heidi Frye facilitated workshops.

The Open 360° Feedback Process™…

• is excellent for a team refresh

• gets teams unstuck

• addresses behaviors negatively impacting the team and/or organization in a kind, honest, and productive way

• addresses the “elephant in the room”

• exposes and resolves conflicts and misunderstandings

• gives teams the best opportunity for healthiness, open dialogue, and as BE-ing as dynamic as possible

• has received many positive comments, like

“This process was pivotal in my growth as a leader”,

“My favorite part of the program was the Open 360’s—the feedback was transformational”,

“I wasn’t surprised by the feedback, I already know that about myself, however, I was surprised by how much my behavior impacted the team”, and

“The negative comments didn’t surprise me at all, but I will say, I was totally blown away by the positive…I had no idea I was so valued.”

This highly regarded program is masterfully facilitated by Heidi Frye. With great respect for each contributor, and a process that is 100% proven successful, Heidi fosters a healthy feedback environment which benefits each participant, leveraging a skillset that draws out the truth, an intuition for the needs of each participant, and a keen sense of humor.

When an organization is healthy and runny smoothly, leadership seems deceptively simple. Like a well-oiled machine, leadership is independent while dependent, complex and interrelated—easily taken for granted. And for that reason, many leaders are surprised by the ongoing hard “developmental work” it requires.

Like working out only one half of your body, unused muscles atrophy. Can you imagine intentionally only exercising the muscles on one side of your body? To maintain overall balance, a full workout is required. The same holds true for your inner leader. Overall leadership fitness requires a balanced inner workout of the Authentic Self™, the Operational Self™, and the Strategic Self™.

When out of balance, organizational indicators include silos, people problems, passive agreement, disengagement, and turnover. When out of balance, leaders feel like they are alone, spinning the plates—working hard to illicit input from people, making sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed, hanging out in the weeds (because they feel the need to), and trying to keep the momentum going. It is exhausting!

When whole, leaders tap into real power, creating authentically with others, operating from their CORE, accessing their inner truth, strength, and wisdom, and standing up for that knowingness. True power is powerful and effortless, when balanced and whole.