WORK POSITIVE! STRATEGIES AND SKILLS FOR THRIVING IN YOUR ORGANIZATION™

Work Positive!™ grew out of a central observation––that people often fail to achieve career success not because they lack the specific skills required by their jobs but because they fail to acquire the more subtle, artful skills of navigating the organizational environment.

Successful people are excellent navigators. They are highly adept at:

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 Handling organizational politics in astute, but ethical, ways
•
 “Decoding” the organization’s largely unspoken cultural expectations
•
 Managing their emotions and egos appropriately, especially in challenging situations
•
 Maintaining a flexible perspective—from strategic to tactical
•
 Grasping the impact of their work on organizational goals—and on others
•
 Managing complex and delicate situations in organizationally savvy ways
• Getting things done through influence-based personal networks
• Interacting effectively in meetings and other interpersonal settings
• Building a productive, mutually satisfying relationship with their manager
• Taking charge of their reputation and career

Work Positive!™ teaches these artful skills in a lively, relevant two-day workshop that encapsulates the knowledge that successful, experienced business professionals have often spent years acquiring, and helps attendees fast-forward their own navigational abilities.

Research

Work Positive!™ concepts were derived from observations in scores of organizations, face-to-face interviews with successful business professionals, a literature review, and analysis of a Work Positive!™ questionnaire completed by 110 respondents. Interviewees and respondents were asked to reflect on their early work experience and describe highly valuable lessons they learned at that time—as well as lessons they didn’t learn but wish they had. They were also asked to identify those skills that, in their opionion, employes must learn early in their careers to get on a success path and stay on it.

The combined results were then used to identify the key concepts and tools around which Work Positive!™ is designed.

Audience

The audience for Work Positive!™ includes all early-career employees, including those with the potential to move into positions of greater responsibility and leadership.

Program Features

Flexible. Client-specific modules can also be developed and integrated into the program.

Self-Assessment. Participants complete a Work Self-Assessment before attending the workshop, then use the results during the session to focus their skill development.

Work Positive!™ Action Model. Participants learn that action in work settings must be based on awareness and analysis––and that it must be appropriate to the goals of the organization. This is what Jacquard calls informed action, which is embodied in a behavioral model presented and applied throughout the workshop.

Rapid Reminders™. Short, powerful reinforcement mini-lessons––Rapid Reminders™––are e-mailed to each participant monthly for 12 months following the workshop rollout.

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What Your Attendees Will Experience––Workshop Highlights

Day 1

On Day 1, participants focus on how their actual work affects the organization…how they can interact confidently up, down, and across the organization…how self-management can make them a positive force in their organization.

Day 1 Topics Learning Focus
Getting Work Done—Excellently!
• Increase awareness and understanding of how your work affects others' work and the organization at large.
• Build skill at identifying how to take responsibility for, and control of, producing high-quality work.
• Make more informed decisions about how to maximize the positive impact of your work.
Interpreting Your Self-Assessment
• Use the results of the pre-workshop self-assessment to gain a deeper understanding of your potential organizational strengths and derailers.
Interacting with Confidence
• Demonstrate the unique characteristics of workplace interactions.
• Illustrate what goes into a good workplace interaction.
• Show how to frame an interaction.
• Present an easy-to-use approach to conducting balanced, respectful, and mutually productive conversations (the LOOQ process™).
• Offer strategies for—and practice in—handling typical challenging workplace interactions.
Managing Yourself
• Illustrate how having three types of awareness provides the foundation for successful self-management.
• Demonstrate how the Work Positive! Action Model functions as a tool for applying the skills of emotional intelligence in challenging workplace situations.
• Present empathy as a powerful element of emotional intelligence and a positive force in self-management.
• Provide a constructive way of analyzing and managing your reputation.

Day 2

On Day 2, participants learn how they can use informal, influenced-based approaches to getting things done…how to deal with workplace politics in a positive, ethical fashion…how to work collaboratively and positively with their manager.

Day 2 Topics Learning Focus
Building Your Network
• Explain the art and science of networking.
• Demonstrate the power of informal, influenced-based networks.
• Contrast strong and weak networks.
• Present profiles of the five types of people that all networks should include.
• Provide an approach to assessing your network.
Developing Organizational
Savvy
• Explain what organizational savvy is and why it’s important to develop it.
• Demonstrate the link between culture and organizational savvy.
• Present positive, ethical ways of becoming more influential and politically astute.
• Present the 10 key tasks of developing organizational savvy
• Offer tips for recognizing manipulative power plays and dealing positively with them.
Working with Your Manager
• Demonstrate that successful contributors take responsibility for managing the relationship with their manager.
• Reframe the “boss/subordinate” relationship as one of mutual dependence.
• Show how developing a healthy relationship requires knowledge of your manager’s strengths, weaknesses, work style, needs, organizational goals, pressures.
• Use the LOOQ ™ skills and Work Positive! Action Model to view the world from the manager’s point of view.

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