Seminars and workshops
Do the work
in the room.
A full day, on site, with your leadership team. Five hands-on exercises, your own 360 results on the table, and ten principles to leave with.
Why a workshop
Nobody says
‘I have a leadership problem.’
Clients rarely recognize when they are the architects of their own misery. They will admit to a culture problem. A leadership problem is too personal, so the honest conversation never happens on its own.
A seminar creates the conditions for it: outside facilitators, a structured sequence, and a room where the most senior person goes first. Eric and Stacie have run this day inside law firms and professional-services organizations, and they run it without flattering anyone.
Roughly half the day is exercises rather than slides. That is deliberate. A room that has argued its way to a conclusion will act on it; a room that was told the conclusion will not.
Before the day
We run your 360s first.
The single most valuable hour of the seminar runs on your own data, not a case study. Ahead of the session we run 360 reviews across your firm, on questions built for the way a professional-services organization actually works — whether leadership communicates the reasons behind change, whether standards get applied consistently, whether people feel safe voicing a dissenting opinion.
The scored results come into the room. The group works through what each leader should start doing, stop doing, and keep doing, in their own words, from their own people.
There is also a short scoping call, and a look at whatever engagement or turnover data you already have, so the day is built for the argument your firm is actually having.
The arc
How the day runs.
Seven movements, tailored to your industry and the problem you actually have. This is the shape of the day, not a script.
Why this matters at all
Good leaders create and maintain positive culture; positive culture drives positive behavior; positive behavior produces positive results. Then the cost of not doing it: people leave bad bosses rather than bad firms, replacing a professional runs to roughly twice their salary, and half of all employees are not engaged.
Who you are actually leading now
Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z want visibly different things from a leader. What an A-player looks like has changed again in an AI-enabled firm. Then McKinsey’s seventeen team health drivers — configuration, alignment, execution, renewal — give the room a shared vocabulary before anyone is asked to be honest.
What got us here won’t get us there
The authenticity critique, in full. Why a leader can be textbook authentic and still be the problem, what the common firm structures reward, and the two Steve Jobs case studies — the one before the exile and the one after.
Eat last, and know your Why
Inverting the pyramid. Mattis on the three C’s — competence, caring, conviction — and Saban on what a career of building people actually produced. Then the fourteen classic traits, seen through service rather than performance.
Hall of mirrors
Lincoln’s team of rivals, mirrors versus sycophants, and the two hurdles that stop most leaders here: ego and the vulnerability required to be held accountable. After-action reports as the routine that keeps it honest, followed by your own 360 results.
Your team through new eyes, and the ROI of caring
Finding the leaders you already have without the titles, and spotting the Queen Bee dynamic that quietly costs you people. Then the business case: engagement, profitability, attrition and what each is worth.
Change what you can, partner to cover the rest
Buffett and Munger as the model. An honest inventory of what you can build in yourself, and a named plan for the coverage you cannot. The day closes on the ten principles.
The exercises
Five times the room does the work.
These are the parts people remember, and the parts that only work with outside facilitation.
Word Cloud
Anonymous, individual
Working from McKinsey’s seventeen team health behaviors, everyone writes their top five on Post-It notes — one behavior per note. The room’s real priorities appear on the wall in about four minutes, and they are rarely the ones leadership expected.
Experience Share
Pairs, five minutes
Each person tells their partner about the best or the worst boss they ever had. The room then builds two columns of behaviors. Nobody argues with the list, because everyone in it wrote it.
Classic Leadership Traits
Individual, written
Fourteen classic traits, then three questions in writing: beyond title and compensation, why do you want to lead? What lasting impact do you want on the people you lead? Looking back years from now, what would make you feel you were truly successful? This is where the Why gets found.
360 Review Discussion
Group, on your own data
Not a hypothetical. The 360s are run across your firm beforehand and the actual results come into the room: what should this person start doing, stop doing, and keep doing. It is the most uncomfortable hour of the day and the one that changes behavior.
Preference Quadrant
Group
How people want to be led, mapped. It ends the guessing that Pizza Friday was standing in for.
What everyone leaves with
The ten principles
of Invested Leadership.
The closing slide of the seminar, and the shortest honest summary of the method.
Not a value on a wall. A business requirement with numbers attached.
Being true to yourself says nothing about the people you lead.
You cannot fix a blind spot you will not look at.
Where you cannot give the care, name who will.
The leader sits at the bottom holding the weight, not the top.
It is earned slowly, spent instantly, and it is the whole game.
Naming someone a manager does not make anyone follow them.
Ask. Do not assume, and do not call the assumption culture.
Lean into the first without falling into the second.
You are competing with the leader you were yesterday.
In the end, if all externalities are equal, a caring enterprise is very likely to make more money than an uncaring enterprise.
Invested Leadership
Artifacts
You keep more
than a memory.
- Your firm’s 360 results, scored and discussed, with start / stop / continue captured for each leader
- The room’s own ranking of the team behaviors that matter most to the people in it
- A best-boss and worst-boss behavior list built by your team, not handed to them
- Each leader’s written answer to why they want to lead at all
- A coverage plan naming who fills which interpersonal gap, for whom, and by when
- A copy of the book for every participant
Format and logistics
Built around your team.
The full-day session is the version that changes what happens after everyone goes home. Tell us your constraints and we will tell you honestly what fits in the time you have.
- Core format
- Full day, on site, one or both authors facilitating
- Group size
- Works best with a leadership team and the managers below it
- Pre-work
- Firm-wide 360 reviews, scoping call, review of your engagement or turnover data
- Materials
- Post-Its and wall space. The exercises are analogue on purpose.
- Follow-up
- A check-in session to see what held and what did not
- Travel
- Based in Durham, North Carolina. Available nationally.
Start here
Plan a session.
Tell us the size of the team, the day you can protect, and what is actually going wrong. We will recommend a shape, or tell you that you do not need one yet.