Leadership Courses

This course builds leaders’ skills in handling chronic performance problems. They learn how to document and present a solid case for needed improvement and use effective interaction skills. Leaders identify the steps to take after the performance problem discussion to provide ongoing feedback and support, and determine if it is necessary to impose formal consequences.

Helps leaders:

• Effectively address poor performance in a firm, fair, and consistent manner.
• Minimize the impact of chronic performance problems on people, productivity, and profitability.
• Provide problem performers with a clear understanding of what they must do to improve and the consequences of failing to do so.
• Encourage people to take ownership of, and be accountable for, improving their work performance.

In this course, participants will learn four advanced coaching techniques that develop proficiency in using the Interaction Essentials in challenging situations. Leaders learn to ask powerful and insightful questions and how to drive higher levels of employee engagement through appreciation.

Helps leaders:

• Increase the agility and impact of their coaching.
• Make the most of each coaching opportunity.
• Provide input to help team members gain timely insights into their work.
• Enhance the confidence and competence of their staff on an ongoing basis.
• Build an engaged workforce that feels challenged and valued.

This course introduces Trust Builders, actions leaders can take to build and sustain trusting relationships, as well as common Trust Breakers that can erode or quickly break trust. Applying these skills to build trusting relationships enables people to take risks, identify and solve problems, and collaborate to achieve business results.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize how trust in the workplace affects business results.
• Analyze their role in building and sustaining trust.
• Identify common workplace behaviors that can build, sustain, or break trust.
• Demonstrate behaviors that show they trust others, as well as give people the confidence to trust them.
• Use interaction skills to foster open communication, build and maintain trusting relationships, and repair damaged ones.

Leaders of other managers develop multi-directional coaching skills and learn the proactive inquiry method for more effective interactions with their teams. This course is designed for mid- to senior-level leaders. 

Helps leaders:

• Clearly differentiate and seek higher-level coaching opportunities that provide significant payoff to the individual, team, and organization.
• Apply advanced skills to conduct more compelling, collaborative, and rewarding coaching discussions.
• Seek and offer feedback that people can accept and act on to ensure achievement of business goals.
• Monitor and measure the continuous improvement of coaching skills in themselves and those they coach.
• Build and sustain a coaching culture within their team.

By helping learners understand the importance of three coaching techniques and how to effectively handle both proactive and reactive coaching discussions, this course helps leaders have more effective and efficient interactions.

Helps leaders:

• Encourage people to take ownership of, and be accountable for, their work performance.
• Create a work environment where people are comfortable taking on the risks associated with new responsibilities.
• Boost morale, improve productivity, and increase profitability by coaching for peak performance in each person.
• Manage work performance issues in a fair, consistent manner.

In this course, leaders recognize the benefits of a growth mindset, and the insight tool measures their general orientation to how they view other’s potential to grow. They learn and practice a practical approach to coaching in the moment, in any situation.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize and nurture the potential within others to grow and change.
• Build a coaching relationship based on trust.
• Guide, inspire, support, and empower in the moment.
• Ask questions, connect at a human level, and energize into action.

This foundation course for most Interaction Management^® courses helps leaders communicate effectively so they can spark action in others. The course teaches leaders the Interaction Essentials they need to handle the variety of challenges and opportunities they encounter every day in the workplace and beyond.

Helps leaders:

• Achieve results through others by building strong interpersonal relationships.
• Plan for successful interactions with team members─in person and virtually.
• Provide meaningful, supportive feedback that motivates team members and helps individuals improve their performance.
• Impact business outcomes by consistently meeting the personal and practical needs of others.

This foundational course provides individuals with a powerful set of interaction skills that enables them to communicate more effectively with colleagues and customers and, in the process, build trust, strengthen partnerships, and achieve desired results.

Helps individuals:

• Recognize the impact they can have on their success and the success of others by enhancing interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
• Relate to colleagues and customers in a way that meets their personal needs while also meeting the practical need of accomplishing objectives.
• Use a set of interaction process skills that enable them to conduct more successful discussions that achieve results.
• Use a technique for providing specific, meaningful feedback that helps people improve their performance and increase productivity.

This course highlights to leaders that engaging the “head”—the business outcome of the conversation—is just as critical as recognizing and addressing the “heart”—people’s feelings such as being respected or appreciated. Leaders will recognize the role of emotional intelligence in success as a leader as they develop foundational leadership skills that apply to the wide range of workplace situations they must handle.

Helps leaders:

• Conduct conversations that achieve the intended business goals.
• Communicate and respond in ways that meet the unique personal needs of team members and others.
• Recognize and react to emotions (their own and others’) present in work situations.
• Use a technique to provide meaningful, supportive feedback.

This course provides a new, uncomplicated approach to performance management. Instead of semiannual reviews driven by managers, this new process is about having regular, meaningful dialog. In these everyday conversations, leaders coach and develop, making the time they invest reap better performance and stronger relationships with their direct reports.

Helps leaders:

• Conduct everyday conversations that inspire their direct reports to achieve their personal best.
• Nurture workplace relationships and grow trust.
• Give feedback for improvement that’s more comfortable for themselves and their direct reports.
• Convey clear expectations for what their direct reports should be achieving and how.
• Champion a conversation-based approach to managing performance within their organization.

This session moves past the numbers game of diverse representation to focus on leaning into and leveraging the unique abilities, perspectives, styles, and ideas of each person. Stereotypes and unconscious bias are explored as well as the differences in who we are, how we think, and what it means to an inclusive workplace. Three practices lay out a personalized path for identifying, engaging with, and advocating for individuals whose voices must and should be heard.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize biases and stereotypes that can affect workplace decisions. 
• Identify those who’ve been excluded and invite them to the table. 
• Engage everyone and encourage their voices and contributions. 
• Advocate for those with different perspectives and ignite their personal success.

During this two-hour session, participants take an in-depth look at what they value most, connect with their purpose as a leader, and craft a personal brand statement that embodies the impact they want to achieve in the workplace.​

In this course, leaders learn the skills they need to address these challenges, gain the commitment of team members, develop individual skills and abilities, and enhance the overall capability and capacity of their teams and, ultimately, the organization. Leaders learn to identify the tasks they need to delegate, select the most appropriate individuals, assess capabilities and commitment, and plan the delegation discussion. That discussion includes the level of decision-making authority, amount of support, and methods for monitoring progress and measuring results.

Helps leaders:

• Achieve key business results by leveraging the entire team’s abilities.
• Build the team’s capabilities and capacity through developmental delegations.
• Free up time to focus on mission-critical responsibilities.
• Delegate with increased confidence.

This course sets out to help leaders shift their mindset about what they can delegate and feel more comfortable and confident doing so. Learners dig into their workload to identify tasks they’d never consider delegating. They use methods for matching people to tasks they’re both motivated and capable of doing. And, they practice the delegation conversation they’ll have to ensure success.

Helps leaders:

• Delegate work that they wouldn’t have before.​
• Identify tasks to delegate that engage, empower, and develop the team. ​
• Match a person’s capabilities and motivations to an appropriate task.​
• Share work that extends the right amount of ownership and decision-making authority. ​
• Establish clear boundaries, support,​ and follow-up with each delegation.

In this course, mid- to senior level leaders learn to define the current state of team development as well as the ideal future state, pinpointing team and individual strengths and growth needs. Also, identify and develop high potentials for future leadership roles, assess the impact and effectiveness of development efforts, and provide feedback.

Helps leaders:

• Identify their team’s development needs as they relate to achieving current and future business priorities.
• Describe the experienced leader’s role in developing direct reports.
• Recognize how to achieve the highest pay-off for their efforts in developing others.
• Use a three-phase process—Assess, Acquire, Apply—to help individuals identify strengths and growth areas, plan development strategies, and acquire and apply new or enhanced knowledge, skills, and experience.
• Measure and provide feedback on the effectiveness and impact of development efforts on the individual, team, and organization.

In this course, learners are introduced to a practical process to guide their own and their direct reports’ development-planning efforts. The outcome is a meaningful development plan that supports the organization’s current and future business needs.

Helps leaders:

• Recognize the role of the leader and the team member in development planning and execution.
• Recognize the importance of development to the success of individuals, teams, and the organization.
• Use a three-step process—Assess–Acquire–Apply—to identify strengths and growth areas, plan development actions, and successfully implement development plans.
• Employ a set of best practices to overcome common development barriers and challenges.
• Measure the effectiveness of their development efforts so they know they are successful.

This course provides the skills and resources leaders need to accelerate the process of implementing change with their team members and to create an agile work environment where people are more open to change.

Helps leaders:

• Accelerate the process of making change happen.
• Minimize the potential negative effects change can have on productivity, morale, and collaboration.
• Turn resistance into commitment and inspire team members to take ownership of change.
• Clearly communicate the business rationale and benefits of change for the team and the organization.

This course for individual contributors focuses on their role in implementing change in the workplace. Participants discover their Change IQ, learn about the phases of change that many people experience, and are introduced to best practices that will enable them to tackle and overcome the new business challenges of today and tomorrow.

Helps individuals:

• Commit to and take ownership of change.
• Effectively recognize change, explore change, and overcome personal resistance to change.
• Minimize the negative impact on individuals, work groups, and the organization of not adapting to change.
• Demonstrate an embracing change mind-set that influences others to embrace workplace change.

This course provides leaders with a model to determine what drives each individual’s engagement, as well as methods for proactive engagement and talent retention. Participants learn how to conduct “engagement conversations” and “retention conversations.” They explore ways to offer recognition and create an engaging environment using no-cost “everyday engagers.”

Helps leaders:

• Engage individuals on a daily basis.
• Uncover and address what individuals need to be more satisfied and engaged at work.
• Inspire higher levels of engagement by acknowledging the value people bring to the organization and showing them that they matter.
• Increase the quality of conversations with people about their engagement and intent to stay.

In this course, leaders will learn the three key elements of executing strategy at the front line─Focus, Measurement, and Accountability. They learn how to focus on the few most critical priorities, to measure progress toward the accomplishment of these priorities, and to hold themselves and their team members accountable against the metrics. Participants will also explore best practices for accountability, such as determining and communicating accountability—including consequences. The Strategy Execution Tool helps leaders capture in one place their top priorities, progress and outcome measures, and those accountable for achieving the priorities. Using the three elements of execution ensures that leaders and their teams get the right things done, in spite of daily distractions.

Helps leaders:

• Maintain focus on important work in the midst of the daily pressure of business.
• Explain the importance of critical work to their team and others.
• Track progress and outcomes against relevant measures to ensure successful execution.
• Communicate accountabilities so that team members understand the importance, impact, and expectations regarding priority work.

During this two-hour session, participants explore the consequences of fear and failure and the impact a fixed versus growth mindset can have on their ability to take risks. They learn how to mitigate those risks by forming a safety net that enables them to jump into the unknown...and achieve extraordinary things!

This course provides a practical approach, and tools and techniques, to help leaders and their teams think differently about how they work and to help them generate new ideas that add value to your organization and your customers. Leaders also learn what they can say and do to foster innovation with their teams.

Helps leaders:

• Help their teams contribute to business objectives when they:
  • Focus on innovation opportunities that will help their customers meet their objectives.
  • Build robust innovative ideas that consider many perspectives.
  • Learn and benefit from both success and failure.
  • Work together to advocate for the innovation and ensure that valuable new ideas are not lost.
• Enhance their contributions as a leader by fostering innovation with their team.

In this course, individual performers learn how to effectively deliver both positive and developmental feedback. They also learn how to be receptive to feedback and to listen to accurately understand the speaker’s intended message. In the workplace, these skills help them to optimize and sustain their own and their coworkers’ performance.

Helps individuals:

• Support colleagues’ job performance, growth, and development.
• Build authentic, trusting relationships with colleagues.
• More wisely choose opportunities to give and seek feedback.
• Handle, reduce, or eliminate defensiveness or negative emotions that can occur in a feedback discussion.
• Help create a culture of teamwork and performance.

During this two-hour session, participants learn how to be bold and ask for the next step in their career. They identify their stakeholders, learn how to craft a strategy, package their idea, and gain commitment from others. 

In this course, mid- to senior level leaders learn how to create an influence strategy that clearly links their ideas and recommendations to changes that will have a positive impact on individual, team, and organizational performance.

Helps leaders:

• Identify and assess influence opportunities and choose strategies to achieve business results.
• Evaluate their business network and build supportive and reciprocal long-term working relationships at all levels of the organization.
• Leverage their personal power to move people to take action on those ideas, opportunities, and recommendations that will have the greatest impact on organizational priorities.
• Use techniques that allow them to engage people both emotionally and rationally.
• Assess the people they need to influence—understanding their motivations, needs, and concerns—so they can change or reinforce their perceptions and gain their commitment.
• Capture people’s attention and make things happen.

In this course, we train mid- to senior level leaders to use techniques that support innovation. By gaining experience with these techniques in an engaging classroom setting, leaders will be equipped to model ideal conditions for innovation—and be a keeper of the culture that inspires and rewards their teams.

Helps leaders:

• Apply leadership actions that minimize the challenges to creating an innovative environment.
• Recognize their role as a leader in building and sustaining the conditions for innovation.
• Make and measure 30-day commitments to hold themselves accountable for instilling a culture of innovation.

Build excitement for your women in leadership initiative with this high-energy keynote for your lunch-and-learn conference or virtual session. Female and male attendees will find real-world wisdom from themes including confidence, inner strength, and accessing the leader within.

With DDI's Leaders as Allies session, you can create a more equitable and gender-diverse workplace extended to both men and women. This onsite or virtual session empowers bosses and colleagues to be allies to women. It uniquely focuses on what allies can do to champion women versus what they cannot do.

Executives are also in a unique and powerful position to make substantial advancements with gender equality within their organization. The Executives as Allies Session includes all foundational content covered in the standard Leaders as Allies course, with activities and content leveled-up to accommodate an audience of top-level leaders. After surfacing top organizational barriers to women in leadership, participants define actions to address and overcome the identified challenges. Participants then establish lead and lag measures to monitor progress toward a more gender diverse leadership pool. Opportunities for ongoing post-session dialogue and consulting are also available.

In Leading Self, learners gain insight about their personal values, their emotions and how they manage them, and the natural talents they bring to the workplace. Through self-insight tools, engaging activities, and compelling video, learners expand their understanding of themselves so they can heighten their impact at work.

Helps individuals:

• Increase internal self-awareness by identifying values, emotions, and talents.
• Define personal code of values.
• Identify emotional triggers and learn tactics to manage response.
• Identify leadership talents to leverage for greater positive impact.

This online course teaches leaders how to overcome the challenges of time and distance to work as a cohesive team focused on achieving results.

Helps leaders:

• Build community among virtual team members.
• Communicate more effectively in a virtual environment.
• Enhance trust among members separated by time and/or distance.
• Focus their team by keeping team members and their goals visible and in sight.

In this course designed for mid- to senior leaders, leaders learn the ability to drive change by understanding the importance of stakeholders, multiple viewpoints, communication, and buy-in.

Helps leaders:

• Develop their ability to drive change by understanding the importance of involving stakeholders, dealing with resistance, communicating, and building buy-in.
• Improve their understanding and ability to leverage insights from the Change Style Indicator^® (CSI).
• Enhance their skills in leading and motivating others through organizational change initiatives.

Using an engaging simulation, this course teaches a logical decision-making process that addresses the critical elements that result in high-quality business decisions. Participants will develop the skills and confidence to generate options and compare them to important decision criteria, and to select the best course of action. Utilizing this process will also help individuals avoid the pitfalls that often undermine high-quality decision making.

Helps individuals:

• Make business decisions more effectively and confidently.
• Avoid obstacles to objective analysis and judgments.
• Involve the right people at the right time in the decision-making process.
• Gain the help and support needed to make high-quality decisions and to implement them.

In this course, mid- to senior level leaders assess their own emotional intelligence (EQ) and learn to prevent the emotional hijacking that can interfere with personal intentions and organizational outcomes.

Helps leaders:

• Realize how EQ affects business results.
• Understand how emotional hijacking interferes with values and outcomes.
• Recognize the five elements of EQ and learn skills to strengthen each one.
• Analyze their own EQ and the impact of their skill level on those around them.
• Identify their emotional triggers and apply techniques so they can respond effectively rather than react inappropriately.

This course focuses on how leaders can work with their teams to build the infrastructure that enables maximum performance. Leaders gain experience in diagnosing and applying the five Team Success Factors—Results, Commitment, Communication, Process, and Trust.

Helps leaders:

• Avoid misdiagnosing problems that negatively impact team performance.
• Focus their team’s efforts on high-priority actions that directly support the organization’s goals and strategies.
• Enhance the effectiveness of their team by addressing conditions that prevent it from achieving higher levels of performance.
• Foster an environment of collaboration and shared responsibility (with virtual team members, as well), to achieve team goals.

In this course, individual performers learn how to recognize the warning signs of conflict and take action to prevent situations from escalating or to work out the conflict if it does escalate. This allows them to mitigate any negative impact, thus reducing the cost of conflict and improving business results.

Helps individuals:

• Reduce the cost of conflict to them and their organization.
• Minimize or prevent conflict by promoting a culture of trust, mutual respect, and collaboration.
• Make appropriate choices, both in words and actions, to direct situations away from possible damage and toward the discovery of new ideas and solutions.
• Remove roadblocks to proactively taking action when the warning signs of conflict occur.
• Successfully plan and conduct conflict resolution discussions.

During this two-hour session, participants explore women and confidence, quieting the inner critic, and conquering self-doubt to advance their career path. They also immerse themselves in a challenging, real-life scenario in which they identify specific tactics for leaning in to confidence.

This course, designed for managers of leaders participating in an Interaction Management^® program, presents research managers can’t ignore...they can make or break the training initiative. Managers walk away with the skills and resources they need to support their leaders before, during, and after training, so that your organization realizes a return on their investment in leadership development.

Helps managers:

• Support individuals before, during, and after they participate in training events or activities.
• Share accountability with frontline leaders for identifying opportunities to apply newly learned skills in the workplace.
• Champion the value and benefits of using interaction skills in everyday conversations.
• Provide as well as promote the use of specific, balanced, and timely feedback.

This course teaches leaders how to recognize the signs of escalating conflict and take appropriate action to minimize damage. Leaders are introduced to two resolution tactics—coach and mediate—and practice using the Interaction Essentials as they coach then mediate to resolve a conflict.

Helps leaders:

• Reduce the damaging effects of workplace conflict on individuals, groups, and the organization.
• Effectively address workplace conflict and enhance productivity, efficiency, and morale.
• Help others take responsibility for resolving their own conflicts.
• Promote a culture of trust and mutual respect within their work group.

This course will show the positive effect of shifting the traditional role of planner and evaluator from the leader, to a shared responsibility between leader and employee. This shift builds employee ownership, and allows the leader to focus on coaching and developing throughout the performance cycle. Leaders will experience how to use effective (SMART) goals to help them and their employees track progress and fairly evaluate outcomes. A well-written performance plan is also a powerful tool for leaders to use when determining where to focus their development and coaching discussions with their employees.

Helps leaders:

• Ensure direct reports take a more active role in managing their performance.
• Manage performance on an ongoing basis while working within the organization’s time parameters for goal setting and performance reviews.
• Provide the ongoing coaching and feedback your direct reports need to achieve their goals.
• Increase your direct reports’ confidence and commitment to their own success.

This course shows leaders and individual contributors how to package their ideas in a way that will win over even the most skeptical individuals. Participants learn strategies for effectively capturing people’s attention, transforming their perspectives, and gaining their commitment to taking action.

Helps individuals:

• Capture stakeholders’ attention, gain their commitment, and make things happen.
• Leverage their personal power to gain other’s commitment to take action on promising ideas and alternatives that achieve business results.
• Implement new ideas, improvements, and alternatives that will have the greatest impact on organizational objectives.

This course focuses on six Checkpoints that help partners identify and focus on important issues and promote open communication. In addition, learners are also introduced to the Partnership Scorecard, a tool used to provide feedback and measure progress on key elements of the partnership.

Helps individuals:

• Identify six important areas of agreement—called Partnership Checkpoints—that are critical to a successful partnership.
• Use these Checkpoints as the basis for defining and agreeing on key aspects of what is to be accomplished and how the partners will work together.
• Recognize common areas of misunderstanding in partnerships.
• Create and apply measurement tools and methods to monitor progress and facilitate the exchange of feedback.

During this two-hour session, participants explore five kinds of networks they need to nurture to develop their career. More importantly, they learn how to sell their value to potential champions to receive that invitation to connect, and stay connected.

This course equips learners with an important skill set that is essential to providing high-quality customer service. These essential skills will help service providers turn dissatisfied, upset customers into satisfied, loyal ones.

Helps individuals:

• Recognize the business impact of customer retention on their organization.
• Identify the differences between two types of customers—“walkers” and “talkers”—and explain the importance of encouraging walkers to talk about their dissatisfaction.
• Apply a set of skills (HEAT) that will enable them to identify and respond to dissatisfied customers.
• Use a set of best practices for taking the “heat” to turn difficult customer situations into positive interactions.

This course teaches hiring managers and interview team members how to conduct interviews that are objective, fair, and provide the candidate the opportunity to shine. Learners leave the class knowing how to build rapport, manage an interview, and ask pertinent questions to gather data that are predictive of future on-the-job success.

Together, with The Science of Behavioral Interviewing, these courses can help your organization:

• Lower employee turnover by ensuring the candidate’s fit.   
• Reduce bias in the hiring process. 
• Gather relevant data that tells the whole story about candidates. 
• Prevent your interviewers from asking potentially illegal questions.   
• Enhance your company’s brand with an exceptional candidate experience. 

This course teaches interviewers how to make the best hiring decisions by collecting high-quality behavioral data around job-related criteria for success. Interviewers build their skills in using an objective, consistent, and unbiased process for evaluating candidate data, and learn how sharing their data and considering the data that other interviewers have collected leads to hiring the best candidate every time.

Together, with The Art of Behavioral Interviewing, these courses can help your organization:

• Lower employee turnover by ensuring the candidate’s fit.   
• Reduce bias in the hiring process.
• Gather relevant data that tells the whole story about candidates. 
• Prevent your interviewers from asking potentially illegal questions.   
• Enhance your company’s brand with an exceptional candidate experience. 

In this course, mid- to senior level leaders learn actions they can take to engage themselves and their team in executing priorities and how to overcome the challenges that interfere with effective strategy realization.

Helps leaders:

• Understand the essential elements required to successfully implement strategy.
• Overcome the challenges that interfere with implementing strategy.
• Keep themselves and their teams engaged in executing strategy.
• Realize how to sustain execution in the long term.

This course will enhance team effectiveness and maximize not only performance, but also impact on the organization as a whole. Participants learn the personal, interpersonal, and business advantages of working together as a unit and are introduced to a set of best practices for optimal results.

Helps individuals:

• Realize the personal and organizational benefits of working in teams versus working individually.
• Recognize the stages of development that teams typically experience as they grow and mature.
• Use the Team Success Factors and best practices to help their team move from acceptable to high performance.
• Diagnose what is limiting their team from moving to high performance and identify appropriate techniques to overcome such challenges.
• Develop a strategy to help their team progress from one stage to the next.
• Use a set of tips and techniques for working more effectively with virtual team members.

This course arms a new or prospective leader with the knowledge and skills they need to confront the challenges they face early in their leader career. The course encourages the learner to think about the transitions that newer leaders face and how to handle those challenges. They are introduced to three leadership differentiators that are most important to building a positive reputation as well as contributing to the organization’s success.

Helps leaders:

• Reduce the stress associated with the shift to leading others.
• Act with authenticity to build trust.
• Bring out the best in others to enhance engagement and capacity.
• Look for and accept feedback with grace.