Studies conclude that “preventable people problems” – whether breakdowns with leadership, motivation, or getting along – are the “biggest reason (by far) for the high failure rate of high-potential startups” [USCMarshall School of Business]. That challenge is only increasing with more staff working remotely and teams working ever faster to meet launch-window targets. It’s become commonplace for investors and incubators to perform conflict resolution and “founder therapy”.
Some of what we do with organizations does amount to conflict resolution. But we’ve also found that by offering a few solid communication norms and curating a few team-building opportunities, as well as supporting executives directly with their effectiveness, a lot of problems can be prevented before they occur.
Conflict Resolution
We believe that all tensions are opportunities in some way, and that occasional conflict is a natural feature of healthy working relationships. And yet, the way you resolve conflict matters: you can cobble things together in a way that leaves lasting resentments, or you can get related to one another’s underlying experiences in a way that leaves you closer and clearer than ever.
Can be on-site or remote.
1:1 Executive Support
Our team supports you directly in whatever areas are the linchpins to your success at any given time: leadership development; strategic prioritization; attention management, focus, and accountability; preparing for high-stakes or sensitive communications; deepening the quality of your relationships; and overall well-being.
Executive Team Dynamics
Facilitative support designed to maximize coherence among members of a leadership or founding team, usually through recurring remote sessions. When combined with trainings or retreats, these also serve as an opportunity to integrate lessons learned in a functional way.
On-Site Trainings
Our interactive trainings feature our most distilled, most impactful tools for building alignment, increasing efficiency, and fostering connection – typically delivered in a single day at your workspace. Training components can be customized from a menu of options.
Off-Site Retreats
Retreats are custom-designed to rapidly enhance the relationship fabric on your team – plus leave you with a set of keys to keep that fabric resilient over time. We have personally run over a hundred ‘relational’ retreats, giving us a deep well of proven-effective activity frameworks, as well as the flexibility to dynamically steer according to what’s most needed at the time.
The Enhanced 360™️
Like other 360-degree reviews, the process begins with a survey to collect anonymous feedback from your team. Unlike in other 360s, the Enhanced 360™ uses the data solely to stoke a series of facilitated, outcome-oriented conversations among the team, the outcome of which is a set of specific positive changes that everyone agrees to make. Thus, the process results not in a set of survey statistics (which point only to problems, not solutions, and are subject to all manner of inconsistencies and biases), but rather a set of Promises for Change both that the executive(s) make to the team and that team members make to one another.
Systems Optimization
“You do not rise to the level of your goals,” says Atomic Habits author James Clear; “You fall to the level of your systems.” Even the most successful execs and teams are often leaving a ton of success on the table by not taking their systems to the next level. We help you optimize your:
Individual attention management: how you know what to work on when
Ecology of focus: how well your habits and environment support your ability to get deep work done
Project management: how you track priorities as a team
Speaking Engagements
Cutting-edge, relevant Relational Leadership topics, delivered seminar-style with healthy amounts of real-time integration and practice… at company HQs and at conferences.
Topics have included:
The Five Agreements That Create Outstanding Culture
Humility and Dignity: Two Keys to Building Trust and Getting Results
Optimize Your Meetings for Effectiveness and Efficiency
The Three Pillars of Executive Effectiveness
The Power of Setting Effective Context for Any Situation, and the Simple Way to Do It