What We Do
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Leadership Development & Coaching
• Customized leadership development programs
• One-time workshops or trainings
• Board or team retreat facilitation
• Individual and group leadership coaching to advance careers
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Organization Change & Strategy
• Development of 1-, 3-, and 5-year strategic plans
• Implement organizational change initiatives with people-focused approaches
• Design and facilitation of Appreciative Inquiry initiatives and summits
• Custom research and focus groups to support strategic organizational initiatives
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Communications & Culture
• Defining and shaping organizational culture including mission, vision, values, and purpose
• Securing organizational culture through training and systems design
• Internal communications audits and strategy development
• Personalized training and keynote presentations
Leadership Development
& Executive Coaching
Custom solutions for individuals, teams, and organizations.
Leadership Development & Coaching
Leadership is the act of influence that moves people and organizations toward a shared goal. Good teams understand the leadership capacity of individuals and know how to align these strengths to move everyone forward, together. Great teams invest in strengthening and building new leadership capacity along the way.
Leadership can be learned. We can help.
Services: We design customized leadership development offerings that help develop capacity where your organization needs it most. This can range from one-time workshops focused on building a specific skill (such as giving feedback), to fully developed leadership models tailored to your organization and implemented through training, integration with existing systems, and group and individual coaching.
At an individual level, leadership coaching can help you advance your career, navigate difficult terrain, or advance your capacity for self-awareness or other leadership skills. We work with executives and division leaders to offer the personalized support they need to excel. With coaching packages for individuals and teams, we’ll find the right fit for you and your team.
Framework: Our leadership development framework is values-driven, and consists of four ares of focus:
Leading Yourself,
Leading Others,
Leading the Organization, and
Leading for Impact.
What sort of topics and experiences fit in each category of the leadership framework? Learn more here.
BlueTrail Software had a global team of exceptional engineers and developers, but the company needed more than technical skills. The leaders wanted their talented tech staff to show up at meetings with confidence, move ideas forward, offer feedback with boldness, and guide their clients with strategic insight. My colleagues and I designed a customized leadership development program that consisted of monthly 1-hour training sessions on vital topics, small group exercises for application of the concepts, and action-learning projects to lock in the growth and help the company advance an important initiative. The result? Surveys show we significantly moved the needle in every area the executives identified as important.
“Our company is centered on the empowerment of its stakeholders, so we decided that all our employees should go through a leadership training. We were not interested having our employees learn recipes and tricks, but instead to embark our employees in a self-discovering journey that would enable them to discover the kind of leaders they are and how they would now lead and follow. Amber and her colleagues guided us during an entire year, showing attention to both the group and each single participant. Our company benefited tremendously from this experience.”—BlueTrail co-founder, Remi Vespa
Strategy & Organization Change
Collaborative slutions for designing strategy and achieving results.
Collaborative Strategy & Change
We help leaders answer two of the most pressing questions they face: what is our strategy and how do we make it happen? We do this through a collaborative approach to strategy development and change.
People support what they help to create.
Framework: Our approach to strategy development and organizational change draws from Appreciative Inquiry, a future-focused and collaborative method for moving teams, organizations, and communities toward a common goal. We start by identifying unique strengths—the positive core of the organization. We build on these strengths as we develop a compelling vision for the future; and then we design and deliver actionable plans for making that future a reality.
Our process involves external research, internal interviews and information gathering, collaborative design sessions, and iterative testing to ensure success.
Our work draws from the Appreciative Inquiry model of organization change. What is Appreciative Inquiry? Learn more here.
“Amber helped me facilitate a number of global Appreciative Inquiry Summits at a couple organizations I led that needed to go through organizational transformations to get on a path of sustainable, flourishing growth. Amber is an expert in the AI process and a gifted facilitator. She is highly adept at getting to the right question to ask, and was instrumental in helping me guide these firms through this important work. She stayed engaged with me after the summits were complete to ensure momentum was carried forward. In all cases, we successfully transformed the organizations for extraordinary results. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”—John Heiser, former CEO
Communication & Culture
Guidance for shaping culture and enhancing internal communication
Communications & Culture
Author Susan Scott says, “the conversation is the relationship.” In organizations, we believe the conversation is the culture. Communications and culture are inseparable in organizations; get them right, and the rest will follow.
We help leaders get communications and culture right.
Framework: We believe that what you see—employee behaviors—is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the waterline are the assumptions, beliefs, and values that truly influence your organization’s culture and communication. We help get clarity around those assumptions, beliefs, and values; then we use them to shape behavior by designing communication channels and organizational systems that are simple, useful, and rewarding.
We believe strong and positive cultures—and the communication that supports them—have three essential qualities. Learn more here.
Photo credits Dylan Gillis, airfocus, LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash