Effective leadership is no accident--fortunately, it's no mystery either. This "worldview" workshop takes a holistic look at the discipline of leadership development, sees through the uncertainty, and simplifies matters with insightful concepts and exercises. Participants will walk away with an elevated awareness of their own development, plus the energy to see it through.

To really get it, you must:

• Evaluate your learning style
• Utilize feedback strategically
• Clarify your goals for learning from experience
• Harness the power of perception
• Understand the importance of an accurate self-assessment
• Know the tips for self-directed leadership development
• Learn to convert setbacks into developmental experiences
• Turn your job into a "leadership lab"
• Look closely at development as a process
• See how "automatic behavior" at work can affect your growth
• Identify the three ways we learn from experience
• Differentiate developmental experiences from the non-developmental

Surprise: it's not the smartest or most talented who succeed. In fact, smart executives everywhere fail with logic every day. How could this be? Dr. Thacker leads an eye-opening discussion on the realities of influence and the critical role emotion plays every moment of every day. All effective leaders have something in common: they know how to harness the power of emotions to achieve "stretch," or breakthrough, goals individually and as team members.

To win, you need to know how to:

• Understand the fundamentals of human motivation
• Appreciate the needs for achievement, affiliation, and power
• Take the FIRO-B assessment
• Learn to sell versus tell
• Gain awareness of and control your emotional impact
• Speak the emotional language of another
• Discover the meaning of emotional intelligence

Your "influence quotient" as opposed to your IQ is what determines success. This seminar probes the art and science of influence, and deals with lessons as relevant to life outside the office as they are inside. Focused on interpersonal behavior, these discussions will help you see how the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of others is what will make you an exceptional team member.

To increase your influence, you must learn to:

• Examine your "influence quotient"
• Identify real opportunities to influence
• Make an impact with careful listening
• See why their perspective is more important than yours
• Understand the "influence deficits" that are holding you back
• Realize the principles of exchange and reciprocity
• Identify relevant currencies

Using smart techniques to wield influence won't work unless you have the right mindset. The "intention to influence" approach is a specific system of thinking about and relating to the world. These six mental habits aren't necessarily natural to us, so they must be used and honed every day.

Change your mindset by:

• Clarifying your intentions and state them in simple terms
• Maintaining a constant focus on your intentions
• Exerting influence in a world where formal authority gets you nowhere
• Discovering how to influence authority
• Learning the six mental habits of influence
• Understanding why getting over yourself will go a long way

Don't let the term "soft power" fool you--it can be more powerful than strength or toughness, particularly in the workplace. Now is the time to learn to leverage the power of attraction and achieve what you deserve.

To take advantage of soft power, you'll need to:

• Understand the opposing dynamics of soft and hard power
• Gain support through attraction rather than force
• Discover enlightened self-interest and its role in success
• Demystify office politics
• Identify real Machiavellian behavior
• Learn how to make sense of the influential - but informal - social systems within your company

Maintaining a sense of well-being or "balance" is tough in a world where better faster stronger has been replaced by faster faster faster. Your sense of balance is a complex, highly personalized equation that can only be managed by you--and maintaining this sense of balance is critical for long-term success.

To achieve balance, you must:

• Clarify the role of work in your life
• Realize which psychological needs are being met at work and home
• Consider the toll of our excess access culture
• Connect to your "core four"
• Control the clutter
• Ask yourself 10 crucial questions
• Know when to manage your energy, not your time
• Pursue and achieve absolute clarity
• Think more and do less
• Recognize that knowing your values can make your miserable
• Grasp the difference between connection and connectivity
• Believe that working hard is not always smart
• Ask yourself: is this a psychological issue, a spiritual issue or both?