Accountability
Creating a Culture of Accountability
From the reception desk to accounting to the mail room, everyone has an impact on the reputation – and the success – of the Jewish organization in the eyes of donors, members, beneficiaries, prospects, vendors, the media and the community. But when staff on the front line or in the back room feel like their attitudes and behaviors don’t matter because they are “behind the scenes”, the organization is put at risk. In this session, Professionals of all levels will understand how their job is truly mission-critical, and learn how and why to be accountable and customer-focused in both reactive and proactive scenarios. (Note: a separate session is offered for those in supervisory roles who want to create, reinforce and model a culture of accountability)
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 “We loved the stories you told, you were charming and vivacious and everyone LOVED you! You handled the facts, gave them concrete information, and told them what they needed to know. Your methods were logical, and you delivered the messages even-handedly and without bias - giving each side it's due. You led with the facts, backed them up, and got to the point. Everyone in the room had a fantastic experience! Thank you. Thank you. You made me look good and it was a great start to the campaign year!”
– Beth Appelman, Director of Development, Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford
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Adapting to Different Behavioral Styles*
How many times has someone gotten upset with you because they misunderstood your intentions? How many times have people misread your mood, your tone or your approach? Was there a small change that you could have made that would have prevented all the confusion? Too often, that insight comes a little too late. In this session, Professionals and Board Members will learn how to grasp that insight before those misunderstandings occur, not after. Participants learn to see their own unique behavioral style and preferences, and will recognize how behaviors – their own and others – are likely to be misread. By learning how to adjust their communication style to meet the needs and styles of those around them, relationships flourish and more work gets done.
Board Building
Eight Steps to Building a Better Board
Board building is often seen as a one-time event rather than an on-going continuous improvement process. However, board building is critical to breathing new life into the organization – and the Jewish community -- while honoring its history, and maintaining the integrity of its mission, vision and activities. This session will give Professionals, current Board Members and Lay leaders who seek board positions the eight critical steps of building a strong, vibrant and diverse board that can get the work of the organization done in a personally and Jewishly fulfilling way.
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Board Governance
Getting the Board to Govern More and Manage Less
Whose job is it to update the strategic plan -- and then stick to it? How about linking the current agenda to the strategic agenda? Who is supposed to monitor the success of your organization’s initiatives? Both the Board and Professionals have separate and distinct roles in keeping the Jewish organization viable and running smoothly. In addition, both share areas of mutual support and responsibility. In this session, participants will learn how to maximize their individual and collective impact from strategic thinking to human and financial resource development and more. Note: It is highly recommended that Professionals and Board members participate in this workshop together for maximum impact.
Communication Effectiveness Series *
Can we talk? Of course we can! But are we really communicating? Communication is more than talking and listening. It requires a deep understanding of another person’s perspective. But when you take into consideration all of our biases, behavioral idiosyncrasies (no, of course we don’t mean YOU), unspoken emotions, personal agendas, and unshared assumptions, this can seem almost impossible. These sessions show Professionals, Board Members and Lay Leaders to recognize their own communication styles, strengths and challenges to increase their self-awareness, as well as how to read other people and see how others interpret their behaviors. These sessions also applies this new knowledge to the area of conflict, and helps participants discover simple ways to communicate more respectfully and constructively. Most importantly, these sessions leave participants with a gut-level appreciation for the needs of their lay and professional partners, and a toolkit for adapting their communication styles in ways that create enduring working alliances.
Getting the Most from Your Key Professional and Volunteer Contributors
You’re managing staff and volunteers on a variety of tasks, and you’re wondering: Why isn’t this getting done right? Maybe it’s because you haven’t asked four key questions: Do they currently have the knowledge they need to achieve it? Previous experience in having done something like it? The confidence to do it? Motivation to stick with it? Your approach to recognizing and removing barriers to performance will depend a lot on the answers to these four questions. However, if you ignore the diverse needs of the people you manage, there is a greater chance that professional and volunteer contributors will waste energy moving in the wrong direction, get frustrated with a lack of success, or just disengage from a project or team. This session gives Professionals a user-friendly, comprehensive framework and toolkit to kick-start or complement your existing management approach to identify existing levels of willingness and ability, and lead staff, volunteers, and the organization to success!
Lay-Pro Relations
Lay-Pro Partnerships without the Tsuris
When your Professionals, Board Members or Lay Leaders hear the term “Lay-Pro Relations”, do they get a warm, fuzzy feeling – or a knot in their stomachs? If you identified with the latter, then this session is for your organization. Effective, respectful and fulfilling Lay-Pro partnerships are the hallmark of successful Jewish organizations. To articulate a clear and common understanding of where the organization is going and how it will get there, both professional and lay partners need to develop and exhibit key collaboration skills and shared expectations. This interactive session will provide a framework for fostering relationships built from cooperation, joint planning and implementation, effective communication and shared personal and Jewish values.
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Leadership
The Meaning of Leadership; Leading with Meaning
If you search for “Leadership Books” at Amazon.com, and you’ll have more than 18,600 titles to choose from. If you were to write your own book about leadership to compete with – or complement – the masses, what would be in it? What traits, behaviors and Jewish value would you include in your discussion? Are you currently modeling your own definition of leadership – or someone else’s? In this session, lay leaders and board members will explore various leadership theories from business, organizational psychology, and social
science, while building their own personal and communal leadership model and action plan.
Maximizing your Strengths as a Manager *
The strengths of a manager can be a terrific benefit for the people who work for them. And of course, their limitations can trickle down to create frustration, confusion or even paralysis for those they manage. Because they have this effect on others, managers have a responsibility to know themselves. This session give Professionals with supervisory responsibilities a safe, fun way to understand and organize the strengths and challenges that they bring to the table. They gain a greater appreciation for the impact that their behavior has on others, and they discover how their personal style is read and filtered by difference co-workers, and even lay leaders. As a result, participants learn to maximize their strengths, both making themselves and the people they manage more effective in the process.
Meetings
Successful Meetings without the Tsuris
More schmoozing than strategic thinking? More opinions than outcomes? More food than facilitation? It must be a Jewish meeting! Every time you hold a meeting for Professionals, Lay Leaders, or Board Members, you have an opportunity to re-engage participants in the vital work of the organization, plan and accomplish mission-critical tasks, build ownership, retain talented professional and volunteer leadership, reinforce supportive personal and professional relationships, and demonstrate that this organization knows how to get things done. How many of these opportunities are you missing? If your meetings are unproductive, unfocused or unpopular – this session is for you. Participants will learn how to consistently meet the 3 criteria for productive meetings, how to build an outcome-based agenda that drives the entire meeting, how to use the meeting to reinforce Jewish values, and 8 other miraculous meeting makeovers.
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Performance Management, Feedback and Coaching for Supervisors
Performance Management without the Tsuris
Professional talent is tough to retain in Jewish organizations – do your managers have the skills they need to keep their direct reports interested, challenged, developed, rewarded, and recognized? In this session, Professional Staff with supervisory responsibilities will learn to establish performance goals, design performance plans, give (and receive) constructive and positive feedback, prevent and manage performance issues, coach for performance improvement – and get their own work done, too!
 Deborah is spunky and strong and uses her energy and insight with the precision of a laser. She is just as good a listener as she is a coach, which is actually what makes her a good coach. When doing presentation coaching, she keys into to what's important. She finds the buried lead. She carves out the diamond. She makes you shine, through rigorous challenge and glorious inspiration. She is one of kind, and anyone who meets her, works with her, befriends her, is one lucky person. I certainly feel blessed and grateful for her help, support and guidance.
• Author Kimberlee Auerbach, The Devil, The Lovers & Me: My Life in Tarot |
Public Speaking
Public Speaking without the Tsuris
You speak volumes – even before you’ve said a single word. From the way you use your hands, eyes and mouth to the way you give pause, pace and pitch to your voice, you are constantly broadcasting how you really feel – as well as how your audience should feel about you and your organization. How confident are you about the messages you’re sending? This session prepares Professionals and Board Members who publically represent their organizations – at meetings, major events, or to the media -- to manage their anxiety, their delivery and the audience while delivering a compelling and memorable message about the organization.
Sales Skills and Stewardship for Powerful Donor Development*
In a Jewish organization, it’s easy to forget how much diversity there is! While our donors may be (primarily) Jewish, they still have vastly different preferences in how they like to be approached, be asked to give, have their concerns addressed, be recognized, and be stewarded. Too often, we get so busy with the overwhelming task of fundraising and donor development that we rely too much on a single, well-worn approach. This session reminds Professionals, Board Members and other fundraising Lay Leaders how different our donors truly are. Participants learn to read the “buying” needs of different people, and adjust the development conversation accordingly. They gain insights into why certain prospects and donors are difficult for them to work with, and practice better ways to respond in those situations.
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Solicitation Skills
Soliciting without the Tsuris
Fundraising Guru Bill Sturtevant writes that “the gift is tangible evidence of an emotional event”. But if the primary emotions that your professional, board and lay fundraisers evoke from donors, prospects and themselves are fear and resentment, the gifts will reflect those feelings. No one who is raising money on behalf of your Jewish organization should feel – or act-- like fundraising is a chore; it can be, in fact, be an overwhelmingly positive and potentially life-altering experience for both the donor and solicitor. This session gives participants the knowledge, skills, confidence and motivation they need to raise money and lower anxiety for both themselves and donors.
Storytelling
Strategic Storytelling to Recruit and Inspire Donors and Volunteers
Stories are a rich part of our Jewish tradition – personally and organizationally – and are an adaptable, universal, and economical resource. Stories support Jewish organizational fundraising, marketing, branding and community building. And when it comes to finding deep, powerful, mission-driven stories, Jewish organizations have the corporate world beat! When it comes to telling these stories strategically, however, Jewish professionals and volunteers struggle with the same issues as those in the corporate world – how to cull the key points you need to make an impact, how to balance facts and emotion, and how to incorporate the critical call-to-action. In this session for Professionals, Lay Leaders, and Board Members, participants will learn the key elements of an effective story, how to link stories to organizational values, mission and vision, and how to design and deliver their stories using 5 key steps that yield results.
Supervision
Team Effectiveness Series*
Our professional and lay teams rely on both individual and group talent. Each person needs to know how to let their strengths shine, while the group need to know how to work as a unit. Team differences are inevitable, and sometimes those differences are easily accepted, laughed about and may even complement each other. But too frequently teams find those differences can also cause confusion, stagnation or frustration. Only when people have a framework to make sense of those differences can they learn what to expect from others and the best way to get what the team needs. In these sessions, Professionals, Board Members and Lay Leaders who work in teams or committees will learn to address three of the most common challenges that teams face: motivation, conflict and communication. Participants learn simple, intuitive ways to make lasting improvements in a team’s effectiveness.
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What is DiSC®
The DiSC© Profile is a nonjudgmental, self-response tool for understanding behavioral types and styles, and is considered one of the most scientifically validated and reliable assessment tools in the world. Applied in organizational and interpersonal situations, the DiSC® Behavioral Inventory can lead to invaluable professional and personal insights. DiSC® is used for personal growth and development, training, coaching and managing of individuals, groups, teams, and organizations.
DiSC ® helps you:
“I am so glad that JNF leadership had the wisdom to provide such a dynamic and insightful trainer to bring the new JNF staff together – you blew everyone away."
