Steven Gaffney

Notice Vs. Imagine
Getting The Unsaid Said Is The Key To Innovation, Collaboration, And Growth.

People often operate and make decisions as if their opinions are fact rather than exploring the real truth. This leads to employees assuming they know the needs of their clients or colleagues, rather than taking the time to determine if these assumptions are correct. These issues become even more exacerbated when the people involved have different agendas, goals, needs, and backgrounds.
Prevent misunderstandings and assumptions

This session includes Steven Gaffney’s legendary application of the “Notice vs. Imagine” technique. Based on more than a decade of research, the failure to distinguish what is “noticed” (the facts of the situation) from what is “imagined” (opinions, thoughts, evaluations, and conclusions) is often one of the most harmful things for an organization’s bottom line.

Improve relationships, build trust, and make work and life easier

In this seminar, participants will be challenged to open up and engage in discussions and exercises in order to better their personal and workplace environments. Participants will learn to distinguish between what are facts and what are opinions so they can act only on the truths of a situation rather than their perceptions. In order to ensure participants will retain what they have learned, each participant will choose a personal case study to work on throughout the session. They will learn to distinguish the facts of the situation from their opinions of the situation. By the end of the session participants will know exactly how to solve their case study issue and how to prevent similar issues in the future.

Reboot, Engage, And Accelerate
How To Become A Consistently High Performing Team To Achieve Peak Success

Is your leadership team performing at the highest possible level? Chances are, the answer is no. And is your team even a team?

Many teams in the workplace are really “committees,” because a true team wins and fights challenges together. A committee wins or loses, separately.

The truth is, even the healthiest, most efficient corporate teams can always do better. Steven Gaffney’s popular Reboot, Engage, and Accelerate program is designed to improve the specific group dynamics of any leadership team to achieve peak performance. Whether your team is new or old, this hands-on session will re-focus and re-align the group for a fresh start.

Why your team needs a Reboot

Think of this program as hitting “reboot” on your team dynamics. When you reboot your computer, you essentially clear away the junk to re-focus your efforts on making the device run more smoothly, with fewer glitches. The same is true of this reboot session. This interactive seminar is an opportunity for any leadership group to reset priorities. The goal? To ultimately reach their full potential as a seamless, top-performing team.

Reboot, Engage, and Accelerate is ideal for dramatically improving a wide range of leadership teams, including:

Teams that are really “committees”
- Teams of exceptional people who work in silos, rather than seamlessly together
- Teams in charge of a critical project, program, or department
- Teams that struggle to make key decisions without constant re-litigation
- Teams that include both high-performing and lower-performing members
- Teams acting like committees—who win and lose separately—instead of like true teams—who win and lose together
- Teams not utilizing all the strengths and resources of the organization
- Teams that suffer from a lack of coordination, collaboration, and true teamwork
- Teams performing at a very high level that need a push to excel even more

Even world-class executive teams must regularly re-establish trust, build better relationships, improve communication, and re-align to contribute more powerfully to the organization’s bottom line. In fact, all teams must occasionally take stock to uncover and resolve existing problems in order to achieve peak performance. Even brand new teams must do this, since past history, distorted hearsay, and organizational folklore impact every group from the start.

Growth Conflict™
In this groundbreaking program, leaders will learn to apply Steven’s proprietary Growth Conflict™ concept to inspire group innovation and fix problems early on. While many teams bury conflict for fear of confrontation, today’s work world demands cross-communication and collaboration. Without it, time deepens problems and erodes trust within the team.

Growth Conflict™ is the idea that the group’s conflict should be completely revealed and resolved through an open communication process. Steven will guide participants through this approach, teaching them how to:

Stop staying in their own “swim lanes” and start collaborating across organizational lines
Eliminate leadership blind spots that result when executives don’t challenge one another
Develop a healthy pattern of debate in leadership team meetings
Address small issues in the group before they become major problems
After these issues are openly discussed and resolved in the seminar setting, Steven will guide the team to adopt an actionable plan with full accountability, equipping them to move forward on their goals as a team. In addition, participants will use Steven’s proprietary “2 Hour and 18 Minute Strategy for Success” blueprint that converts any idea into an actionable plan within this time frame. This winning intellectual formula enables the team to apply the seminar’s lessons directly to real-world issues once the program ends.

As part of the Reboot, Engage, and Accelerate program, Steven Gaffney will perform a thorough analysis of your team, through interviews and observation. With the insights from this analysis, Steven is able to create a safe, open environment where he encourages each participant to share challenges, questions, and feedback with the rest of the group. This unique process reveals hidden barriers, identifies current dynamics—both good and bad—and establishes a pattern of honest communication. In turn, the team walks away with the tools they need to accomplish top goals as a cohesive unit.

Reboot, Engage, and Accelerate and become a consistently high performing team to achieve peak success.

Getting To The Honest Truth
The Most Important Communication Strategy To Boost Teamwork, Increase Trust, Build Remarkable Relationships, And Get Things Done!

This highly engaging and interactive seminar is delivered by Steven Gaffney, based on his popular selling books: Just Be Honest, Honesty Works, Honesty Sells, and Be a Change Champion. Honesty is not only the best policy, but it is the easiest and most effective way to communicate when it comes to resolving conflicts and producing results.

The key problem within most organizations and between individuals is not what people ARE saying, but it’s what they are NOT saying to each other. How much of your organization’s productivity, efficiency, and collaboration is affected due to unspoken communication? How much time and money does it cost your organization by not having honest and open dialogues? Once people “Get the Unsaid Said” in a productive manner, virtually any issue can be resolved.

This session includes Steven Gaffney’s legendary application of the “Notice vs. Imagine” technique to prevent misunderstandings and assumptions. Based on more than a decade of research, the failure to distinguish what is “noticed” (the facts of the situation) from what is “imagined” (opinions, thoughts, evaluations, and conclusions).

The concept of “Notice vs. Imagine” may sound like a simple distinction, but think how often people operate and make decisions as if their opinions are fact rather than exploring the real truth. Have you seen missed opportunities because someone believes they know what their customer wants rather than checking in and listening to uncover what the customer really wants and needs? Have you ever seen project execution go awry because project goals were based on assumptions rather than facts and data? The misdiagnosis becomes even more exacerbated when the people involved have different agendas, goals, needs, and backgrounds.

Participants will be asked to choose their own personal case study to work on during the session. This will help ensure that participants know exactly how to apply what they have learned by applying it to a specific personal example.

Leading Through Times Of Change And Uncertainty
Top Leadership Strategies To Deal With An Uncertain, Complex, Fast-Paced Working Environment

Is your company or organization planning to make a significant change? Are you worried that your leadership may not be properly suited to handle this change? Research has shown that 70% of changes attempted within an organization fail due to poor leadership. Change in today’s work environment is constant and it creates new challenges to even the strongest leaders, frequently revealing problems that have been neglected or left unresolved. It is important that leaders develop a specific skill set that enables them to see their teams successfully through organizational changes.

Be adaptive, motivational, and empowering to your team

In this session, participants will learn critical skills for how to effectively create an environment that allows for open communication so that all employees feel comfortable voicing their concerns and opinions. Participants will learn how to communicate honestly with their team and breakdown the communication barriers that often prevent successful change. This will maximize your company or organization’s ability to successfully navigate new initiatives and ensure their success.

Be A Change Champion
Master Momentum: How To Sustain The Boom And Avoid The Bust Of Change

Research has shown that the majority of changes attempted within an organization fail due to the execution of the change rather than the planning of it. There is simply a foundational gap in resources and knowledge about how to generate and maintain the momentum surrounding a new initiative.
Discover how to adapt, motivate, and empower

The rate of change in today’s business climate is increasing faster than ever and has created new challenges for even the strongest leaders. It is important that leaders have a specific skill set that enables them to be adaptive, motivating, and empowering to their teams in an environment where change and ambiguity are the norm.

Move forward with momentum

In this session, based on Steven’s book titled Be a Change Champion, leaders will learn critical skills to keep momentum, no matter how unpredictable or uncertain the environment. Many leaders have the ability to manage change, but the ability to keep up the momentum once a change is launched is a specialized and critical skill in today’s business world. This session will teach leaders how to keep up morale during organizational change initiatives and keep their employees focused on the endgame.

Honesty Sells
How To Be A Better Salesperson And Increase Profits

The top 10 percent of salespeople practice honesty as the best long-term strategy to build business and profits. Everyone has had an experience with a less than-honest salesperson, and many salespeople have lied to their clients in order to make a short-term sale. True sales success, however, is not based in verbal tricks, silly gimmicks, mind games and other forms of manipulation. Today’s clients are looking for long-term, trusted relationships with their suppliers and this demands a new sales approach based on honesty, trust, integrity, and loyalty.
Create a positive client experience

Successful salespeople all use a range of styles and techniques, and they all share one thing in common: They know that honest communication is the secret to increasing sales effectiveness in the long run. By focusing their efforts on satisfying clients through openness and trust, these professionals sell more, get more referrals, and experience less stress.

Experience long-term sales growth

This session will teach participants how to use honest communication to build stronger client relationships and develop business growth over time. Your sales team will learn to overcome harmful sales assumptions and avoid sales strategies that hurt the business. They will learn to create two-way honest and open relationships with clients and increase customer responsiveness. By the end of the session, participants will be more effective salesman and will immediately impact your organization’s bottom line.

The Power Of Conflict Wealth
Embrace And Channel Conflict To Successfully Grow Your Teams, Relationships, And Organizations

Gone are the days of being afraid of confrontation and feeling overwhelmed by old school thought patterns. Steven Gaffney’s most requested keynote offers a revolutionary strategy that reinvents the conflict model and has been successfully implemented by leading companies worldwide.

If you are looking to grow your business and impact your bottom line, the #1 way to do so is through internal discussion. Remember, you can’t fix a problem that no one tells you about.

Use honest communication and embrace conflict

Using Gaffney’s strategies, companies have successfully and rapidly instilled an ultimate standard for healthy teams so that employees feel so comfortable that they offer ideas you might not even be asking for. These ideas help organizations quickly increase profit without any capital investment.

Promote the speed of truth

Whether you are going through a merger or change breakdown, the speed in which you do so will directly impact the profitability of your organization. This program is designed to help you apply customized and tangible strategies so that your teams perform at a faster pace, resulting in improved profit margins, reduced resource allocation, and increased shareholder value.

The Fish Isn’t Sick...The Water Is Dirty
How To Keep Communication ‘Waters’ Clean To Increase Collaboration, Boost Teamwork, And Build Remarkable Relationships

It is critical to organizational performance that employees avoid creating a workplace that discourages communication. The reason most organizations have communication issues is unintentional discouragement of honesty. Employees unknowingly create communication barriers and act in ways that make their colleagues uneasy about sharing critical feedback with them.

Increase productivity and profitability

How does lack of open, honest communication impact your organization? The average employee loses seven weeks of productivity every year because of troublesome and unresolved communication issues. Lack of open, honest communication is at the root of 80 percent of problems at work. Upwards of 75 percent of employees who leave their jobs do so because of communication issues and relationship issues with their boss– not money. Even more startling is that 91 percent of people admit to lying regularly; and the number-one reason they lie is fear. The key question is what is this costing you in lost productivity, profitability, and missed new business opportunities?

Fix conflict early on

“The Fish Isn’t Sick…The Water Is Dirty”® seminar shows you how we unknowingly encourage others not to be honest and how we can turn the situation around. You will discover the real reasons why it is so difficult to work with some people and how to identify sources of conflict before they become huge problems. You will also learn why most people don’t ask questions, search for feedback, or give others the benefit of the doubt — and you will discover what you can do about it.

Inspiring Excellence
Leading And Motivating Today’s Workforce

Have you ever watched an organization change its leader, make no other changes, and dramatically improve its productivity and morale? Honest and effective leadership is the key. We are all leaders regardless of the title we have been assigned or our level in an organization. We lead our staff, bosses, co-workers, clients, and even our family and friends. We lead all day long, consciously or subconsciously. The question is what are we leading people to do?

Inspire the people you lead

“Inspiring Excellence” is a leadership seminar designed to provide strategies, techniques, and tools that will produce change and help you achieve your leadership goals. This ground-breaking, highly interactive program will dramatically improve teamwork, loyalty, trust, and morale. It will help everyone to work together more effectively in order to accomplish the organization’s vision and goals. This seminar can teach anyone how to develop a proactive, energetic, and entrepreneurial environment that will motivate people to excel beyond their personal and organizational expectations.

Achieving Beyond Limits
Honest Motivation And Excelling Strategies Of Star Performers

An organization gains a competitive edge only when the people within that organization are able to achieve their goals. Achieving goals seems increasingly difficult in today’s world. As businesses reorganize, cut budgets, and reallocate resources, stress increases and tension escalates. Negative attitudes and complaints can run rampant through an organization. Employees and managers are called upon to do more and more with less and less. Eventually, morale declines, productivity drops, and profitability suffers.

Stay focused on success

Given that reality, how do we remain calm, concentrate, and excel in an environment characterized by too much work and not enough time and resources? The answers lie in Achieving Beyond Limits: Honest Motivation and Excelling Strategies of Star Performers.

Accomplish your goals

Achieving Beyond Limits is an intensive career development program built around the central notion of honesty. This seminar will show participants how to manage the only factor you can control – yourself – to break through those obstacles and get moving again. It will provide specific strategies, techniques, and tools that star performers use to achieve beyond limitations. Participants will see how to dramatically enhance and improve their career and achieve their goals, while increasing initiative, focus, motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity. It is appropriate for all levels of an organization, all individual career levels, and customized to the clients specific needs.

Influencing With Or Without Authority
Honest Persuasion Strategies That Make Things Happen—Internally And Externally

People often think influencing and selling means manipulating people into doing things they do not want to do. Those who think this way usually lack the ability to sell ideas and influence their clients and other people within their organization. This causes ideas and opportunities to be missed and initiatives and proposals to be stalled or not well executed. This breaks down leadership, stifles teamwork, and sabotages innovation; ultimately reducing productivity and killing potential profits.

Leverage the power of your workforce

Everyone needs to know how to influence and sell. On a daily basis there are opportunities for virtually every employee to directly or indirectly influence the health, growth, and success of their organization through salesmanship. In today’s fast-paced, competitive environment, many of these opportunities are there one minute and gone the next. The key is to employ the skills of your team to quickly recognize, develop, and capitalize on these opportunities.

Build positive rapport

This seminar provides strategies and techniques that can be used both internally within your organization and externally with customers, vendors, and other organizations. Participants will learn the Key Rapport Factors involved in building sincere relationships, which is essential to influencing anyone in a non-manipulative manner. Participants will also learn the Power Principles of Influence. These will enable their ideas, requests, and initiatives to be accepted internally and externally, as well as teach them how to dissolve resistance and objections.

Cross-Generational Communication
How To Connect, Communicate, And Collaborate With Anyone.

From Baby Boomers to Millennials and beyond, every generation is labeled and pigeonholed into one neat little package. This over-simplification severely limits our thinking, relationships, and workplace culture. It can lead to hostile work environments and create unnecessary inefficiencies, ultimately being harmful to an organization’s bottom line. As the younger generation becomes a larger part of the workforce, it is important for every organization to ensure continuing inter-colleague communication.
Relate to and work with anyone— no matter the generation

During this seminar, participants will be taught a proven, foolproof system that will enable them to collaborate with associates across generations. They will learn how to use honesty to communicate with their older and younger counterparts and prevent communication barriers. These techniques will help eliminate generational assumptions and misunderstandings so that your organization gets the most out of its workforce.

2 Hour And 18 Minute Strategy
Increase The Overall Effectiveness Of Your Organization In 2 Hours And 18 Minutes

In this day and age of limited resources, organizations need to move on ideas quicklly because often, whoever implements first will win. There is no longer time for seeking perfection on every idea or initiative before taking action. It is critical for organizations to streamline this process in order to improve their bottom line and maximize business growth.
Execute your plan

In this session participants will use our proprietary process to convert an organizational issue or idea into an executable plan in 2 hour and 18 minutes. During this working session, the group will develop a list of ideas to improve the organization then isolate the three most important ideas and develop a workable plan to implement them. They will then present, adjust, and execute those ideas, and will be held accountable for their results after the session.

Improve your teamwork

This session is a great tool to assess how people in a particular group interact with one another, as well as to observe each individual’s true leadership abilities. As the participants work on a real project in live time, leaders can witness how their employees react to one another, as well as identify potential sources of delay in implementing new projects or ideas. In addition, all participants will learn how to apply overall interpersonal communication strategies to aid in resolving their organizational issues and problems.