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Programs and Public Offerings

If you are interested in leading change more effectively, enhancing leadership capabilities, teamwork, and productivity, Karen offers several programs/workshops that can help you and your team. Each program is designed to be informative, inspiring and engaging, and to provide proven tools and techniques that can be used by anyone. Youth Programs are intended to help young people identify their signature purpose.

Programs & Workshops

Applying Type, MBTI®.

  • Do you often find yourself speaking before giving thought to what you were going to say, and then wondering why you continue to do that?
  • Does the “big picture” excite you, but often lead to a feeling of being trapped by the details you overlooked?
  • Do you wonder why some people always seem to be rescuing others – even those who don’t want to be rescued?
  • Are you a person who would be glad to get everybody organized, if only they’d let you?

This self-report questionnaire and workshop (half-day, full-day, or two-days) enables participants to understand and better appreciate individual differences among people. Standard offerings can be customized for a variety of purposes to include improving communications, team effectiveness, and leadership and change management skills.

“It helped me to understand myself better and to be less judgmental of other people/leaders.” - BG


Change Management
is a process of aligning and enabling the workforce to achieve strategic and operational goals.

  • Have you assessed the readiness for change?
  • Have you built support for the required change?
  • Have you developed strategies and action plans to effectively manage the change?

Workshops, seminars and presentations are customized using a framework for managing complex change.


Developing an Inclusive Environment. Through personal storytelling, dialogue, experiential exercises, and reflection, diversity workshops (half-
day or full-day sessions) are designed with the intent of

  • raising awareness,
  • acquiring knowledge,
  • developing skills, and
  • action planning.

Offerings are customized for adults as well as for younger audiences.

“The course makes you think about things that you may have never thought about before. The materials were good and the discussions were enlightening.” - CJ

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Enhancing Employee Development. Creating the story, nurturing the story, and celebrating the story frame the design for Corporate Universities, Mentoring and Rewards and Recognition programs that provide opportunities for individual growth, success, and acknowledgement. These large-scale change initiatives are long-term investments in employee development.


Management & Leadership Development Curriculums. Programs are developed based on client-identified competencies and/or skill gaps and focus on collaborative meaning-making. There are two distinct offerings.

1) Using Kouzes’ & Posner’s Five Best Practices, this development program focuses on the adult learner, incorporating action-learning, reflection, and an optional 360° feedback process using LPIonline.

2) A leader’s ability to craft a story is not Storytelling Leadership. Through stories, leaders inspire, provoke, stir, excite, motivate and engage others in ways meant to influence thinking and behavior. But to believe the message, you must believe the messenger. This workshop examines (and provides reflective exercises on) the four qualities – voice, knowledge, multiple intelligences, experience - of the storytelling leader.


New Manager Transition.
The overall purpose of transition planning is to establish effective work relationships by identifying desired results, clarifying roles, and assessing needs. There are various options to consider, depending upon the context. For example,

  • Was the outgoing manager well-liked?
  • Did (or will) the outgoing manager remain in the organization?
  • Has the transition already taken place?

The basic process for managing a transition between a new manager and his/her direct reports or staff include: planning, assessment, data feedback, transition meeting, and follow-up.

“As a manager and new employee, this process was invaluable. In a non-threatening way, my staff was able to ask the questions that were important to them.” – M.M.

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Noble Purpose. Discovering, claiming and living the life that we care about is the focal point of the Noble Purpose curriculum. Though not an exclusive list, people engaged in this work:

  • Seek self-improvement through investing in self as the instrument of their leadership
  • Are interested in going to the next deeper level in their quest for self-mastery and spirituality
  • May be at a crossroads in his/her personal or professional life
  • Are motivated for more and better

Offerings, both telephonic and face-to-face sessions, can be customized for younger audiences.


Offsite/Retreat Planning & Meeting Facilitation. Done well, an offsite or retreat can be time well spent, reaping benefits long after the participants return to their workplace. Done poorly, they, along with in-house meetings, can be a terrible waste of time, money, energy and creativity. Making the most of this invaluable time requires planning and effective facilitation.

Having the right process is equally important to having the right people, agenda and planning. Because it is challenging to wear both hats, that of a participant and a facilitator, we find that clients like to use an independent, neutral or 3rd party facilitator who can keep the agenda on track and ensure that all voices are heard, that the significant stories are shared, and that the questions that matter are explored.

  • Reaching clear agreement on expectations
  • Ensuring that the right people are there
  • Interviewing participants prior to the event or meeting
  • Developing the agenda and format for action planning


Team Development. Teams are both business entities and social groups, composed of members with diverse attitudes, values and backgrounds. Because of this diversity, learning to work together requires time, patience, and effort. Questions covered in team building workshops include:

  • What’s binding (goals) the group together?
  • What’s the best way (roles and responsibilities) to do this to reach the team’s goals?
  • What’s the best way (norms and procedures) to handle communication, decision-making, and coordination?
  • What’s the best way to celebrate (milestones & accomplishments)?

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Youth Programs

Diversity and Inclusion. Diversity is valued in youth development programming because it is both a good preparation for handling the diversity of adult life and also important in the present. The curriculum provides in-depth activities and discussions that promote self-awareness, encourage interpersonal relations, and allow young people to explore their feelings and reactions to diversity, acceptance, peer pressure and leadership. The program goal is to empower youth to make changes in their immediate surroundings.

Noble Purpose. Youth deserve the attention, preparation, celebration, and the resources to becoming all they were meant to be and do in this world. Do I make a difference? Do I matter? What is the purpose of my life? How can I make a difference? Young people are not having the conversation with each other and there are not enough caring adults holding the conservations with them. This Noble Purpose curriculum nurtures, reinforces, and celebrates behaviors that will allow young people to tap into their signature purposes, unleashing potential that all young people have – to the benefit of themselves, others and their communities.


Youth Leadership Development.
Young people need more than a strong education; they need the full array of developmental resources to succeed in school and in life. Youth Leadership Development is a training program that promotes leadership capability in young people and the development of individual character and attributes of citizenship. One-hour sessions, held over the span of six weeks, focus on their ability to make a difference – in their families, schools and communities.

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Public Offerings & Events:

2006      
  April 21
Mayor’s Court Clerks of Ohio Professional Development Program in Aurora, Ohio
Leadership Self-Discovery: If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

 
       
 
November 5

International Leadership Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois
Once Upon a Leader – Narrative Method and the Study of Leadership (Panel Presentation)
Storytelling Leadership, with qualities of both servant and charismatic leadership, is a process that takes the power of storytelling combined with voice, knowledge, multiple intelligences, and experience of the storytelling leader to unite a group of people with a common ideology towards a shared purpose.

 
2007
     
 
February 6

Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio
Continuing Education Downtown, Cole Center
Working with Diversity

 
       
 
April 11

Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio
Continuing Education Solon, East Center
Working with Diversity

 
       
  June 21 ASTD, Cleveland, Ohio
Living and Leading a Life of Purpose
 
       
 
September 5

Organization Development Connection, Cleveland, Ohio
An Evening with Joan Southgate and Karen Gilliam
The Noble Purpose of Storytelling Leadership

 

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Gilliam Consulting
Karen L. Gilliam, MBA, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 46220, Bedford, Ohio 44146
karen@gilliam-consulting.com