At Expert Access, we know that high-performing teams can make – or break – a project.  Organizations that train and build teams benefit from individual employees working in concert towards a goal, saving valuable time and resources.

The team building resources offered by our consultants range widely, from strategic, organization-wide team development initiatives, to tactical, one-time team-building workshops.  Some of the team-building resources we offer include:

Tactical Team Building Initiatives

• Brainstorming sessions
• Meeting facilitation
• Team-building exercises and workshops
• Innovation think tanks
• Indoor / outdoor team building programs
• Large group team building events and adventures
• Team building activities and simulations

Representative Team Building Programs

Skills for Creating High-Performing Teams and Organizations: a 1- to 1 ½ day work conference for members of new or intact teams and business units who want to break through to a new sense of purpose and direction.  This program is suited to aligning energy and focus in the wake of organization change and restructuring.  

FASTEAMS®  - Team Learning Software: a revolutionary team performance system built to extend the current boundaries of e-learning. Its twenty-three online tools represent the accumulated best practices of over 350 teams. Empower your teams to benchmark their performance, track projects and solve common team problems 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the need for a facilitator.

FASTEAMS® for Leaders : a classroom or web-based course that covers all facets of a team or project lifecycle. It provides team and project leaders with in-depth knowledge and application strategies for using the FASTEAMS® toolset. The software may be used in self-directed or instructor-led, face-to-face or distance learning formats.

Team Building Activities and Simulations –  Learn about leadership and high performance teaming in real time and transfer your learning directly to your work environment. Whether you choose a high ropes course, a scavenger hunt or an Indy Race Car event, kinesthetic experiences activate learning and powerful behavioral change while building collaboration and boosting performance across functions, locations and teams.

No matter what your team development needs, Expert Access stands ready to match you with one of our pre-screened, professional consultants or firms.  Contact us for a free consultation on how to improve team performance at your organization.

If leaders are to provide effective leadership and inspiration within an organization, they must be able to identify and build upon their individual strengths, overcome their weaknesses, and learn to trust their intuition.

Executive Assessments support business performance through talent development. They are powerful tools for any organization interested in:

An essential, component of any comprehensive Executive Development program, Executive Assessments provide insight into the personality, thinking and learning style of the individual.  Assessments can identify as well as quantify areas of excellence, social skills, cultural diversity awareness, management styles, skill levels and areas of developmental need.

A Range Of Options

Expert Access recommends assessments that involve a blended approach of both behavioral and cognitive tests as well as simulations to provide a comprehensive profile of each executive’s strengths and developmental areas.  

A full-day assessment can compare results to cross-industry, national and international executive benchmarks.  The day may include business simulations, leadership role-plays, a behavioral interview, and cognitive tests supplemented by online inventories. 

Results and feedback gained during the assessment process can:

• Determine whether organizational goals are clearly understood and pursued
• Identify potential pitfalls, training and developmental needs
• Encourage and support individual development and improvement through clear, focused feedback
• Identify areas for targeted, individualized training
• Provide positive reinforcement
• Build more productive teams by providing better leadership

At Expert Access, our pre-screened, world-class Executive Assessment consultants offer a wide array of best-in-class assessment tools and techniques; from MBTI – the world’s most widely used and recognized personality tool, to the Hogan Leadership Suite, to 360° multi-rater surveys and feedback. With one call, we can help you identify and obtain the most appropriate assessment consultants and programs to meet your needs; and, like all of our services at Expert Access, there are no added fees for our services.

Executive Coaching is a critical element of a comprehensive Executive Development program.  Executive Coaching helps key employees:

• Identify and build upon their strengths
• Recognize and overcome weaknesses and areas of need
• Draw lessons from on-the-job situations
• Develop confidence and trust in their management intuition
• See themselves from others’ perspective
• Become better leaders

Success Factors

The most important factor in successful Executive Coaching is pairing the participant with the ideal coach.   To ensure success, the coach must be compatible with the client on many levels.  Expert Access makes coaching matches based on the participants’ personalities, backgrounds, communication styles, and approach.  All of these factors contribute to the success of the coaching program and enable mutual respect and trust in the coaching relationship.

The Expert Access Advantage

The professional coaches used by Expert Access are prescreened, pre-vetted, and possess a wide array of certifications, qualifications and coaching styles.  We’ve worked with most of our consultants for years, and perform extensive reference checks on all of our coaches before any client introductions are made. 

Expert Access has helped clients succeed with a variety of coaching assignments.  Whether you’re looking for:

• a coach with expertise in global leadership to give your managers the cultural and political savvy needed to navigate new environments;
• a coach who can expertly onboard a new hire by helping to establishing positive relationships and providing objective feedback about the degree to which he or she is hitting—or missing—key objectives;
• or a coach with hands-on experience in assisting your executive transition to a role with new functional responsibilities such as finance or marketing, we can provide the best match.

How We Work With You

After an initial consultation with the client and understanding of their needs, we recommend one or two of our coaches based on the matching criteria (usually we are able forward bios immediately after the consultation, and in most cases our first recommendation is a good fit).  This process saves our clients the extensive time and effort of interviewing and vetting coaches themselves.  And all of these services are provided at no extra charge to our clients, as part of the Expert Access fee-sharing structure.

What to Expect

While each of our consultants has their own individual style, the overall approach is always consistent with industry best practices.  A comprehensive Executive Coaching Assignment will include:

• Assessment- identify performance goals, areas needing improvement, performance or skill gaps, and expected outcomes.  This phase usually involves the participant’s manager as well as the participant.
• Information Gathering -360° feedback from managers, peers, direct reports and others.  Participant assessments include MBTI, style inventories, MRG Leadership Effectiveness, HoganLead, etc.
• Plan Development – participant and coach develop initial plan for addressing specific areas of development.  Plan is discussed with manager and agreed upon by all (participant, coach and manager).
• Implementation – Coaching sessions are typically 1.5 – 2 hours and are scheduled bi-weekly.  Implementation can also include supporting or training programs as needed.
• Reporting & Feedback – Progress evaluations, feedback gathering, and reporting are provided based on agreed-upon methods and timetable.  Ensure client goals have been achieved and expectations met.
• Follow-up – Ongoing communication and/or coaching as needed.

Investment

• Fees are typically based on the scope of services, number of sessions contracted, and the executive coach’s background, experience and availability. 
• Instrumentation (MBTI, Benchmarks, Styles Inventories, Hogan etc.), and data gathering (360 feedback processes) are billed separately. 
• Typical executive coaching engagements include 1.5 - 2 hour, bi- weekly in-person sessions, with phone calls between the coach, client and stakeholders as needed.

To find out how Expert Access can help you with your Executive Development program, contact us today for a free consultation.

Our world-class Innovation programs and workshops feature tools that can be infused into your company’s everyday activities, to foster creativity and innovation in every individual, in every department, every day.

Creative Innovation – An Action- Learning Approach

Creative innovation is a learned technique that when properly taught and supported:

• Propels businesses to the top of their markets
• Inspires breakthrough product discoveries
• Sustains market superiority
• Achieves optimum operating efficiency
• Increases growth and profitability
• Develops a highly motivated workforce.

Innovation Programs and Workshops

Strategy Development: Unlocking Opportunities and Creating Advantages

This customized gaming workshop uses a variety of multi-functional ideation and facilitation techniques that will challenge your senior team to identify winning strategies and create competitive responses.  The one and a half day workshop is tailored to your current market challenges.

Real World Innovation for New Product Development

Created by two innovation experts who have created and launched over $1 billion of innovation success, this one-day workshop inspires and teaches participants how to develop new and better products and services.  From concept to delivery, participants will explore the pros and cons of processes and approaches that work in the “real world”,  while learning how to engage consumers, customers and peers as creative partners in the process.

Ideation Technique Training for Managers

This 1-2 day program teaches participants to employ creative new ideas to overcome business challenges.  Utilizing an action-learning process, managers will also learn how and when to use specific ideation techniques to inspire their teams.  Participants will learn a variety of state-of-the-art, empirically proven individual and group techniques including:

• Triggered Brainwalking
• Worst Idea
• Semantic Intuition
• Patent Prompts
• Problem redefinition/Questioning Assumptions
• White boarding

Reinventing the Sales Meeting

Skip the motivational speaker and power-up your National Sales Meeting with two of our world-class ideation facilitators.  In 1.5 – 2 days you can turn your National Sales Meeting into a forum for generating powerful new ideas for selling strategies, trade programs and cross-selling opportunities.  Your top sales people will be truly motivated by participating in challenging ideation sessions and creating innovative new ideas for growing the business.

Effective Brand Communication for Managers

This 1 – 1.5-day workshop is designed to provide your marketing brand managers with the tools they need to create and effectively manage brand communication in a client/agency relationship.  Using dozens of real-world examples, participants will learn to:

• Define key elements in “brand building” for both brand positioning and new product architectures
• Develop unique brand positioning
• Create an effective agency brief
• Judge, react to, and improve upon agency creative work and presentations

 

At Expert Access, we thrive on enabling companies to become more creative and foster innovation.  Our pre-screened, best-in-class professionals can plan, develop and execute your entire program from the beginning, or "step in" at any point to implement any portion or segment or the program as needed.   Please contact us today for a free consultation.