A key part of this concept was that leaders focus on moving their middle 70% staff into the top 20%.

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So after thinking about it and mind-mapping various possibilities, I came up with the Top 20 Master Class - A course that, if I was still a team lead or manager, I would want to give to my staff to help them move into that top 20%.  

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I wanted to build something that worked for people who are brand new to the organization as well as people who have been there awhile, who have the desire and are willing to put in the work to become better at their job.

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So after a few hundred hours of development, I came up with a 2-day master class.  Here's what it covers:

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• Mindset.  Success leaves clues, so we want you to train your mind to be like successful people.  This is foundational.  If you have this skill, most of the other pieces fall into place quite easily.  

• Kolbe.  Understanding the way you like to work and aligning your work with your style is critical to both productivity and your morale.  We give each student a Kolbe A test (normally $55 USD, but it is included in this class) to help understand themselves better, but we also teach them how to work with their supervisors to match work and Kolbe style to get better results.  

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Again, success leaves clues.  I go over each of the 7 habits, but with a focus on how it applies to government workers and use some real-life examples.  Most people that are able to understand and incorporate the 7 habits into their work, will almost certainly end up in the top 20% of their work peers.

• The Language of Colors - I normally do this as a fun, 60ish minute workshop, but in the Master Class I teach it more like a formal lesson.  The goal is the same - recognize your own personality type and be able to recognize and adapt to other people's personality types to decrease tension and increase cooperation.  The advantage of the class is we have the luxury of being able to answer students questions.

• Influence.  Now that we are able to build rapport with someone using the Colors, the next thing we want to do is build on that and give the student some advanced skills to be able to negotiate and influence people.  These skills go a long way towards resolving conflict and have been shown to decrease Action Requests and public complaints.

• Understanding and working inside government.  Staff can get frustrated with senior leadership and it's often because they don't see or understand all the pieces that go into the sometimes-difficult-to-understand decisions that are made.  I go over the 40,000 ft. level all the way down to where they operate to give them that better understanding.  This understanding has a direct bearing on staff morale and it helps them make better decisions.  We walk through scenarios that, on the surface, seem to be really bad, but with deeper insight, make sense.  

• How to be a good follower.  Everybody else focuses on leadership, but a leader is nothing without good followers.  It is NOT about blindly following whatever the leader says

• How to be a good leader even if you are a team member and... when to be a leader and when to be a follower.

• How to use Outlook to significantly improve productivity and decrease stress.  Based on David Allen's "Getting Things Done", I show staff the exact methods I used to get stuff out of my brain (which lowers stress) and into Outlook in a way that maximizes productivity and prevents forgetting tasks or missing deadlines. 

• Productivity hacks.  Most staff have one or more bad habits that significantly decrease their productivity.  These are easy to implement items that are proven to increase productivity.   The additional benefit is that staff that are more productive

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We deliver this class over Microsoft Teams for the students' convenience and we record the classes so if, for whatever reason, a student ends up missing the delivery, they can watch the recording in the private student area.

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In addition to the class discussion, all students have three 1-hour private coaching sessions with me that they can use, if they wish, to go over anything specific to them that they don't want to go over in the class.  They have a year to use this, so they can try implement the content taught in the class and if they have something specific they want help is, I'm there for them.