Building fully engaged and highly effective teams

Thought Patterns for a Successful Career™ is an educational process designed to expose students to concepts that can significantly change their lives. It teaches persistence and high achievement skills, addressing issues such as returning to school as an adult, fear of success, managing personal challenges while attending school, and making a transition into
a successful lifestyle following graduation.

The course is designed to improve the student’s learning experience and prepare him or her for personal and professional growth and success. The focus is on increasing the student’s self-discipline and self-esteem. The positive concepts taught in this course are intended to unleash the student’s potential for growth and creativity, resulting in personal and professional development.

Building Team Connection in a Remote Workplace with Everything DiSC®

In today’s world of remote work, people are craving a shared sense of connection. The connections that naturally occurred in a physical work environment are sadly missed in a virtual one. People are seeking new ways to interact and build relationships with colleagues and managers.

In this highly interactive workshop, team members will learn their DiSC® style, work motivators and stressors, and preferred ways of working. They’ll understand one another’s unique approaches to work and the challenges they face in working remotely. They’ll identify new strategies to work and connect in a virtual environment, one where they value and feel valued for their differences. 

Participants will learn: 

• What motivates the different DiSC styles and how they react to each style
• Recognize styles in action and learn strategies to improve relationships
• Create an action plan to build effective relationships in the new world of work

About the Facilitator: 

Lisa Holden Rovers, MSc, CPHR, PCC, founded Workplace Matters in 2005. As an award- winning human resources professional, Everything DiSC facilitator, and certified leadership and team coach, Lisa helps grow leaders, elevate teams, and inspire people to thrive together. Her career success has been built on creating safe and engaging learning environments where participants discover their strengths and learn new approaches to work better together.  

Find out more about Lisa on her website or on LinkedIn.

A New Playbook for Team Effectiveness with the Five Behaviors® model

It can be frustrating to everyone when teams don’t work well. Politics, a lack of alignment, and inefficiencies eat up precious time and energy that could be put to use on higher priorities. 

For something that has such a big impact on our work lives, we don’t spend much time talking about what it takes to make our teams better – or even how we can be a better team player. Solid teamwork doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not necessarily an innate skill. Teamwork must be developed and practiced – and it requires the right framework in order to thrive.  

That’s where the Five Behaviors® model and personal development assessment comes in. Based on Patrick Lencioni’s best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, this program outlines a simple but powerful five step model that helps team members develop the skills to become a better team player and start building stronger teams. 

Participants will: 

• Learn the Five Behaviors® model and a common language for teamwork
• Identify personal strengths and challenges and how they impact team effectiveness
• Create an action plan to apply habits needed to be a high-performing team player 

About the Facilitator: 

Lisa Holden Rovers, MSc, CPHR, PCC, founded Workplace Matters in 2005. Lisa helps grow leaders, elevate teams, and inspire people to thrive together. She’s a certified leadership and team coach, an Everything DiSC® and Five Behaviors® facilitator, and an award-winning human resource professional. Her career success has been built on creating safe and engaging learning environments where participants discover their strengths and learn new approaches to work better together.  

Find out more about Lisa on her website or on LinkedIn.

Creating a Culture of Belonging: A practical approach to DEI in the workplace

Since 2021, companies across the globe have seen a massive loss of their employees and there is no indication of it slowing down. When interviewed, workers cited a lack of feeling valued and a sense of belonging as the top two reasons for leaving. Today’s employees are looking for purpose, connection, and a sense of shared identity in the positions they accept while.  

Employers still believe money is the great fix. Employers and leaders can no longer afford to ignore the need for creating a culture of inclusivity and belonging in their organizations -especially for employees who belong to marginalized and equity deserving communities.

This program will demonstrate how to create a workplace defined by belonging and connection through examining applicable practices around equity, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism. 

Participants will learn to: 

• Foster a culture of inclusion:  From performative to proactive
• Understand Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the workplace: Not just the acronyms
• Identify Anti-Racism in the workplace: Name it, and act on it
• Understand the human experience of diversity in the workplace 

About the Facilitator: 

Joanne Kinya Baker, MSW, RSW is a registered social worker and educator in the area of governance, equity and community development with over 17 years of experience. As the founder of Shades of Humanity Consulting, Joanne describes herself as a social justice and change advocate.  She’s had a prolific career having worked across refugee camps in Africa, on behalf of the United Nations and other organizations. For the past decade she has been affecting social change through her collaboration with local governments in Canada, developing strategies that build anti-racist, welcoming and inclusive communities. Joanne also works both small and mid-sized organizations, supporting them to achieve their equity goals. 

Find out more about Joanne on her website or on LinkedIn.

Building Trust and Psychological Safety

Trust. An impactful word that has many interpretations. We each come with our own history and relationship with trust – perhaps a moral issue or a theoretical concept that doesn’t have a practical way of navigating. We’re proposing a different approach, based on the work of Charles Feltman and the Thin Book of Trust. This framework provides a pragmatic and practical way to build, maintain and even repair trust.

It’s a buzz word in our world today, but what is it and how do we build it?  Psychological safety is an environment where vulnerability is rewarded; this takes intention, practice, and consistency. Strong psychological safety heightens collaboration, innovation, and creativity. 

Participants will learn to: 

• Develop trusting relationships and work collaboratively
• Create shared tools of inclusion, an incubator for innovation
• Create personal strategies for building trust and psychological safety

About the Facilitator: 

Ila Edgar is a Leadership Coach, Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, Relationship Builder/Connector, Trust Guru who brings 25+ years of diverse, progressive experience in leadership development and coaching. She is well regarded as a strategist and an implementer, with demonstrated success in engaging and motivating others, creating strong relationships, building capacity, inspiring innovation, and building trust/psychological safety for teams. 

As a difference-maker who is always willing to zig where others may zag, her values of connection and generosity underpin her approach to enable clients to identify goals, develop and execute practical strategies, and share her boundless energy, innovation, and enthusiasm to help objectives to be realized. Ila is a natural coach whose talents have been called upon as a frequent workshop facilitator, presenter, and speaker. 

Find out more about Ila on her website or on LinkedIn.

Building Your Mental Toughness

Today’s environments are turbulent. Change has become the constant. Rasmus Hougaard describes it as a PAID reality, where we are constantly Pressured, Always On, suffering from Information Overload and constantly Distracted. 

Our mindset and mental toughness are literally the difference between a day and a great day. In this interactive, exploratory day, discover strategies and tools that allow you to stay calm and in control whatever the pressure you face. Discover new ways to focus and remain motivated, challenge the inner critic that has ‘chirped’ at you forever, and determine methods to constantly and effectively boost yours and others self-belief. 

This course may appeal to you if you struggle with Stress Management, need help with your Mental Toughness, struggle with your daily mindset, are looking for ways to get ‘unstuck’ in your current lifestyle, and want to build your self confidence in any situation. 

Participants will learn to: 

• Distinguish their unique approach and response to stress and anxiety
• Create personal strategies for staying calm and in control under pressure
• Discover the motivation behind mindset and how to shift mindset with ease
• Develop techniques for building self belief (includes self esteem and self confidence)

About the Facilitator: 

Jennie Gilbert, BSc, PGCE. Jennie’s career has spanned two continents and involved many adventures, including the Base Camp of Everest several times. She has actively led teams from 4 to 300 people, in education, for profit and non-profit corporations, as well as the sports field. 

Currently, and for the last decade, Jennie has been a regular and popular facilitator at SAIT. Recognized with SAIT’s STAR ‘Original’ Award, she is often recognized for her unique approaches and for establishing best in class solutions. 

Jennie is a dynamic professional facilitator who relentlessly focuses on reaching the highest return on expectations. She has a unique ability to relate to and imbue her audience. Participants are delighted with the depth & quality of knowledge, as well as the readiness to apply their new skills to the real world. 

“Whatever you do, don’t come prepared to sit still and be bored!”  Jennie constantly encourages thinking beyond the ordinary. She enjoys being at the forefront of designing programs with a fresh perspective, new ways of learning, and new opportunities for participants and facilitators.

Find out more about Jennie on LinkedIn.