Wolf & Heron Hosts Virtual Roundtable on the Shifting Roles in L&D as The Great Resignation Continues
Wolf & Heron Hosts Virtual Roundtable on the Shifting Roles in L&D as The Great Resignation Continues

The leadership development firm will moderate a panel of L&D experts and thought leaders from various industries. Panelists joining the online event include Nick Foote from apparel company Carhartt, Lauren Kelley from tech giant Google, and executive coach Laura Knights from Knights Consulting. Attendees can expect to hear diverse perspectives on challenges that resulted from mass employee resignation also known as The Great Resignation. The roundtable guest speakers will also share insights into new strategies that organizations should consider when recruiting, retaining, and developing their future leaders in the current economic market.

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Press ReleasesStephanie JuddComment
Dress for the Power Inside You
Dress for the Power Inside You

We’ve all heard the expressions “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” or “look good, feel good” but Stephanie didn’t really believe them. She was conflicted about wanting to look good and feeling guilty about wasting time focusing on “vain” things like clothes and makeup. But, it turns out that research indicates that what we wear affects our brain. It impacts our behavior, mood, personality, confidence, and how we interact with others. Getting dressed is less about what it signals to other people, and more about how it affects yourself.

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ArticleStephanie JuddleadershipComment
Turning a Fail into a Win: Navigating Conflict with a Client
Turning a Fail into a Win: Navigating Conflict with a Client

One of our recent Story Hours focused on the topic of Navigating Conflict: Working through an interpersonal challenge. The imminence of the event inspired Kara to brainstorm story ideas that could fit that subject. Navigating conflict is a guaranteed component of leadership. It comes up all the time in our coaching conversations as our clients navigate conflict with their managers, colleagues and/or direct reports. There’s almost no limit to where it can show up at work and, when it does, it creates a spiraling ball of distraction that saps mental energy, inhibits communication and causes negative feelings all around.

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ArticleKara Davidsonleadership, conflict, conflict resolution, navigating conflictComment
The Storytelling Mistake to Rule them All: Generalizing
The Storytelling Mistake to Rule them All: Generalizing

When brevity is the most important thing, stories may not be the best tool of choice. But when coming across as a compelling and memorable communicator, consider stories—especially ones that lean on specificity—to carry your message.

In our work as storytelling coaches, one of the most common challenges our clients face is bringing their stories down to specifics. Recently, Stephanie had a client, let’s call her Jane, come to her for support in preparing for an interview. Jane knew that she was going to be asked about her origin story. In her case, the question was going to be something along the lines of, “What inspired you to get into the field of Mathematics?” Here’s a rough approximation of the story she started with, and the final version that she landed on. Read on to compare the two to eachother.

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ArticleStephanie JuddstorytellingComment
How to Help Your Sales Team Personalize The Pitch Deck With Stories
How to Help Your Sales Team Personalize The Pitch Deck With Stories

One of the most common challenges of sales leaders is enabling their teams to take the demo deck and make it their own—uniquely, authentically and personally theirs. Read this article for some ways you can empower your salespeople to adapt the deck for a more relatable and engaging presentation.

Stephanie Judd authored this article as a Forbes Council contribution.

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Media Mentions, ArticleStephanie JuddForbes, StorytellingComment
Three Common Mistakes when Designing for Engagement
Three Common Mistakes when Designing for Engagement

“Employee engagement” has been a hot-button issue for more than a decade, and remains central to organizational strategy. But engagement is even more important now as companies experiment with hybrid work, or a permanent virtual workforce, and the Great Resignation exists as an ever-present backdrop. And yet, “engagement” remains a big-picture, intangible, and somewhat esoteric idea that has lots of impact on the people within an organization without anyone really understanding what to do about it.

The truth of the matter is that truly engaging your team happens long before the actual moment of reckoning. It’s thinking through details, and finding ways to activate interest and ownership with your employees in every interaction. Here are three common myths about employee engagement and what you can do instead.

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ArticleStephanie Juddleadership, Meetings, facilitation, engagementComment
15 Ways To Ensure A Successful Outcome From Any Negotiation
15 Ways To Ensure A Successful Outcome From Any Negotiation

When entering into a discussion where both parties have something to gain and something to lose, there are effective ways to make sure everyone comes away feeling it was a win. In this article, Stephanie Judd is featured as one of 15 coaches who discuss things junior-level professionals, senior leaders and C-suite executives can do to achieve the best possible results in any negotiation.

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Media MentionsStephanie JuddForbesComment
Leveraging Coaching Skills as a Leader: Making a Request
Leveraging Coaching Skills as a Leader: Making a Request

A request is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as ‘the act or an instance of asking for something’. From a coaching perspective, this definition falls short. A request, in our opinion, is made when we see untapped potential or an opportunity not being fully leveraged within a person. At its core, a request is a gift of possibility available to the person who chooses to receive, unwrap and appreciate the request you have made.

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ArticleKara Davidsoncoaching, leadershipComment
Top Watch-Outs When Building a Hybrid Conference
Top Watch-Outs When Building a Hybrid Conference

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it was that we can engage with each other even if we’re all in different places. As the world re-opens and in-person conferences are restarting, there is an expectation that they will remain accessible to folks who are unable to participate on site. And yet, early attempts to build meaningful hybrid conference experiences have shown us that we’re playing in a whole new league now. Hybrid experiences aren’t in-person or virtual experiences. They’re something altogether different. We still have a lot to learn, and it’s easy to execute hybrid conferences poorly.

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ArticleKara Davidsonconference, Meetings, hybrid, hybrid conferenceComment
The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own
The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own

It’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.

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ArticleKara Davidsonsales, slide deck, make it your own, presentations, storytelling, stories, authenticityComment
Learning Design Best Practices for a Global Workforce
Learning Design Best Practices for a Global Workforce

With an increasingly distributed and global workforce, organizations need to become more sophisticated about how to support their employees' growth and development. There are many variables to consider from time zone, to language barriers, cultural differences, remote vs in-person vs hybrid, folks who are co-located but virtual, etc. Meanwhile, L&D teams are still being asked to deliver high-quality training and great experiences that engage employees and inspire them to do the hard work required to develop new skills. Here are a few tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way as we develop impactful learning experiences to a variety of global teams and organizations.

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ArticleStephanie Juddhybrid, L&DComment