Organizational Training Programs

Bring your leaders together for a more powerful organization

Strozzi Institute has created a range of corporate programs that can be fully customized to deal with your organizations concerns in a private setting. We welcome the opportunity to develop a program for your specific needs.

Strozzi Institute focuses on embodied learning – in which individuals and groups engage in recurrent, experiential practices over time in order to achieve mastery in their roles and way of being. When we see this level of embodiment in individuals, we trust and believe in their competences. This level of presence and leadership transcends an idea or wishful thinking. For example, athletes do not read how to swim or pole vault and then go out and do it. They train with focus and intention, they have a coach or mentor who provides them with feedback, and they place themselves in a constant game of learning.

We are well know for:

Team building using experiential team building games and team building activities to developing high performance teams.

Leadership development through developing awareness of individual possibilities and limitations and developing new practices to embody new ways of being.

Communication and accountability using speech act theory and learning to embody the art of impeccable coordination, commitment, and engagement.

Assessment process for accountability, building trust, and creating higher standards of work excellence.

Below are examples of how we might work together:

Leadership Presence - One-day program
The Leadership Dojo – Four-day program
Leadership Mastery - Multi-conference program

Leadership Presence (a one-day program)

Our Leadership Presence program is designed to give individuals and teams from your organization practices for effective coordination during a day of leadership development.

In this training, participants will learn to:
Develop a centered presence - the ability to stay calm and grounded in chaos
Increase one’s ability to lead and influence others
Hold themselves and others accountable for commitments and promises
Build team cohesion and coordination

Participants find this program to be lively and fun in a learning environment that creates possibilities for new actions as well as identifying and managing limitations. The practices of this program provide participants with a new perspective of coordination - simple, yet not trivial: how do you manage your commitments and hold yourself and others accountable for the promises you make?

Course activities may include:

Lecture on effective leadership in organizations
Practices for declaring a future
The practice of conversations for action
Practices for centering and grounding
Practices for offering and receiving grounded assessments
Practices for managing limiting behaviors

Experiential exercises and team practices will dramatically strengthen the ability to stay focused and committed to goals in the midst of complexity and chaos.

The example above is one possibility for a day-long training. We can also custom design this day to align with the needs and concerns of your organization.

Leadership Dojo™ (a four day program)

The Leadership Dojo™ is an intensive training in developing leadership. Participants will learn to value, motivate, and bring out the best in themselves and the people and teams with whom they work. Many if not all of the practices in Leadership Mastery are in this training:

Practices for declaring a future
The practice of conversations for action
Practices for centering and grounding
Practices for offering and receiving grounded assessments
Practices for managing limiting behaviors

In addition, we include practices such as:

Anticipate and address breakdowns rather than react to them
Develop the ability to provide real-time feedback which enables people to self-correct in the moment
Increase the ability to lead and influence others
Keep their composure and create opportunities in high-stress and emotionally charged environments
Build trust to have honest, courageous conversations
Act decisively while maintaining important relationships - distinguish between being right and being effective
Accurately “read” people and better discern intent, motivations, and capacity for action
Increase their capacity for concentration, open focus, visualization, and mental rehearsal
Increase their strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility -- physically, emotionally, and mentally
Increase willingness and ability to commit to and own a shared mission
Hold themselves and others accountable for commitments and promises
Build team cohesion and coordination
Hold team standards of assessment

We request a high level of commitment in order to accomplish the goals stated above, and at the end of this session, we promise you will have an exemplary, world class performing team.

Permeating all the activities in The Leadership Dojo is the notion that in order for a leader to be at their optimal level of performance, they need to be emotionally, spiritually, and physically fit. We believe that only through the synergistic integration of these three elements can a leader achieve their full potential. This balanced nexus between Body/Mind/Spirit is the fundamental source of power for the exemplary leader. It is the ground that gives credibility to declarations and it is the capital for developing trust with others. The impeccability of this unification creates a leader that is capable of decisive action, emotional maturity, and embodied vision.

Course activities may include:

Lectures and group discussions in leadership values and principles
Team assessment practices
Declaration and embodied commitment
Attention (mental) training
Individual depth coaching
Martial arts training (empty hand, grappling, jo, and knife)

Experiential exercises and team practices will dramatically strengthen the ability to stay focused and committed to goals in the midst of complexity and chaos. Teams will be engaged in real-time practices that are directly linked to the everyday needs of your organization. Of primary importance is developing participant’s ability to extend into the world with clear intention, skillful action, and grounded compassion.

Leadership Mastery (a multi-session program set over the course of several months)

A fundamental claim of Leadership Mastery is that cultivation of the self, which is the foundation for exemplary leadership, occurs through engaging in recurrent embodiment practices. In this program, the emphasis is on practices over time which allow us to deeply embody new skills and actions.

There is a difference between academic knowledge and embodied knowledge. Academic knowledge is an intellectual understanding; it is an important part of leadership, but it is not designed to necessarily produce effective leadership or new actions. Embodied knowledge, on the other hand, is the skill to act appropriately at the appropriate time. It is immediate, available, and responsive. It occurs through recurrent practices, not with memorization or rote learning. Learning in the Leadership Mastery leads to the capacity to take new actions.

In the Leadership Mastery program, participants will learn:

An executive presence of integrity and authenticity
The capacity to generate and manage moods to create a productive and balanced life
The ability to cultivate, manage, and repair trust
To build sustainable team cohesion and coordination
The ability to coordinate effectively with others
The ability to motivate and mobilize others
The capacity to stay emotionally balanced in times of adversity and change
The ability to listen more deeply to the concerns of internal and external customers
The ability to resolve conflict more effectively

These skills of leadership are not novel or contestable in what are commonly seen as the necessary social skills for a leader. Yet it is rare to be in an environment in which there are practices that develop them. The Leadership Mastery program is that environment.

The structure of the Leadership Mastery program is as follows:

Three-day conference. In this first phase participant’s historical way of being in the world, as individuals and as a team, is revealed to them while beginning the practices that develop new leadership skills.
Two-day conference. After 4-6 weeks of applying the practices from the first conference in the workplace, the second phase will implement relational practices and business processes that are necessary for the participants to succeed at the individual, team, and company level. Also, the successes and breakdowns observed during the time between conferences will be addressed.
Two-day conference. After a second 4-6 week period of using what has been learned so far, the third phase engages in practices of reading and anticipating the world within which your organization does business. This allows participants to perceive each other, their customers, and their marketplace from a fresh perspective.

The principles structured into this program can serve to form the internal culture of an organization. These principles are always present when training in the Leadership Mastery program, and inform the background ethics, morals, and norms of a company. These principles are:

Integrity between speech and action (telling the truth to customers and colleagues)
Appropriate respect and obligation to the customer and/or supervisor, to fellow colleagues, and to the workplace itself
Synchronization of mind and body (making and fulfilling commitments)
Honoring tradition (business processes) while being open to innovation
Taking a stand for one’s position without arrogance or aggression
A life-long commitment to learning
Maintaining a proper equilibrium between career and the concerns of the corporate vision.

It is important to note that the practices in the Leadership Mastery program include the specific conversations, actions, and issues that the individuals and teams are dealing with in their organizations. While one learns the fundamental embodied practices of an exemplary leader in this program, they are doing so as they take care of the business at hand. It is not in the retreat situation in which one embodies the virtues of leadership, but in the heat and liveliness of the very issues that require leadership.

Individual coaching is a beneficial option and greatly enhances an individual’s capacity to fully engage in and maintain the leadership practices between the conferences.

In this program as in all of Strozzi Institute’s organizational programs, we attend to the specific concerns and issues of the organization to design the particulars of the program.