Presentations

Michael’s presentations feature original, tested skills and techniques he’s developed from frontline experience in communication, management, leadership, and customer service. He often combines elements from several different presentations into one that will fit your needs and time format. Michael is a speaker—but he knows it’s listening that makes great presentations. He will be delighted to reach out personally about customization.

Please contact him so he can learn how to best meet your needs.

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Presentations

Presentations

01

CONFLICT COMMUNICATION: How to Deal with Disagreement, Conflicts, & Hot People Without Antacids

This internationally acclaimed session by an award-winning communication expert is packed with practical, essential skills you will use every day to (1) handle conflict with greater confidence and calmness and (2) build more open and collaborative communication for outstanding teams, collaboration, and service.

This is one of Michael’s most requested presentations because the demonstrated skills can be used immediately in almost every situation, regardless of a person’s job description or role.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • How to kick out of our heads incorrect things we were taught about persuasion and handling conflict, and replace them with approaches that work better

  • Precisely what to say and do when dealing with disagreement, frustrated or upset people, and when facing difficult issues and conflict

  • Ways to resolve conflicts with less stress, more credibility, and respect

  • Immediately boost your persuasiveness and problem-solving using expert techniques to tailor your responses to the needs and concerns of others


02

TEAM TALK: BUILDING EXCELLENT TEAMWORK COMMUNICATION to Create an Open, Collaborative Work Environment for Flexibility, Ongoing Improvement, & Service

Team leaders of all types will use these practical techniques every day to build more open communication and stronger professional relationships, which will encourage best performance and program improvement.

Team success requires an open exchange of ideas, yet people present an increasing diversity of attitudes, experiences, values, assumptions, and beliefs.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Building a culture where differences are treated as a strength

  • Boosting everyone’s ability to be more flexible and open to change

  • Credible ways to encourage putting concerns “on the table” with respectful and positive discussion, while reducing talk behind backs

  • Michael’s Facilitating Phrases — creating an environment that encourages ongoing individual and organization improvement

  • Increasing the constructive expression of what people really think, creating an environment where it’s safe to present new and different ideas that will enhance our service to others

  • Developing more positive relationships for great teamwork

  • Reducing fear of new thinking and motivating more of it—while modeling flexibility

People were using the techniques the following day. Very informative, easy to understand.
— National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)

03

L.A.S.E.R.B.E.A.M.: Using More Powerful & Positive Communication to Grow Excellent Team Member Behavior

If you manage, supervise, or lead teams, this unique session is your essential toolbox for success. It teaches the power of being more specific, more credible, and more positive every day in our communication and expectations. It dramatically improves the way we give feedback. These are Michael’s nationally acclaimed methods for building a more motivating, positive, and supportive work environment.

Saying things like “You’ve got to be more organized” or “Be creative” or “Be a team player” doesn’t work; replace this with more specific, positive communication that facilitates the growth of great behavior. Go beyond identifying the qualities you want in others and be able to identify and support the specific behaviors that define success.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Using Michael’s DLP Technique to move past saying “Great job!” to be more credible when giving feedback about behavior, including evaluation and coaching

  • The surprising number one reason team leaders tend to talk more about what they want to change instead of things they could celebrate every day

  • Terrific techniques to convert the qualities we look for in others to the specific behaviors that demonstrate them— knowing precisely what we want effective staff and employees to do and say

  • Making our communication clear, positive, and much more motivating, while assuring greater success for everyone by providing specific paths for higher performance

  • Make the daily ways we talk to people about their behavior more useful and valuable to them


04

Super Supervision, Coaching, & Mentoring: Leading Staff to High Level Performance

No “management theory” in this session: This is an original and engaging presentation of specific, immediately useable skills that managers, administrators, supervisors, and other team leaders members can use immediately and every day to motivate staff and coach them to their highest levels of performance.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • How to more precisely identify, coach, and grow the exact behaviors we’re looking for

  • The key secret to staff retention and motivation and the conversation and planning that makes it happen

  • Michael’s “Proof of Support” techniques: Simple, outstanding ways to support people in doing their best work and build stronger, trusting work relationships

  • Promoting ongoing skill development as an effective mentor and coach and providing more useful feedback

Please Note: Michael’s Continual Development of Staff (CDOS) 2-step coaching technique can also be included in the above presentation depending on the format and session length.

  • CDOS is an easy-to-use structure for coaching in which continual work on performance goals is the norm: “Everybody’s working on something” for growth all the time

  • Make feedback more useful so it produces positive changes

  • Overcome resistance to coaching, even by veteran team members

  • Cut through the stress that leadership team members have about providing feedback


With his energizing teaching style and trademark “use-it-immediately approach”, Michael demonstrates specific, positive, and practical tools and techniques we can use ourselves and teach to staff to build solid and lasting relationships with customers and clients—plus great collaboration with each other for excellent internal service.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Creative, unique activities to bring back to your teams to get them “onboard” with service success

  • The single, core secret to impressing those we serve and how to apply it every day

  • Exactly what to say and not to say to build and sustain strong relationships

  • Techniques to deal calmly and professionally with conflict, frustration, anger, and disagreement with confidence and credibility

05

The Customer is Always Bright: Superb Customer Service through Skilled Communication & Immediate Ways to Get Your Team to Provide the Best


06

THE DEATH OF MEANINGLESS, MEANDERING MEETINGS: Ten Powerful & Practical Techniques to Make Meetings Move

This session demonstrates creative, highly effective techniques personally developed by a nationally recognized facilitator and discussion leader, including methods you won’t find anywhere else.

Managers and other team leaders spend a lot of time leading face-to-face and virtual meetings, and most of us run them based on how we’ve seen others do it. Problem: These models are often ineffective, and nothing is less motivating than wasting the time of team members—and your own.

Solution: When you get the reputation for running fast, productive, engaging meetings that make great use of time, people love you and look forward to working on your team. Michael will demonstrate specific, advanced skills that are easy to implement and make a powerful difference.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Making Meetings Matter More with a New Way to Prep: Turbo-charge your preparation and organization of meetings by replacing traditional agendas with a simple-to-use, dynamic, efficient, and innovative technique that makes it easier to convert talk into action and accomplish more in less time. Plus, you’ll improve the quality of decisions.

  • Participation Boosters for Masterful Meetings: Get people to speak up and comfortably increase participation by everyone in all kinds of meetings. Get opinions and ideas out in the open and find out what everyone is really thinking.

  • The Master Secrets to Keeping Meetings on Track: Original skills you can use immediately to keep your meetings moving at a productive pace that is highly focused on producing results


07

Fresh & Highly Effective Techniques for Terrific Training that Engages Participants & Maximizes Learning

Michael is a master trainer who has present on six continents and in all 50 states. He’s the author of bestselling training books and has over 45 years of experience teaching many different sizes and types of groups. This session demonstrates original and creative strategies, activities, and presentation skills that grab attention and participation, motivate learning, and build a learning community that is safe and open for all. This is a “master class” in how to “wow” your participants with high engagement and practical value. And you’ll get training activities and methods you won’t find anywhere else.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • How to grab — and keep — attention with original, easy-to-use creative tools

  • Increase learning by getting people to immediately practice essential skills so they are ready and confident to use them on the job

  • Maximizing participation and boosting motivation for both new and experienced staff

  • Creative, engaging, ready-to-use activities that you can plug into existing training right away

Your session was a perfect ‘10’! You provided our members with an incredible amount of excellent tools to aid them in being truly effective leaders in their administrative roles. Your professional expertise, presentation style, and charming personality were greatly enjoyed by all!
— Toronto Law Office Management Association

08

PRESENTATION POWER SKILLS: How to Speak So People Stay Awake and Do Not Hate You

We are increasingly presenting in meetings both online (Zoom, et al) and when we’re up in front of everyone “in real life.” Whether on screen (even for a few minutes when “sharing” our screen online) or face-to-face, it requires more expert skills to really get through to people so that they aren’t checking their email and texts while we’re talking. 

No matter what your level of experience, this session is packed with original and fresh techniques from an award-winning presenter with decades of experience speaking in 6 of the 7 continents and in all 50 U.S. states. Michael will demonstrate valuable and original techniques to create a more engaging, effective presentation—and one that doesn’t simply involve commenting on dull slides as if they were the “script” for the presentation.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Exactly what to say and do to grab and hold any audience’s attention

  • Fool-proof tips for improving your existing presentations or for creating new ones

  • How to identify and wipe out extremely common presentation blunders (which we usually make because we are copying people who should have gone to a workshop…)

  • Methods to gain confidence in your public speaking abilities


09

TIME MANAGEMENT for People Who Don’t Have Time to Take a Time Management Course: The Real Secrets to Getting Things Done

This nationally acclaimed, creatively presented, no-nonsense session demonstrates six groups of outstanding tools that have received rave reviews by professionals for their flexibility, practicality, and ease of use. Boost your productivity right away while reducing unnecessary stress. You don’t have to use all of the techniques every day – just when you need them. They can be applied quickly and tailored to your individual needs and work habits.

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • Special techniques to defeat procrastination and reduce interruptions

  • How to increase productivity and efficiency

  • Getting more accomplished so we never have a day when we got “nothing done”

  • Organizing what needs to be done in a new and better way that replaces our usual “to-do” list with something simple that helps us produce high quality work more efficiently


10

How to Manage Volunteers Before They Manage to Get Away

National, state, and regional organizations have acclaimed this practical, tool-packed session for its fresh and positive approach to the supervision, leadership, and motivation of volunteers. 

Participants will Learn and Practice:

  • What makes volunteers tick, and what ticks them off

  • Setting up the relationship with greater clarity to ensure success and retention

  • Communicating and enforcing expectations

  • Compensating volunteers in money-less ways

  • Surprising rules about rewards

  • How to keep volunteers motivated, enthused, and cared for

  • Handling volunteers who aren’t working out

  • Professionalizing your volunteer force

  • Solving common problems and challenges


Interested in learning more or booking Michael for a presentation?