Joanne L. Smikle

There are few organizations that have the luxury of not attending to their most important resource, their human talent. This interactive session provides a comprehensive approach for cleaning the sludge from your pipeline and creating a flow that feeds key positions throughout the organization. Participants will leave with a strategy that they can adapt to identifying latent potential, cultivating high performance, and creating career paths that engage employees at all levels. They will be able to mount a strong defense against turnover, promote healthy retention, and stimulate an enriching work environment.

The question of why employees commit and engage is an important inquiry for businesses of all types. With so many employers wanting to reverse high turnover trends, it is critical that leaders develop an understanding of why people stay. This interactive, informative session presents a research-based approach to understanding commitment and engagement. It shifts the focus from turnover to comprehensive organizational strategies that create sustainable commitment and retention. The session introduces the range of compelling factors that lead to high levels of employee engagement. It provides a model that can be adapted and applied to many settings.

This interactive workshop introduces a model for using Appreciative Inquiry to get measurable, lasting results for the leader, the team and the organization. Participants will have the opportunity to apply the elements of AI to their dilemmas and develop transformational strategies that they will be able to immediately apply. The facilitator will introduce Dr. David Coopperrider’s 4-D Model and the 5 Generic Processes. Both tools can be adapted to address issues ranging from productivity to work process redesign, to specific performance management issues with staff to raising the bar on innovation and creativity in the enterprise. Case studies, assessments and simulations will be used to teach participants how they can apply and modify the model to create sustainable transformations. Finally, the session addresses practical considerations and cautions that leaders should consider when applying AI.