The executive team is the brain trust of the business. Yet, these teams, like so many others, can fall short of their potential, failing to take full advantage of the talent around the table, reaching suboptimal decisions, and failing to learn from experience. Some teams need a refresh around their process habits and decision blind spots. Other executive teams need help building their capacity to face future challenges. Depending on the team’s needs, Kathleen offers programmes to improve the team’s—and firm’s—performance.

In a world of constant change, managers need the tools and skills to build and sustain a sense of inclusion and engagement among their reports. For themselves, too, managers must maintain their resilience. Capitalising on the adage that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers, we focus on what managers can do — cheaply and easily — to foster feelings of inclusion and to deepen reports’ feelings of engagement. Through interactive casework, we analyze how resource-challenged managers can create productive, committed, happy teams. Drawing on an empirically-validated engagement framework, I work with participants in small groups to brainstorm innovative practices that they can implement Monday morning to achieve their inclusion and engagement goals.

Kathleen is passionate about working with women to help them recognise and pull down the barriers that prevent them from having the impact and success they want. Working with Jill McCullough, an internationally renowned acting coach, Kathleen relies on a range of techniques to help each woman hone the skills she needs to accelerate her career. Drawing on drama techniques, for instance, women practice skills to manage their experience of fear that may inhibit them from claiming their “place at the table.” Kathleen relies on empirically validated research to provide women with tactics to help them better negotiate outcomes for themselves and their teams. Women leave the programme with a greater sense of self-confidence, easy-to-use tools to help them lead more effectively, and an affiliation network to support them as they put these tools into practice.

Getting things done in today’s firms requires excellent collaboration and conflict management skills. One’s ability to find solutions to shared problems, to manage difficult people, and to get people with diverse values and perspectives to work together effectively is critical for one’s success as a leader. As a recognised thought leader in the field of negotiation, Kathleen builds the programme around her SHIFT© model of collaboration. SHIFT© gives participants a set of tactics to help them navigate and manage tricky situations, and in ways that enable participants to maximise their economic, relationship, and reputational goals. Highly experiential, this programme provides a “learning laboratory” for participants to experiment with new tactics free from the stakes and constraints that can inhibit them in the real world. Participants leave with a clearer understanding of their strengths, a set of effective tactics, and the confidence to begin to use them right away.

A seasoned and highly effective public speaker, Kathleen regularly shares her expertise with audiences in keynote speeches and annual meeting addresses. Current topics include how women can achieve greater success for themselves and their firms, how to become a trusted advisor to one’s clients, and how employees can better navigate the firm to become even more effective.