Most Requested Programs

Crucial Conversations® –
Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

If you feel stuck – in a relationship, in your career, at home, wherever – chances are there's a crucial conversation that's keeping you there.

In this fast-paced program, based on the New York Times bestseller Crucial Conversations, Dr. Duncan introduces you to the principles and skills you need to handle crucial conversations – the ones that will yield major improvements in areas like productivity, quality, safety, diversity, change management, and personal relationships.

This program focuses on the best practices of people who get consistently good results. After more than 25 years of research in two dozen industries involving over 25,000 individuals, we have found that:

• All relationships, families, teams, and organizations have problems.
   
• The difference between good organizations and the best is not how many problems they have. The difference is how respectfully and rapidly they get problems solved.
   
• People's ability to confront emotionally and politically risky topics (crucial conversations) with each other is the #1 predictor of rapid problem-solving.
   
• If you want to become unstuck and improve your results and relationships, you need to improve your ability to deal with crucial conversations.
   
• When faced with crucial conversations, you have only three options – avoid them, deal with them badly, or deal with them well.

Using video clips and real-life stories, Dr. Duncan teaches the time-tested skills for dealing with them well.

("These skills have generated new techniques for working together in ways that enabled us to win the largest contract in our industry's history." - Dain M. Hancock, President, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics)

Crucial Confrontations® –
Tools for Resolving Broken Promises,
Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior

Every individual, team, and organization faces disappointment. A coworker misses a deadline, a boss fails to live up to an expectation, or a direct report just plain behaves badly.

We all face accountability challenges but not everyone responds in the same way. Top performers hold others accountable, create results in everything from productivity, to teamwork, to improved relationships.

Change your world by making Crucial Confrontations skills your best practices.

As with Crucial Conversations, this program focuses on best practices. It also includes video clips and real-life stories to help the principles and skills “come alive” for you and your team.

(“If you read only one ‘management ‘ book this decade … I’d insist it be Crucial Confrontations.” – Tom Peters, author of Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age)

Wake Up That Sleeping GIANT!

Within most of us there's gigantic potential waiting to be focused on a life of productivity, high performance and achievement. Learn the five keys to waking up the GIANT within you. In this program, Dr. Duncan underscores the power of SMART goals, the importance of taking courageous action based on personal vision, the necessity of saying no to forces that pull you off track, and the indispensable vitality that comes from mental conditioning. Not a mere "motivational" pep talk. This message is chock full of specific how-to advice from a man who has invested a career in observing and working with some of the most effective leaders of our time.
CHANGESmarts – 
Win Their Hearts While You Rock Their Boat

Truly effective change is an elusive goal for most organizations. It doesn't have to be. Dr. Duncan offers a simple-though-powerful seven-step approach to completing your implementation on time, within budget and with all human and technical needs met. With CHANGESmarts, you'll discover how to create a more compelling "business case" for action... how to decrease disruption and enjoy a tighter focus on what matters most... how to diffuse resistance... how to build stronger sponsorship and shared commitment... how to establish higher levels of trust, teamwork and collaboration... how to create the right communication and reinforcement strategies... and how to instill more "psychological ownership" in your people - which leads to change that lasts.

Building a High Performance Culture – 
With Real Staying Power

Dr. Duncan has helped scores of organizations breathe new life into their cultures. With lots of stories from his vast reservoir of experience, he'll show you how the "unwritten rules" being followed in your organization may actually contradict your professed values. Learn the keys to strategic alignment - ensuring that the behaviors at work in your environment reinforce your mission, vision, values, and strategic business objectives.

Be a Gardener, Not a Mechanic

A first tendency of many business people is to fix things. After all, they’re paid to solve problems, so the metaphor of the mechanic seems natural. Unfortunately, some leaders then try to fix people. Not many folks want to be fixed. They may be open to persuasion or influence, but they don’t want to be “fixed.” In this session, Dr. Duncan shows how great leaders adopt the role of gardener rather than the role of mechanic. With his characteristic pattern of real life illustrations, he explains how the gardener/leader creates an environment that encourages growth, an environment full of light and nourishment, an environment with sufficient space for stretching and expanding. Great leadership – and great gardening – are all about creating positive change. This program is ripe with ideas on getting a great harvest in your leadership garden. 
    Note: This program is popular as a keynote address emphasizing leadership in the work place ... and it can be tailored for a session with executives and spouses to emphasize effective relationships in marriage.