Designed as the go-to reference for managing a consulting business, The Business of Consulting is candid, practical, and eminently useful. Fine-tuned to address the changes in today’s business environment, this vital resource outlines the basics for managing a consulting practice and shows how to: Develop a business plan Market your business Charge for your services Build a client relationship Grow the business Ensure your continued professional growth Make money in the profession
Everything you ever wanted to know about consulting—a practical roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs Seismic changes occurring in the workforce are leading to more and more people entering the world of contract, freelance, and contingency work. Rapid changes in demographics and advances in technology have led companies and talent to engage in profoundly new ways and consulting is one of the keys to success. The New Business of Consulting is authentic and practical, and shares the knowledge and skills required to start and grow a successful consulting business. From how to make a smooth career transition, to how to determine a consulting fee, to how consultants inadvertently create a bad reputation, it covers everything you need to know to thrive and flourish in this competitive field. Covers contemporary topics, such as how to achieve success in the gig economy Discloses a reliable technique to land the clients you want Presents options to help you balance your life and your business Prepares you for naming your business, managing critical financial issues, and building a client relationship Shows you how to take your income and impact beyond working as a solopreneur The crucial start-up days of a consulting business may be frenetic and fraught with questions. This new edition provides sanity and answers all the questions. It includes practical tools, templates, and checklists that you can download and implement immediately.
Retain outstanding talent with a successful training and development program One of the best ways to retain great talent in your business is to deliver a strong training and development program—and this book gives you the tools to do just that. Featuring the latest strides in talent development, such as social learning, hybrid training, creating videos, and more, it arms you with everything you need to upskill employees to be more effective, productive, satisfied, and loyal. Develop a robust training and development program Foster a supportive and innovative work environment Use mentoring, coaching, and informal learning effectively Align learning to your organization’s needs Engage your employees with a motivating training program using the helpful guidance in Training & Development For Dummies!
There are more similarities than differences between how artists and scientists work. Both ask countless questions. Both search in earnest for answers. Both are dedicated to reaching the best results. Not so different from today's trainers, are they? Elaine Biech, one of the most highly regarded names in talent development, has set out to identify the perfect blend of content mastery and audience insight. The result is this highly informative book.The Art and Science of Training presents the science for learning and development, but it also emphasizes that training success lies in knowing what to do when things don't go as planned. Discover how top facilitators always put learners first, even when faced with exceptions to the rule—the unwilling learner, the uninformed supervisor, the inappropriate delivery medium, or the unmanageable performance challenge. And learn why you must understand people, not only content, to ensure consistently exceptional learning experiences. Science is both a body of knowledge and a process. Art is the expression of creativity and imagination. Where they intersect is the best way to help others learn and grow.
An action plan for working as a consultant Management consulting is a $250 billion industry and growing at a rate of over four percent annually. Many predict that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will soon be contingent, freelance, or consulting members of the workforce—making this book more relevant than ever. Individuals become independent consultants out of necessity or preference: necessity because they lost their job or the company offered an attractive exit package; preference because they want a career change, more control over their time, or an enriched, varied work situation. Consulting also appeals to the Millennial workforce who are searching for careers that offer a good salary as well as meaningful work. The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide: • Serves as a companion to The New Business of Consulting • Provides you with a place to plan your transition into consulting • Helps you identify your niche, develop a business plan, charge what you’re worth, and create a marketing strategy to ensure a steady stream of clients • Prepares you for changes you will encounter beyond your professional life, including social, family, and financial aspects The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide helps you work through the challenges of consulting such as working alone, deciding on necessary insurance coverage, finding your first clients, struggling with cash flow, and understanding market trends.
Tackle training and development the fun and easy way so you can share your specialized knowledge with others Millions of Americans train others as part of their jobs. Whether you're an employee training your co-workers on a new process or skill, a volunteer asked to train new volunteers, a chef training your staff, or a paramedic giving CPR training, it's just as important to know how to teach others as it is to know what you're talking about. It doesn't matter how much you know about your subject if you can't share it with others. And that's where Training For Dummies comes in—it offers all the nuts and bolts of training for anyone who has to educate others on any subject and in any field—and it's written in plain English. Covering all the modern, interactive instructional methods and dynamic training approaches available, this hands-on guide will help you inspire trainees and keep them engaged throughout the training program. You'll discover: How to master the jargon of training The keys to using audio and visual aids effectively How to prepare for the training certification process Helpful ways to evaluate your results and improve your tactics Tips, techniques, and tidbits for enhancing your training sessions Methods that improve trainee participation Alternatives to the traditional lecture method Tactics for gauging and managing group dynamics Strategies for addressing problems in the classroom Hints for understanding and adapting to different learning styles Resources and other extra material you can immediately use The book has a part dedicated to the training profession, so if you're interested in becoming a professional trainer, you'll learn how to upgrade your skills and knowledge and what the trainer certification process entails. You'll also gain a perspective on other aspects of the field of training. Additionally, Training For Dummies shows you ways to inject humor into your training sessions, ideas for saving time in the training room, and icebreakers that actually break the ice. Get your own copy to start flexing your training muscle today.
The Consultant's Quick Start Guide offers a practical approach to setting up a consulting business. Throughout the guide, Elaine Biech--author of the best-selling The Business of Consulting--shares both her own secrets as well as those of numerous other successful consultants. With a focus on the business side of consulting, Biech takes you through a painless, fill-in-the-blanks, step-by-step process for setting up your consulting firm. New sections include: Why A Consulting Career—Five Reasons Why You May Be a Good Investment How Much Will Clients Pay? Your first "To Do" List What to call your business Creating and writing Business Plans Office Location Options Setting up your office, including Furnishing Your Office and planning your Technical Needs Electronic Records, including Monthly Expense Records, Revenue Projections, and Invoicing Staying Organized, including a Session Planner Determining your market niche Creating your marketing plan Developing your website Reviewing your first year with your family Electronic resource list, available online Skills And Knowledge Required of Consultants
To keep your competitive edge in the marketplace, you must find practical and inexpensive ways to retain the clients you have, develop new clients, and increase your bottom line. Marketing Your Consulting Services is a complete how-to guide that will help you develop and implement a dynamic marketing plan that will make your consulting business more visible to clients and more competitive in the marketplace. Written by Elaine Biech—one of the foremost experts in the field of consulting—this practical and easy-to-use resource includes useful guidance, practical ideas, special consulting considerations, and creative tips. Marketing Your Consulting Services is filled with the information you need to help you: Develop a successful marketing plan Understand the marketing ins and outs of a small consulting firm Find new clients Get your clients to refer you to other clients Implement inexpensive and effective marketing tools Develop creative marketing ideas Retain the clients you have today Biech urges you to develop a "market all the time" attitude, and to help you get started, she recommends hundreds of ideas that can be easily implemented. In addition, the book's "Fast Fourteen To Do Today" are suggestions you can put immediately into practice to help jump-start your business. Written to be a hands-on resource, Marketing Your Consulting Services also includes Quick tips throughout each chapter for easy reference. Marketing Your Consulting Services offers you the practical tools and helpful suggestions necessary to market and sell your consulting services. It includes everything a consultant needs to know about marketing to be—and stay—successful.
Liven up training with new, dynamic strategies for active participation 101 More Ways to Make Training Active brings together a rich, comprehensive collection of training strategies and activities into one easy source. Designed for quick navigation, this useful guide is packed with classroom-ready ideas and twenty "how-to" lists to enliven any learning situation, helping you better engage their trainees and encourage active participation. These techniques are applicable to almost any topic and learning objective, and provide guidance on every aspect of Active Training design and delivery. Each strategy includes recommendations for length of time, number of participants, and other conditional factors, plus a case study that illustrates the strategy in action. Coverage includes topics like communication, change management, coaching, feedback, conflict, diversity, customer service, and more, providing a complete reference for facilitating active training sessions. Active Training requires the participants to do most of the work. They use their brains, and apply what they've learned. The environment is fast-paced, fun, supportive, and personally engaging, and encourages participants to figure things out for themselves. This book contains specific, practical strategies for bringing this environment to any training session. Learn new strategies for stimulating active discussion Inspire creativity, innovation, and collaboration Teach better decision making, leadership, and self-management Make lectures active to encourage more participation Active training makes training sessions more enjoyable, and as participants invest themselves more heavily into the material, outcomes begin to improve dramatically. This dynamic atmosphere doesn't happen by accident; the activities and the course itself must be designed and delivered in a way that encourages active participation. In 101 More Ways to Make Training Active, you get a toolkit of creative, challenging, and fun ways to make it happen.
Enhance your toolkit with the best of the best—100+ tested and perfected activities guaranteed to succeed "A treasured collection with some never-before-seen tools and activities to increase participation and retention for your learners. . . . The 'insider's tips' feature helps even the newest trainer facilitate these activities like a pro." —Jean Barbazette, author of The Art of Great Training Delivery "I believe in the effectiveness of training activities, the brilliance of Elaine's editorial skills, and the street smarts of my ASTD colleagues. They all come together in this brilliant book." —Dr. Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan, of The Thiagi Group; author of Jolts! "What a wonderful book! . . . This is a must-have reference book for every learning and development professional." —Jack and Patti Phillips, Founders, Chairman and CEO of the ROI Institute, Inc. Workplace learning professionals are always looking for the best solution—tried-and-true activities, ones that work every time, ones that always lead participants to gain deeper insight into their leadership capabilities and potential. The Book of Road-Tested Activities gives you just what you're looking for: well-crafted games and activities that have been put to the test in real training situations and proven effective. To create this edited collection, training legend Elaine Biech painstakingly selected the very best—more than 100 activities that ASTD training professionals have taken to the finish line with excellent results. Divided between activities geared toward specific workshop topics and multi-purpose training tools and techniques, the book covers: Training topics—communication, listening, customer service and sales, creativity and innovation, teamwork, leadership, and more Tools and techniques—icebreakers, openings, reviews, and online learning, plus unique tools that will add a new twist to your own techniques With both new, innovative activities and classic, dependable ones enhanced with creative variations, Elaine Biech's The Book of Road-Tested Activities provides you with an array of tried-and-true training tools for every occasion and purpose. They'll help you achieve your own stellar track record of successful training and satisfied customers.
Year after year, consultants, trainers, and human resource professionals have come to rely on the Annuals to provide them with the most current and quality tools on a wide variety of topics. In this book, editor Elaine Biech and contributors to the Annuals have honed in on the important theme of team building to create the first topic-specific book in the Annuals series. The Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools includes an innovative ten-block model for building a high-performance team and draws on the best-on-the-topic articles from thirty-five years of Annuals volumes. Open the pages of The Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools and you will find: * A Stellar Panel of Contributors including Julie O'Mara, Patrick Doyle, Laurence C. Porter, Robert C. Preziosi, Anthony J. Reilly, John E. Jones, Leonard D. Goodstein, and Karen Vander Linde * A Toolbox Loaded with activities, surveys, and information that you can put in place to build high-performing teams * A Complete Team-Building Kit that includes a model for determining a team's strengths and weaknesses "I cut my training teeth on The Pfeiffer Annuals, and I've been a faithful advocate of these peerless guides ever since the first one. I'm just beside myself with glee to have a collection of the 'classic team-building tools' all in one place! Elaine Biech has done a masterful job of bringing together the all-time favorites and organizing them into a practical model. You've just got to have this book on your shelf, within easy reach. Buy it now! I know you're going to use it often." --James M. Kouzes, coauthor of The Leadership Challenge and Encouraging the Heart, chairman emeritus, Tom Peters Company
Liven up training with new, dynamic strategies for active participation 101 More Ways to Make Training Active brings together a rich, comprehensive collection of training strategies and activities into one easy source. Designed for quick navigation, this useful guide is packed with classroom-ready ideas and twenty "how-to" lists to enliven any learning situation, helping you better engage their trainees and encourage active participation. These techniques are applicable to almost any topic and learning objective, and provide guidance on every aspect of Active Training design and delivery. Each strategy includes recommendations for length of time, number of participants, and other conditional factors, plus a case study that illustrates the strategy in action. Coverage includes topics like communication, change management, coaching, feedback, conflict, diversity, customer service, and more, providing a complete reference for facilitating active training sessions. Active Training requires the participants to do most of the work. They use their brains, and apply what they've learned. The environment is fast-paced, fun, supportive, and personally engaging, and encourages participants to figure things out for themselves. This book contains specific, practical strategies for bringing this environment to any training session. Learn new strategies for stimulating active discussion Inspire creativity, innovation, and collaboration Teach better decision making, leadership, and self-management Make lectures active to encourage more participation Active training makes training sessions more enjoyable, and as participants invest themselves more heavily into the material, outcomes begin to improve dramatically. This dynamic atmosphere doesn't happen by accident; the activities and the course itself must be designed and delivered in a way that encourages active participation. In 101 More Ways to Make Training Active, you get a toolkit of creative, challenging, and fun ways to make it happen.
Everything you ever wanted to know about consulting—a practical roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs Seismic changes occurring in the workforce are leading to more and more people entering the world of contract, freelance, and contingency work. Rapid changes in demographics and advances in technology have led companies and talent to engage in profoundly new ways and consulting is one of the keys to success. The New Business of Consulting is authentic and practical, and shares the knowledge and skills required to start and grow a successful consulting business. From how to make a smooth career transition, to how to determine a consulting fee, to how consultants inadvertently create a bad reputation, it covers everything you need to know to thrive and flourish in this competitive field. Covers contemporary topics, such as how to achieve success in the gig economy Discloses a reliable technique to land the clients you want Presents options to help you balance your life and your business Prepares you for naming your business, managing critical financial issues, and building a client relationship Shows you how to take your income and impact beyond working as a solopreneur The crucial start-up days of a consulting business may be frenetic and fraught with questions. This new edition provides sanity and answers all the questions. It includes practical tools, templates, and checklists that you can download and implement immediately.
An action plan for working as a consultant Management consulting is a $250 billion industry and growing at a rate of over four percent annually. Many predict that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will soon be contingent, freelance, or consulting members of the workforce—making this book more relevant than ever. Individuals become independent consultants out of necessity or preference: necessity because they lost their job or the company offered an attractive exit package; preference because they want a career change, more control over their time, or an enriched, varied work situation. Consulting also appeals to the Millennial workforce who are searching for careers that offer a good salary as well as meaningful work. The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide: • Serves as a companion to The New Business of Consulting • Provides you with a place to plan your transition into consulting • Helps you identify your niche, develop a business plan, charge what you’re worth, and create a marketing strategy to ensure a steady stream of clients • Prepares you for changes you will encounter beyond your professional life, including social, family, and financial aspects The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide helps you work through the challenges of consulting such as working alone, deciding on necessary insurance coverage, finding your first clients, struggling with cash flow, and understanding market trends.
Kouzes' and Posner's bestselling The Leadership Challenge has been the most trusted source for becoming a better leader for millions of executives. This new guide from Kouzes and Posner, written in conjunction with coaching experts Elaine Biech, provides practical information and tools for integrating The Practices of Exemplary Leadership into a coaching practice or program. Filled with best practices and success stories as well as worksheets and checklists, this comprehensive resource enables coaches to quickly and easily adapt their coaching regimen to include The Leadership Challenge and the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI).
This career development tool kit is for people who want to take charge of their own professional futures. If you want to have a career that is meaningful and inspires you, you must prepare for it the same way you would a marathon—developing an overall training plan to carry you through to race day and beyond. This is especially important in today's unpredictable work world, where organizations are in a state of constant flux, and many have either eliminated their employee development programs or adopted a generic, one-size-fits-all approach. Skills for Career Success maps the strategies and skills you will need to take responsibility for your own future. It provides an overview of career development basics, including how to write an Individual Development Plan (IDP) that is practical and useful to you. The core of the book is an easy-to-navigate catalog of fifty-one critical skills, such as communicating clearly, adapting to situations, advocating for yourself, managing time, and selling your ideas. For each skill, there are actions you can take immediately, ongoing practices, and long-term goals. Beyond the skills, there is advice for keeping your career on track, mapping a path beyond your current job, overcoming personal roadblocks, finding your passion at work, and initiating talent conversations with your manager. There are also guidelines for managers who want to bring out the best in their people.
Prepare and establish new front-line leaders with training that develops essential supervisory skills. Investing in new supervisors increases productivity and organizational profitability, and it results in engaged, high-performing teams. Yet many new supervisors—the very people responsible for planning and organizing work in every organization—are often undertrained in the skills required to be a successful front-line leader. In New Supervisor Training, training legend Elaine Biech presents innovative two-day, one-day, and half-day training workshops that help supervisors embrace their new roles and develop supervisory skills in five key areas: promoting communication, guiding the work, leading the workforce, coaching employee performance, and developing themselves. Free tools and customization options The free, ready-to-use resources (PDF) that accompany this book include downloadable presentation materials, agendas, handouts, assessments, and tools. All workshop program materials, including MS Office PowerPoint presentations and MS Word handouts, may be customized for an additional licensing fee. Browse the licensing options in the Custom Material License pricing menu. About the Series The ATD Workshop Series is written for trainers by trainers, because no one knows workshops as well as the practitioners who have done it all. Each publication weaves in today’s technology and accessibility considerations and provides a wealth of new content that can be used to create a training experience like no other. Other books in the series include Communication Skills Training, Leadership Training, and Coaching Training.
As part of the ASTD Trainer's Sourcebook Series, this volume presents complete tool-kits and instructions for creating effective, personalized training programmes. This text concentrates on the skill of creativity. Surveys, games and role plays are covered in here with complete instructions on set-up, handling the activity and participant handouts. Full illustrations of training steps such as trainer openings, discussion questions and skill practices are also incorporated.
The Leader in Resources for Training & HR Professionals for the Past Four Decades The challenges of organizational consulting are ongoing. To stay on top of the game, consultants need access to the latest thinking in the field, cutting-edge approaches and techniques from practicing consultants, organizational systems experts, and academics. The 2011 Pfeiffer Consulting Annual is a ready-made toolkit of ideas, methods, techniques, and models that assist and support your work as an internal or external organizational consultant. The Annual addresses the broad range of topics that are of most interest to professionals in the field. The materials provide highly accessible means of interacting with a diverse variety of systems and processes—from collaborative work systems and executive coaching to strategic planning and organizational development. This year's Annual presents a "organizational dynamics" theme. The contributions to The Annual focus on organizational dynamics and include information on team building, leadership, communication, and problem solving. The volume includes a variety of tools. For example, Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) are the mainstay of the Annual and cover a broad range of consulting topics. The activities are presented as complete and ready-to-use designs for working with groups: facilitator instructions and all necessary handouts and participant materials are included. Check out the ELAs by several well-known consultants including David Piltz and Jim Eicher. The Inventories, Questionnaires, and Surveys section includes tools for measuring team effectiveness, determining corporate responsibility and scale of intellectual capital for organizations. The articles section presents the best current thinking about workplace communications. Jan M. Schmuckler and James Eicher have contributed must-read articles. Year after year, the Consulting edition of the Pfeiffer Annual has provided thousands of trainers, consultants, facilitators, and managers with up-to-date information and tools to help make organizations more effective. Find out how other practitioners are improving organizations day by day: delve into the indispensable 2011 Pfeiffer Consulting Annual. You will understand why it is the best and most reliable source for practical, professional, performance-boosting tools and fresh ideas.
Praise for Developing Talentfor Organizational Results "Elaine Biech brings together some of the 'royalty' of American corporations and asks them to share their wisdom in increasing organizational effectiveness. In 46 information-filled chapters, these 'learning providers' don't just sit on their conceptual thrones; they offer practical advice for achieving company goals and the tools to make it happen." Marshall Goldsmith, million-selling author of the New York Times bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There "Recruiting, developing, inspiring, engaging, and retaining your talent are critical to the growth and success of all organizations. Developing Talent for Organizational Results is a rich resource that can help you cultivate your most precious resource." Tony Bingham, CEO & President ASTD and Co-author of The New Social Learning "Hiring and developing talent is the area that I am most passionate about. . . . Developing Talent for Organizational Results covers all the important topics, uses multiple experts, and supports learning with ready-to-use tools to develop talent in your company. It is like having a million-dollar consultant sitting on your book shelf!" Mindy Meads, former CO-CEO Aéropostale and former CEO/ President Lands' End The best companies win with highly talented, highly committed employees hiring and developing the best talent is essential. In Developing Talent for Organizational Results, Elaine Biech brings together the work of many of the most renowned learning providers in the world all of them members of ISA: The Association of Learning Providers. Filled with a treasure-trove of consulting advice from The Ken Blanchard Companies, DDI, Forum, Herrmann International, Bev Kaye, Jack Zenger, and others, this book delivers the answers you want to improve leadership, management, and communication skills; address training, learning, and engagement issues; and shape the culture and care for your customers to achieve desired results.
Annotation The Pfeiffer Annuals provide a source of new ideas and proven solutions contributed by practitioners, subject matter experts and consultants from the field of human resource development. The materials--articles, experiential learning activities and instruments--can be fully reproduced for training purposes from the accompanying CD-ROM.
The 2009 Pfeiffer Consulting Annual is a ready-made toolkit of ideas, methods, techniques, and models that assist and support your work as an internal or external organizational consultant. The Annual addresses the broad range of topics that are of most interest to professionals in the field. The materials provide highly accessible means of interacting with a diverse variety of systems and processes?from collaborative work systems and executive coaching to strategic planning and organization development.
The Leader in Resources for Consultants for the Past Four Decades Experiential Learning Activities Instruments Articles For more than 40 years, The Pfeiffer Annuals have helped consultants, experts, and academics in the field to stay informed and ahead of the curve. The 2013 Pfeiffer Consulting Annual is a toolkit of ideas, methods, techniques, and models that support your work as an internal or external organizational consultant. It addresses the broad range of topics that are of most interest to professionals in the field. The materials provide accessible means of interacting with a diverse variety of systems and processes—from collaborative workflows and executive coaching to strategic planning and organizational development. This Annual puts the focus on preparing leaders for the future. Leader preparation is a topic that permeates our organizations and pervades all that you do as professionals in the learning and consulting arena. Developing leaders for the future is no longer simply a matter of cultivating a pre-defined set of skills. The Pfeiffer Annuals can help you give new leaders all the tools they need to face an uncertain future. Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) cover a broad range of consulting topics. The activities are presented as ready-to-use designs for working with groups: facilitator instructions and all necessary handouts are included. ELAs showcasing the theme including: conflict assessment, making difficult decisions, setting important goals, and managing stress. The Inventories, Questionnaires, and Surveys section contains tools to help respondents take an objective look at themselves or their organizations and determine how a particular theory applies to their situations. Don't miss the assessing readiness for a mentoring partnership in this section. The articles section presents the current thinking about workplace communications, leadership, and individual development. Beverly Kay, Hank Karp, Mohandas Nair, Vince Rogers, Rick Maurer, and Jeanette Goodstein contributed must-read articles. The article by Jo Lynn Feinstein highlights the topic of strategic leadership which is an essential issue for almost every organization. Year after year, the Consulting Annual has provided thousands of professionals with up-to-date information and tools to make organizations more effective. Delve into this volume and you will understand why it is the most reliable source for practical, professional, performance-boosting tools and fresh ideas.
Compiled by training and consulting expert Elaine Biech, this new Leadership Challenge resource provides practical information and tools for demonstrating and teaching The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership to audiences both new to or already familiar with the model. Filled with 75 experiential learning activities and games, each keyed to a specific practice(s), this book is an excellent addition to a facilitator's existing The Leadership Challenge and the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) or other leadership development program. This book will feature contributions from experienced Leadership Challenge facilitators and other greats in the training industry.
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