Penny Tremblay

Suitable for all audiences including managers and senior leaders, these keynotes and workshops offer current trends and techniques for dealing with our most essential assets … our people!  Not usually taught in technical education, people skills and conflict resolution, when mastered help team members gain promotions, lead harmonious and profitable teams and engage long-term clients. Increase your ‘Sandbox Factor’

Maximize performance with peaceful, productive and profitable relationships

Workplace conflict will always arise, but the financial burden is avoidable.  Retain employees and clients long-term with the PLAY NICE approach, especially when the going gets touched.

• Understand conflict: why we’re attached to it, why we fear it and when to embrace it
• Lead yourself first, then others
• Navigate through challenging times and complex behaviour

Years of corporate training and conflict resolution combined with mediation studies at Harvard bring real life stories and examples to inspire listeners to want to move through conflict to peace.

Audiences are inspired to take responsibility for their presence, performance and inner peace for best practices in workplaces and beyond.  The playful and hilarious suitcase metaphor invites us to take a personal inventory of what’s worth keeping and what unresolved issues need to be unpacked or let go.

• Discover what’s in your suitcase
• Why you’re so attached to it
• How to detach, unpack your authentic self and find peace

Penny Tremblay delivery style is captivating, raw and honest with stories, examples and research about how resolving conflict from the inside out leaves very little for others to get entangled with.  Unforgettable with actionable tools and advice, this transformational piece fuels positive and lasting change.

Workplace and business culture rooted in human connection is more challenging than ever in this digital era.  Add physical distancing and remote work teams to that and you’ve got a great reason to be giving and receiving more. In our multi-diverse workforce, strategies to leverage the power of human connection, inclusion and strong relationships that are in alignment with corporate purpose engage both employees and clients.

Give and Be Rich in Workplace Relationships

• Giving Simply to Give
• Being Open to Receive
• Tapping the Circle of Abundant Business Relationships

Penny Tremblay message is backed by her best-selling book, Give and Be Rich, which invites us to look deeper into our own authentic inventory and find more within to give.  Giving is the new sexy.  Giving is where we become rich in self-worth, confidence, humility, respect, love, social grace and all of the currencies of life.  Her dynamic stage presence and message delivery are entertaining, interactive and memorable.  There is laughter and depth to inspire long lasting change in perspective, service, attitude and gratitude.

THE ENTIRE TEAM WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS EIGHT-STEP PLAYFUL APPROACH TO THE PROHIBITIVE PROBLEM OF TEAM CONFLICT.

Inspire participants to:

• Lead themselves by taking responsibility for their career success
• Understand conflict resolution, performance and productivity from the inside out
• Lead others with best practices for respectful communication and positive influence

Workplace conflict left unresolved festers has a huge cost and is avoidable.

When leaders have the skills to prevent problematic interactions, delegate, coach and provide feedback along the way, staff thrive.

When issues arise and are confronted promptly teams become more engaged and productive.

For Managers, Supervisors and the Entire Leadership Team, this program provides tools to build trust and engagement to influence people to want to perform well.

Manage Relationships for High Performance:

• Provide feedback, coach employees, delegate effectively and build relationships of trust
• Manage Conflict for Peace, Productivity and Profit
• Confront, resolve or mediate issues as they arise within the team, and follow through on commitments made

Most professionals weren’t taught how to talk about conflict, disagree or even negotiate their way of working through conflict.

When staff embrace conflict as an opportunity for change and growth, accept friction as part of their learning journey and use the tools learned in Navigating Conflict and Mediation and Workplace Restoration Techniques, an entire culture can shift, and so can the personal lives of everyone involved.

What if you could have more power in half an hour? That’s a bit more than the time it will take you to read this, and you’ll have it for life. What an investment!

WHEN WE’RE POWERLESS, IT MEANS WE HAVE LESS POWER THAN WE’RE CAPABLE OF HAVING. THE FOLLOWING 7 STEPS WILL HELP YOU BECOME MORE INFLUENTIAL IN LEADING YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

1. Take Responsibility
2. Stop Avoiding Critical Conversations
3. Claim What’s Yours
4. Learn to Say ‘No’
5. Set Boundaries
6. Let Go
7. Embrace Agitation

There are many mistakes leaders should avoid when dealing with workplace conflict.

• AVOID

When I ask leaders to be honest about how they have contributed to their team’s conflict, they most often say that they should have dealt with it sooner. The conflict left unresolved festers and expands into something much larger and becomes more complex to resolve. The best time to resolve conflict is now! Like a fire that requires immediate attention to contain and suppress, managing conflict as soon as it comes to a manager’s attention will prevent it from escalating to unnecessary suffering for all involved. The challenge is that many managers don’t know how to intervene, or where to seek help.

• DON’T INVOLVE EVERYONE

Trying to resolve issues without all the parties is not likely to produce a good outcome. Oftentimes, a manager feels obligated to hear the complaints of one team member about their colleague and then go to that colleague to somehow convey and convince change. It rarely ever works because the manager ends up bouncing back and forth between the two (or more) parties trying to find common ground, but the reality is that you can’t solve a set of circumstances on behalf of other people. You can’t do their talking for them, and you can’t do their listening, so the entire endeavour ends up being a “he said/she said” game.

• UNDERMINE AUTHORITY

If an employee goes to their supervisor and is unsatisfied with the response, they communicate up the chain. This makes sense if the employee can’t get a resolution, however, how the team member up the chain entertains the complaint is very important to maintain the structure of the organization, and not undermine the authority of the supervisor. For example, Sally copies her supervisor’s manager in an email about a complaint or goes completely around her supervisor to the manager. The manager should ensure that the supervisor is involved in resolving the issue or else they’re undermining the authority and integrity of the organizational structure.

• ACCOMMODATE DIVISION

Accommodating people to work apart is a big mistake over time. I’ve seen many crooked lines on the org chart to accommodate people who can’t get along with their bosses and it is always fertile grounds for conflict. I’ve also seen colleagues separated physically or across departments to avoid conflict and it isn’t the best solution. What is best, is that people seek to understand each other and come to a workable solution, not a ‘special arrangement’ that keeps them from working together when everyone else around them is expected to get along.

• GET EMOTIONALLY ENTANGLED

One of the most common, awkward, and difficult situations is managing or supervising ‘friends’. This is common because people get promoted from within, which is a smart way to retain and promote employees who have great corporate knowledge. The challenge is that they used to be ‘friends’ with the team that they now need to have a different relationship. Confiding with team members that you manage is also a common entanglement that makes managing difficult. I know that ‘it’s lonely at the top’ but a good mastermind or network of professionals in similar positions is a safe way to connect and share the challenges of being a leader.