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"The staff at Rocky River Public Library found Kim Langley’s training on customer service informative and entertaining. Her anecdotes struck just the right chord, leaving us laughing and considering our work with the public. Her videos and visual aids created a picture of the work she was discussing. The staff really liked her breaks for trivia that lightened the tone and gave our brains a rest. She was able to weave into her training specific items we had asked for and still complete her presentation right on time. Everyone left smiling!" Nancy Levin Deputy Director, Rocky River Public Library
"Kim's programs provided new tools and strategies, fresh ideas and best practices tailored to meet the challenges that are unique to a library and its operation. Her engaging style and energy held the group's attention and sparked imaginative solutions." Kitty Sommers
Director of Marketing and
Development
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No matter what your challenge, LifeBalance Enterprises has a program to sharpen your skills and increase the performance of your people. Kim Langley, president of LifeBalance Enterprises, is an experienced professional trainer, conducting 100 to 150 workshops annually for libraries, educational institutions, corporations, professional groups, and associations. Her areas of expertise include Emotional Intelligence, Conflict Management and Communication Skills, Stress Management and Wellness, Creativity, Family Life Skills, Work and Family Issues, and Professional Development Training.
Below is a list of programs that can be delivered to your organization, along with descriptions of each.
Available Programs for Library Professionals and Staffs
NEW! Customer Service: the Service Difference Finding Meaning While Making a Living Working with You is Killing Me Working with Emotional Intelligence The Science of Optimism: Fostering a "Can do!" Attitude Managing Difficult Conversations Listening and Communication: Building Teams while Building Skills
Community Programs J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
NEW! Customer Service: The Service Difference Customizable to emphasize relationships with internal or external customers or both, participants will walk away from this highly rated seminar knowing at least 4 things that research on customer service reveals about what our customers and clients want. Tips will be offered on how to get an A on your client's "service report card" by offering not just core service but The Royal Treatment. Participants will learn the importance of the "moments of truth" in which this single encounter defines our whole organization in the client's mind. We’ll practice how to use the human business model for increased customer satisfaction and how to end the interaction with a Positive Close. We'll rehearse defusing skills that will help participants to lead the difficult person off a "rant" and on to business. These defusing skills help associates to deal with their own emotions and stay "unhooked" by the customer’s toxic energy, while assisting the upset client. Skills learned will include Reflective Listening, Empathy (I Felt/I Feel), Reframing, Service Recovery in handling mistakes, making an effective Apology, Escalated Concern, and Selective Agreement. Video segments on the power of complaints (if time permits, usually in the 6 hour program) with brainstorming to improve an organization and its services can be facilitated. In all programs, including the shorter than 6 hour version, a step by step method for offering customers the "royal treatment" will generate discussion and model professional skills.
Managing Generations With workers from four generations now active in the workforce, the potential for misunderstanding, frustration and conflict puts increasing pressure on productivity. To turn that challenge into a competitive advantage, this session gives participants a skill-building approach to the complexities of effectively working in and managing a multigenerational workforce. Employees and managers gain insights, strategies and skills that help minimize generational conflict and strengthen collaboration. Excellent short visual vignettes of typical workplace situations generate lively discussion and practical solutions.
Everyday Creativity This very popular seminar teaches a surprising truth about creativity--that it's not a magical, mysterious occurrence, but a ready tool that enables you to look at the ordinary and see the extraordinary. We'll utilize creative catalysts that include the student sketches of Vincent van Gogh, the inspiring thoughts of great minds from varied cultures and centuries, and a visually stunning (participants will be WOWED!) video example of creativity by DeWitt Jones, a National Geographic photojournalist. Key learning points include: • creativity is a matter of perspective • train your technique • there's always more than one right answer • don't be afraid to make mistakes • learn to break the pattern • reframe problems into opportunities and • every act can be a creative one.
Finding Meaning While Making a Living This seminar will be time away for inquiry. We spend more time in the workplace than we do with our families, out in the natural world, or in our places of worship. How do I bring into my work the questions about my destiny that enliven, embolden, and perhaps even confuse me a little? What do I celebrate in my work? How different are work and play? Can I make my work more fun? Drawing on some respected authors including Thomas Moore, Marsha Sinetar, and David Whyte (author of The Heart Aroused) we will enjoy the humorous and the serious sides of bringing home the bacon. Organizations and businesses around the country are opening up this kind of dialogue because they recognize that when people feel connected to their work they are motivated to for the continuous improvement demanded by the changes leading to the 22nd century. Participants will give themselves the opportunity to dive deep and surface refreshed in clearer waters.
You Can Manage Stress This seminar offers you practical tools for building a more satisfying personal and professional life. No one can live a stress-free life, but when faithfully practiced, the skills gleaned from this seminar can result in increased health, fulfillment, and clarity of purpose. At the end of the experience, participants will be able to • identify their main stress symptoms and effective techniques for relieving them • describe 5 "quick fix" stress buster methods • demonstrate 3 minute energy builders • fill the "energy bank" • experience the benefits of guided imagery and affirmations • recognize the difference between tough times and real addiction to stress or work • evaluate personal tendencies to react with positive or negative "self-talk" • set goals in a personal plan to reduce stress • describe 5 proven long term stress reduction skills • evaluate their risk for stress exhaustion • continue their learning beyond the day with excellent print and audio and video resources that they have sampled in the workshop.
Working with You is Killing Me We've all worked with someone who makes work impossible, but it doesn't have to be that way. This powerful video program, based on the national best-selling book, teaches employees and managers how to tame a toxic co-worker by setting boundaries. Everyone - including the lucky few who've never had to work with a difficult person - will benefit from this program. It brilliantly portrays how employees on any career path and at any level of an organization can be undone by a problem co-worker. The amount of time spent worrying, avoiding, raging and obsessing over toxic employees can affect performance on the job and peace at home. This program provides the antidote, showing exactly how to take responsibility for addressing the problem and put a stop to it all. It shows employees how to "unhook" from difficult situations in four simple ways: Physically, Mentally, Verbally and With a Business Tool (memo, email, log, etc.). Participants will learn to: • examine how their own reactions can enable the situation. • internalize a series of proven responses to problem behavior. • reinforce the message if the problem behavior returns. Benefits: • Helps people deal with difficult co-workers • Reduces stress-related problems • Improves interpersonal relations
Stress-Less Holidays The holidays can be a joyful time, and they can also bring stress, complicated family relationships, and many extra household tasks. In this seminar, we will step back from all the excitement and look at our options, making a plan for holiday celebrations that feel do-able, and also addressing prevention for the post holiday blues. Participants will identify sources of holiday stress, and consider how to best manage their time, relatives, gift giving and finances.
Working with Emotional Intelligence This seminar is customizable for supervisors, project or team coordinators, or a blend of both. It looks at the far-reaching implications of a culture of Emotional Intelligence for cultivation of personal excellence as well as enhanced service. Studies also show that managers with low emotional intelligence are more than twice as likely to derail in their careers as leaders who possess these skills. For persons from entry level to top executive positions, the research shows that emotional intelligence is more predictive of achievement and promotability than advanced degrees or technical expertise. Members of work teams, project leaders and supervisors will improve their ability to influence others and coach effectively, as well as lead productive meetings with knowledge of Emotional Intelligence. This workshop gets very high marks, and can include a self assessment, as well as numerous practical strategies for building E.I. in teams and even whole organizations.
The Fine Art of Goal Setting It's an amazing fact that the majority of Americans surveyed in a recent study were unable to articulate goals for their lives! Yet people who put personal and professional goals into words, write them down, and make a plan for overcoming obstacles to achieving them, are many times more likely to succeed than those whose job performance is left to "wishful thinking". You will learn and practice a step-by-step goal-setting plan in this lively and motivating session. There will be attention to both enhancing your own ability to create clear, specific, achievable goals, as well as how to coach others in this process.
How to Facilitate a Meeting This session will enable both new and experienced meeting facilitators to • handle problem participants, • encourage everyone to contribute his or her ideas, • use an agenda effectively • keep groups on task and • become aware of the importance of paying attention to underlying "currents" of feeling. This session encourages us to have the courage to be in charge of a meeting without being controlling, and to never again facilitate a gathering "in which minutes are kept, but hours are wasted".
The Science of Optimism: Fostering a "Can do!" Attitude This is not just pop psychology, but a life-changing guide grounded in extensive clinical research, and it's information so practical for increased productivity at work and at home that it "grabs you by the lapels"! This seminar zeros in on an important aspect of working with emotional intelligence - optimism. Studies show that optimists make more successful sales people, contribute to personnel retention because people prefer optimistic supervisors, and are more likely not to talk themselves out of their own creative ideas! In this workshop, participants will learn how to acquire more optimism, boost their mood and their immune systems (studies show optimists live longer and miss fewer work days because of illness). A key learning will be recognizing the habitual way you talk to yourself. Studies by Dr. Martin Seligman and other distinguished researchers prove that you can change your interior dialogue, and experience astonishing positive results that can influence everything from your business success, to your self esteem, and even your ability to stick to your goals!
Managing Difficult Conversations We all face situations that cause anxiety and frustration, no matter how we've worked to build our skills, and most of us attempt to avoid difficult conversations every week. Using the tested principles and practical strategies, participants will learn to manage strong emotions, figure out what unspoken "rules" keep us stuck, prepare in advance for the "grenades" lobbed in many difficult conversations, and attend to the meaning of what is said and not said. Excellent video practice vignettes help participants get a grip on their Communication Nightmares and participants will receive coaching on how to handle difficult conversations in professional life as well as at home.
Listening and Communication: Building Teams while Building Skills This engaging seminar is highly interactive and uses games and structured experiences that allow participants to test their verbal and non-verbal skills, ability to listen, and favorite personal communication "roadblocks". Because little time is spent lecturing, all the learners get the chance to become "the expert", especially on their own personal gifts and pitfalls as communicators. If time permits, many audiences find a review of some research findings on differences in men and women's communication styles enlightening.
Conflict Management This seminar is designed primarily to persuade participants that conflict can be positive, problem-solving, and creative and that it's time to throw off negative associations that make people avoid it altogether or adopt the "I'll win, you'll lose" approach. Skills include sowing seeds of cooperation rather than just avoiding conflict, mirroring, stating positive intent, effective use of empathy, delivering "tough news" clearly but tactfully, managing escalating emotions, getting to the root of problems, making conflict safe and profitable, learning to think outside the box, and going for the WIN-WIN scenario whenever possible.
Work/ Life Balance This much-requested presentation helps participants to examine where their personal energy goes, and how to best keep the engine that drives the family (the parent!) tuned up and running smoothly. Session includes private assessment of how time is used, practical tips for achieving better balance in personal and professional life, and resources to support real growth in the "art of life-task juggling". If time permits, some excellent resources on managing the morning rush, calming the hectic return home to dinner making, and making time for quality time can also be explored.
Understanding Poetry Mark Twain reads the hearts of poets everywhere when he said "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. It's the difference between the lightening bug and lightening."
Enjoy this "crash course" in how to understand poetry. We'll carefully examine a few little gems of poems, not to dissect, but to savor them. We'll experience the poets themselves via video, and take a look at some favorites including works by E. Dickinson, P.B. Shelly, and Pulitzer prize winning poet, Mary Oliver. Even if you think you don't "get" poetry, you'll be demystified, maybe even enthusiastic, after this session on the legacy left by the "wordsmiths" of society.
J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s master work, has delighted young and old since its publication. This work has captured imaginations across the globe. It inspired the wildly successful and critically acclaimed films recently shot amid the splendors of New Zealand. You don’t have to travel "down under" to be part of a lively discussion of this book that has inspired countless writers, avid readers, and lovers of secret languages. Adults and adults accompanying youth aged 11 and up (no young children please) are welcome to • share their favorite selections--what’s your favorite part? • participate in a little Tolkien trivia • clear up one another’s questions concerning the fine points of Middle-earth history and lore • bring your vintage Tolkien wall calendars • brush up your scholarship or your Gandalf impression • and enjoy the company of fellow book lovers. As many reviewers have noted, people seem to love this book or hate it! It’s been hailed as a modern epic, derided for its "windy prose", regarded as a muted religious statement, and lampooned in Bored of the Rings. All comers should be ready to express a point of view! A note of caution, though: finish the book, or be prepared for the discussion to spoil the end!
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LifeBalance
Enterprises, Inc. | Kim A. Langley M.Ed. | 1599 Lakeland Avenue | Lakewood,
OH 44107 | (216) 226-3351 |
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Photographs © by Carole Calladine (440-895-9572) |
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