Hands-on Retreat on Self-Leadership Skills
Great Learning Through Interactive Teamwork and Fun
for Managers, Executive Assistants and Other Professionals

How to Harness Your Untapped Strengths,
Build Winning Teams and Have Fun

This hands-on retreat session is an inspiring journey of self and team discovery, designed for the whole team: managers, executive assistants, secretaries and other professionals. It is an exceptional opportunity to ascertain and harness your untapped strengths, both as an individual and as a team member, in a practical and non-threatening way. The objectives are to improve performance at work and build and sustain collaborative and mutually supportive relationships in the day-to-day work environment, at home and elsewhere in the community. By gaining deeper self-awareness and genuine knowledge of what make people tick, you will be able to collaborate better; prevent crises; manage conflicts, difficult people and awkward situations assertively; build trust; enhance their credibility; contribute to building a winning team with management and peers; and maximize value to their organization. The exercises and content go beyond what is available through Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Much of your time during this workshop will be invested to deal with back-home problems, opportunities, and skills to deliver top performance and build a winning team. We believe learning occurs most readily when quickly applied to real-life situations you care about. Therefore, we want you to view a video on self leadership and do some thinking before the workshop about two interpersonal situations you may have some difficulty with on the job, e.g. negotiating priorities with your boss or team members, dealing with difficult people, delegating work to others, enforcing deadlines. Who is involved? When does it occur? How do you usually handle the situation?

This interactive retreat is practical in every sense of the word by virtue of several unique features:

1. You will leave with proven techniques and skills to effectively manage various interpersonal situations facing secretaries and management assistants.
2. The curriculum integrates a rigorous, thorough and practical approach.
3. You will acquire the best available course materials, totalling a substantial market value. You will use both FIRO-B and SDI, two powerful instruments to help them examine and improve your relationships, openness, trust, and communication with others.
4. The retreat workshop leader is also unique. Alain Paul Martin coaches presidential assistants, administrative assistants, middle managers, senior executives and team leaders to turn their potential into a lifelong success. He knows firsthand about the inelastic deadlines and gruelling demands facing these professionals.

1. The pre-readings.
2. Two books on time management, life and career planning will be provided: Herbert Shepard’s Essence of a Proactive Life, and A. P. Martin’s Bringing Time to Life – 120 Practical Tips for Managing Your Time and Enjoying Life. The objective of these course materials is to keep the participants current and growing professionally at their own pace long after the seminar.
3. Consulting Psychologists’ FIRO-B: This self-scoring tool helps users build high-performing teams through openness and trust, and improve communication skills and relationships.
4. Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) to manage conflicts and improve relationships
5. One road map (Harvard University Global SystemTM) features a step-by-step framework for planning, and managing personal time. This road map details the annual, monthly, weekly and daily tasks considered essential to high achievement. With a novel and original 3D design, this laminated 22 x 34” instrument constantly reminds you of the most important questions in time management. When kept in sight, it helps you reduce the workload and focus on what really matters by paying attention to details that count without losing track of the big picture.

Author of books on strategic intelligence and proactive thinking (Bringing Time to Life), Alain Paul Martin is President and Management Faculty Chair of The Professional Development Institute (PDI). He served as executive member of both the Prime Minister’s Committee on Government Reform and the Public Service Advisory Committee led by the Clerk of the Privy Council (the Chief Executive of the Federal Public Service).

In collaboration with Dr. Brian Morrissey, Alain drafted recommendations that ultimately led to the creation the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Together, they subsequently studied the policy lessons learned in the United Kingdom about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and the new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the nineties. Alain subsequently advised the Director General of the UNESCO to undertake a major overhaul to strenghten the essence of the organization in Paris and throughout the world with a greater focus on vital priorities, principle-based leadership and strategic issues.

Alain Martin was a member of the Graduate Management Faculty of the University of Quebec where he taught strategic thinking, principle-based negotiation skills and management of change in the M.Sc. Project Management and Master Degree of Project Management (MGP) in both English and French. Following the 2003 Northeastern widespread power blackout, he led, for several years, advanced risk management workshops for executives, team leaders and engineers assigned to nuclear-power projects (Atomic Energy of Canada, Babcock and Wilcox and Ontario Power Generation).

An inventor who held U.S., Canadian and Japanese patents, Alain Martin led strategic problem diagnosis and collaborative brainstorming sessions with managers, engineers, marketing executives and R&D scientists in biotechnology, aerospace, IT, finance, oil & gas, national security and defense. He is the Chief Architect of Harvard University Global System™. This set of planning and decision-making tools and road maps increases awareness of the freedom of choice and stimulates team innovation and creativity in human intelligence, issue analysis, strategy, risk mitigation, project management and strategic procurement. Alain has been recognized by the Project Management Institute (PMI) for “his outstanding contribution to the state-of-the-art of project management”. His work on proactive thinking and project management is quoted in textbooks, defense publications dissertations and refereed journals.

Prior to presiding over PDI, he held managerial positions in operations research and systems development at Du Pont, Domtar, Bombardier Aerospace, and the CIDA. He has also managed a variety of international projects including telecommunications, airport security, R&D, TV news-coverage evaluation, and the strategic turnaround of Desjardins Group (GDAG), a large financial institution.

Alain is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School. His training background includes people skills at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and negotiation at the Harvard Law School. He is is currently the President of Harvard University Club in the National Capital Region and Past President of Harvard Business School Club. He has been listed in the Canadian Who's Who since 1999. For further information on Alain Martin, click here.

We will deliver our one- to three-day retreat sessions in the location of your choice anywhere in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America, China and Japan.

For groups of less than 30 participants, we recommend the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge (MA), PDI Campus in Ottawa-Gatineau near the scenic Gatineau Park in Canada, and The Cloister at Sea Island (Georgia). These locations are ideal for synergistic teamwork combining experiencial learning and both indoor and outdoor recreational activites. Please contact us for larger groups (up to 700 participants).

Our high-security campus features a main conference room, a separate dining room, small syndicate rooms for teamwork, a syndicate room with a bay window can be also used as an interpretation or videoconferencing booth. Used as a backup conference room, the dining room has the same equipment as the main room. Each room has two large sliding blackboards, flip charts, a TV/VCR, an audio and DVD player, a projection screen and an overhead projector and high-speed broadband Internet connection. A ceiling-mounted SONY digital projector for PPT presentations is available in each room. The walls of each conference room hold several special 8x4 feet display boards for teamwork.