Keynote Topics

Navigating Crucial Conversations for Administrative Professionals

As administrative professionals, you deal with all levels of the organization.  Conversations are crucial, especially when dealing with difficult leaders or co-workers.  There are times when even thinking about having a difficult conversation is intimidating and just plain scary.  “Is today the right day for a crucial conversation?”  Not only is timing important, it’s managing those conversations to achieve a great outcome.  Crucial conversations are powerful in helping to transform you and your relationships with others.  In this session, you’ll discover techniques to prepare for crucial conversations, explore self-awareness, identify ways to find common ground, strategies to develop dialogue, techniques to probe for facts, and how to clarify your intentions.

The Competent, Flexible, and Resilient Assistant

As the role of the administrative assistant continues to evolve, we face many challenges and setbacks. We work 24/7, we make mistakes, organizations restructure, we work in diverse work environments, and more.  Let’s explore ways to transform our thinking so we can adapt to the ever changing environments where we work.  During this session, you will learn skills of self-awareness and self-management, understand, use, and manage your emotions, balance optimism and pessimism, distinguish the signs of when change is in process, tips to increase courage and confidence to persevere, and steps to take the lead to help transform the workplace.

Unleash the Power of the Leader Within

Leadership potential exists within you.   have the ability to take control, be bold, step-up, and lead in the moment.  It is up to you to take charge of your career and break through your self-imposed limitations.  Don’t leave it to fate or your leader.  It has been said that leaders are born,  and research shows that leaders are made through adversity.  In this session, you’ll learn to identify true leadership attributes and expectations, assess your strengths, develop your unique leadership plan, learn self-empowerment tips, collaboration techniques, and experiment and apply positive self-talk.

Exert Influence without Authority

We’ve all met that dynamic, charismatic person that just has a way with others and has a way of being remembered. What does it take to be that unforgettable person?  How do you handle situations where you are required to lead executives and coordinate projects and schedules?  Taking charge and leading without formal authority can be intimidating.    Building credibility with others will help you move throughout the organization with ease and success.  In this session, you will discover how to build trust between you, your leader, and colleagues; identify opportunities to strengthen relationships, and learn the four techniques to building rapport; the six sources of influence and what shapes your behavior; examples of compelling messages, powerful influencing strategies and the art of persuasion.

Adaptability:  Foundation for the Agile Assistant

Adapting is more than coping.  Adaptability is the cutting edge attribute that can make or break an assistant’s career.  The reality is that assistants must be able to react on the spur of the moment.  This is a key component to building a successful partnership with your boss.  Becoming agile and adaptable means changing the way you handle c-h-a-n-g-e!  How can assistants get better at adapting?  This session explores strategies for adjusting to change, skills to adapt to a challenging or new boss, methods to adapt your behavior in difficult situations, research to help understand why people resist change, insights to help manage your own cognitive and emotional reactions, methodologies to remain optimistic and realistic, discovering the keys to courage, and creating support systems to embrace uncertainty.

Becoming the Confident and Courageous Assistant

Are you a highly competent administrative professional who wants to have your skills recognized?  Linda will share information about the developing stages to becoming the confident assistant, including credibility, courage, confidence and credence.  You will learn tips and techniques to establish your reputation, stories and examples to encourage you to rethink what you’ve been doing and how to do them differently, ways to build credibility, questions to solicit feedback, keys to courage, and tips to become more trustworthy.

Seize the Opportunity to Commit and Collaborate

As an administrative professional, what does it mean to be committed and accountable to your boss and team?  The demands of an assistant are constantly changing.  The assistant can be one of the most influential players in a company by embracing the unique differences that others have to offer.  People who share a common direction and sense of community can quickly get where they are going because they rely on the strengths of one another. How can you stay committed to your leader and other co-workers?  In this session, you will learn tips and concepts that will help you gain commitment from others, explore techniques to embrace their unique differences, identify critical success factors, and techniques to help you evolve your role into a solid business partner.

Becoming the Indispensable Assistant

Are you interested in exploring how you can become indispensable to your organization?  By not choosing to do anything, you are choosing the status quo.  Learn to stretch to the next level in your career and be recognized for your talents, contributions, and skills.  In this session, Linda will share critical secrets, examples, and ideas to get you thinking beyond your role as the assistant and feel connected to your work to gain satisfaction from your profession.  Learn how to deliver results day in and day out to emerge a leader.  Linda will help you explore ways to embrace accountability, expand your thinking to transform, and increase your awareness to further develop your career.

Transforming the Relationship between the Executive and the Assistant

Linda has identified four key stages to adapt your current knowledge and skills to become a respected business partner. All these stages are critical to developing a good working relationship.  Reaching the fourth stage signifies that you and your boss have developed a level of mutual trust and respect.  Your efforts are an integral part of the work being accomplished.  In this session, you will learn ideas and techniques to initiate transformation, developing credibility attributes, empowerment tips, and communication strategies.

Your Mission:  Teamwork!

Teamwork benefits the administrative community in profound ways. The easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. In this session, Linda will share examples and create opportunities for administrative teams to collaborate and connect to generate unlimited resources. The power of encouragement and interdependence to each other’s skills, capabilities, and unique talents will create a strong administrative community and increase shared leadership. Linda creates an interactive environment to help improve your own potential and explore the possibilities of your administrative community.

How to Thrive in Changing Times

Change is a constant in many of our lives.  All around us, technologies, processes, people, our environment, ideas, and methods often change, impacting the way we perform daily tasks and live our lives.  Benjamin Franklin once said, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” This is our reminder to constantly embrace change so that we don’t become complacent.  This session will explore getting comfortable in a changing environment, reasons for resisting change, strategies to thrive during change, adapting and staying competitive, tips to remaining optimistic, and committing to self-improvement, and empowering yourself to be a change agent.

Communication Strategies for Impact

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what your leader, co-worker, or hiring manager would ask you? Whether you’re preparing for a conversation with your manager or a job interview, how you present yourself is critical for a successful outcome.  Being confident is a great start; however, preparing yourself with assertive communication strategies will make you stand out, build credibility, and help you connect with people.  In this session you will learn methodologies for understanding your worth, attitudes and behavior patterns, communicating with authority, skills to build rapport, and techniques to increase trust and credibility.

The Power of Networking

Don’t underestimate the power of networking.  Too often we get caught up in our day-to-day routine.  Although it’s comfortable, it keeps us from creating the community we want for ourselves.  Through her experience, Linda will share stories that show the power of networking, including tips and techniques to help you create a powerful network that will put you on a path to help further your career, widen your influence, create a community of people, and enrich your circle of trusted relationships.

Don’t Panic…Trust your Instincts

Linda is known for her no nonsense attitude, ability to think on her feet and act quickly. She will share entertaining and relevant stories that will encourage you to use your instincts and common sense to maneuver stressful situations.  Linda’s ideas and techniques will teach you how to minimize stress and cope with unexpected and difficult situations.

7 Simple Steps to Develop Critical Problem Solving Skills

Solving problems can cause stress.  What’s a problem?  By definition it’s a difficult matter requiring a solution.  Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”  Using a 7-step process, Linda leads an interactive session using real scenarios and critical thinking techniques to solve problems.  Understanding this process will get you to think about problems in a different way, enhance your creativity, and lead you to finding and implementing solutions.

Assessing Your Career

Do you spend more time planning your next vacation than you do planning your career? Wherever you are in your career today, may be a result of your past thinking. Are you feeling dissatisfied and unfulfilled in your job? What are you currently doing to manage your career? Are you passionate about it?  In this session, Linda will provide some self-assessment tools and techniques to test your career pro-activity. Don’t expect others to tell you how to contribute. Showcase your capabilities and take control of your destiny.

The Innovative Assistant – Getting to the Corner Office

Whether as an executive or executive’s assistant, today it takes more than skill to get to the corner office.  In this session, you will learn to empower yourself, cultivate the confidante role, and get techniques for building a lasting partnership with your executive.  Learn the five secrets to generating synergy with your co-workers, and identify powerful but overlooked interpersonal skills.

Believe to Achieve

Do you set goals that you never seem to get around to achieving?  Linda will inspire you to believe in yourself by visualizing and thereby achieving your goals.  She will share critical guiding principles that will provide you with a solid foundation for achievement.  Her stories and ideas will assist you in projecting an image and attitude of self-assurance.

Diplomacy and Discretion

Linda has the reputation of mastering the skills of diplomacy and discretion and has established credibility through her influencing skills and ability to handle delicate situations with tact.  She will teach you how to communicate with confidence and extend elegance in sensitive situations using tact and diplomacy and will motivate you to increase your value by building and maintaining powerful business relationships.

Time Management Essentials for the Administrative Professional

Are you challenged with changing priorities? What are you currently doing to manage your time? Do you put off doing things until the very least minute?  In this session, Linda will share information to develop strategies to overcome procrastination, effectively delegate, diplomatically say no, and disclose solutions to improve productivity.

Say It With Snap!

Linda takes a somewhat stuffy topic and adds energy and fun to verbal and written communication.  She shares some state-of-the art tips and steps to add that edge of crispness, clarity and style to your messages.  Linda will share ideas to help you reach across the chasm between you and your audience.