Got the Training Blahs? Get
ready for something new!
LifeLabs New York provides innovative workshops for
brilliant work skills.
Tipping-Point Skills: All skills are not created equal. We focus on ‘Tipping Point Skills’, the
powerhouses of skills. When you master a Tipping Point Skill it serves as a catalyst, opening
the door to an array of other skills you never knew you had.
Sticky: Each of our exercises is subjected to the stickiness test: will the info stick around and
be useful in real life? We follow a model of deliberate practice - break down a skill into its most
useful components, then apply it to something you are working on NOW. What your team says:
“Yes! I’m going to start using this tomorrow”.
Refreshing: The same old training exercises of the past won’t do in today’s workplace.
LifeLabs workshops are designed to give your team a breath of fresh air. The companies we
work with pick us because of the cultural match. What your team says: “That training was
actually fun. When’s the next one?”
Some of our clients:
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
WORKSHOP LIST
Leadership Workshops (8):
Feedback Skills
Knowing how to give feedback that is specific, actionable, and inspiring is the hallmark of a great
leader. In this workshop learners master the 4 components of an effective feedback message.
Coaching Skills
Learn the fundamental tools of coaching—how to engage, empower, and increase performance in
direct reports. Includes live practice rounds in agile questioning, reframing and exploring options.
This is LifeLabs’ signature (and most popular) course.
Motivation Skills
Harvard Business Review named motivation skills as one of the most important skillsets of this
century. In this workshop you learn and practice the 5 key skills inspire people for the long haul.
Execution Skills
It’s one thing to have a goal; it’s another thing to execute it. Great leaders have not only great
plans, but also great execution skills. Topics: visioning, scoping, workflow, and progress mapping.
Delegation Skills
In this workshop you will practice 1) delegating tasks in a way that ensures you will get the results
you want, and 2) receiving delegation in a way that makes sure you know what the person really
wants. Covers: delegation grid, delegation anti-patterns, Raci/ Daci, task analysis.
People Development
Do you know how to bring out the best in your people? In this workshop managers learn how to
have the types of conversations direct reports crave, in just a few minutes each week.
Better One-on-Ones
This workshop covers best practices in employee development and weekly 1-1 meetings.
Managers practice conversational structures and techniques (e.g. The 5 Minute Monday technique)
that motivate, engage, and build continuous growth in direct reports.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Manager’s Journey
Learning how to be an extraordinary manager is a journey with 9 predictable stages. Find out which
stage you are in on the typical learning journey, and how to fast track your skillset to the next
milestone.
Team Dynamics / Sociometrics Workshops (6):
Understanding Team Dynamics
Every team moves predictably through 4 stages as they work to bond and increase
performance. In this workshop you’ll learn how to recognize your team’s stage and practice
easy behaviors to optimize dynamics, even if you aren’t in charge.
Building Team Habits
This 2 hour session invites your team to understand the way habits work on both an individual
and a team level. Participants learn how to create team habits that drive productivity and
connection, including analysis of current habits and development of new team habits using
game frame modeling, behavioral psychology, and best practice examples.
Facilitating Change
When people resist change, do you know how to help them move forward? In this workshop
you how to motivate people through the 5 phases of a change cycle, adding nimbleness and
agility with each step.
Personality & Work Style
Participants leave this workshop knowing their own personality and a unique skill called
personality flexing: how to read the personality, work preferences, and communication
preferences of colleagues to build more effective work relationships.
Effective Meetings
No more lousy meetings! In this workshop you will learn the components of productive
meetings. Through a series of scenarios, participants learn just-in-time techniques to save any
meeting from going down a path of unproductivity, even if you don’t have authority over the
meeting. The moment you leave this workshop your meeting culture will exponentially improve.
Behavioral Interviewing
Finding good talent is a skill every manager needs in their toolbox. In this workshop you learn
how to interview candidates for both competency, fit, and cultural add. Practice using
behavioral interviewing techniques and get feedback from our trained instructors.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Thinking & Problem-Solving Workshops (9):
Productivity: How to Work Smarter
This class bundles the most popular and successful hacks for working smarter, faster, better –
so that you can win more free time. Result: you leave with your own personal productivity
system in hand.
Goal Setting and Tracking
What if you knew small tricks in the way that you set goals that would maximize your chances
of achieving those goals? In this workshop we explore research on performance, motivation,
and success. The team leaves with new, immediately applicable skills to set, measure, and
track goals.
Strategic Thinking skills
In this 2-hour workshop your team learns tools for being better thinkers and synthesizers of
information. We cover meta-cognition: thinking rationally, thinking big, thinking small, thinking
fast, thinking slow. Tools: grid analysis, decision trees, and 6 hats method.
Problem-Solving & Decision Making Skills
This workshop gives learners tools to become skillful decision makers by learning how to define
a decision, create a criteria matrix, ‘split-track’, prioritize, and communicate the outcome.
Idea-mapping
In this workshop your team learns how to organize and present ideas in brain-efficient ways by
learning how to map information. Result: clearer thinking, productivity, and ability to present
information to clients and colleagues in more engaging ways.
Better Notes
No matter how digital we get, knowing how to take notes well (and having a system for
processing what you’ve noted) gives you an immediate boost in your productivity, creativity,
and level of efficiency. In this class we cover Cornell, grid techniques, and visual thinking.
Meta-learning
What if you knew a way to double the effectiveness of your learning? In this workshop you
learn how to learn, including double loop learning, meta-knowledge, and rapid skill acquisition
for yourself and others.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Innovation
Coming up with innovative solutions is a skill that can be learned. In this workshop you practice
using creative thinking methods and leave with at least one innovation that can be applied
immediately to your current work projects.
Crafting Delight
In this workshop participants learn about the science of delight, which is an emotion on the
positive valence spectrum of surprise. Through a series of exercises and fieldwork, your team
learns how to systematically map experiences and engineer points of delight at any level of a
project/ interaction cycle. Co-developed with Surprise Industries, this course gives people
across the company new ways to think about building internal/ external engagement.
Observation & Communication Skills Workshops (8):
In-sight Lab
The more you understand yourself, the more you can gain insight into other people. In this
workshop participants learn tools from behavioral psychology to gain self-insight into their own
habits, core drivers, communication style, and action preferences. Then, we make a plan for
how to apply each insight for increased work effectiveness. Close the gap between own
perception and perception others have of you.
Power Listening
When a team has been trained in listening skills you can tell immediately. Conversations
deepen, flow, and take on new dimensions. In this workshop we focus on paraphrasing,
bottom-lining, reframes, finding the need behind the need, and word pivots techniques.
Question skills
One of the best tools in a leader’s skillset is ‘question agility’ - knowing how to use the exactly
right question at the exactly right moment. This lab deepens your question skills so that you
instinctually word questions in ways that maximize results. Through a series of innovative
exercises you will practice asking questions and getting feedback on your question skills,
resulting in immediate improvement of your question agility.
Conflict Resolution
In this workshop we go through a series of scenarios to master conflict resolution skills – take
tension out of difficult issues, make actionable requests, and turn problems into opportunities.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Yapper Lab: Small Talk Skills
Are you good at connecting to people via small talk? In this quirky and useful lab we help your
team learn how to make small talk both meaningful and effortless via fun experiments in rapport
science. Result: better relationship building and networking skills, better care of clients and
customers.
Career Growth & Happiness
What do you really want in your career? This workshop will walk you through a series of
exercises to help you clarify and understand your strengths and needs so you can infuse more
of yourself into your work projects. Happy workers = more productive workers.
People Reading
Can you tell when a client/customer/ colleague has a question but is hesitating in asking it? In
this lab you get trained in a unique skill: the detection of facial micro-expressions, signals of
agreement/ disagreement, hesitation, and uncertainty, so that you can detect when it is
necessary to pause, talk more, or ask questions. Scores get measured via a pre- and posttest. This is the same training provided to members of the Secret Service.
Effective Emails
Simple changes to the wording of your emails can make them vastly more productive and
impactful. In this workshop participants learn to sequence and optimize any message.
Influence Skills Workshops (4):
How to Build a Business Case
To prioritize and present ideas effectively and persuasively, all team members should ideally be
trained in the ability to build a business case.
Influence When You Don’t Have Authority
Learning how to motivate people (clients, co-workers, and yourself) is a unique life skill. In this
lab we take a look at insightful research on motivation and performance. You will practice tools
for gaining buy in and getting things done when you aren’t in charge.
Persuasion
Can you change people’s minds (including your own)? In this lab participants learn the 5
fundamentals of persuasion by practicing with real life scenarios. Result: Your team leaves with
a toolbox for creating win-win situations. Skills learned: 3 chairs method, sequencing, CARLS
technique.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Rapid Trust
In this lab you learn the foundations of trust-building and learn how to quickly establish
credibility. Based on research on rapport, loyalty, and influence.
Presentation & Facilitation Skills Workshops (2):
Presentation skills
Learn the art of creating presentations that engage, resonate, and move people to action.
Includes the ability to present & engage without slides – one of the world’s most useful skills.
Experience Design
How do you shift something from good to great? In this workshop you will learn how to apply
Experience Design Theory (EDT) to turn your presentations, meetings, trainings, or services
into experiences that captivate and inspire audiences.
L&D (20):
We host over 20 practice labs for Learning & Development professionals. Here is a quick
glance (see our website for the full overview):
Advanced Training Design
• Using Frame methods to build outstanding training sessions
• Add surprise & delight to your training design
• Stickiness – 4 factor model for transferable learning
• Creating Follow-up: how to create job aids that people love
Training Delivery
• The big 5 skills (gesture, movement, VAK)
• Metaphor and the use of story
• Leading, pacing, and the art of pause
• Advanced flipcharting
Facilitation Skills
• Asking & Answering questions
• Focusing a group & Building consensus
• Dealing with difficult situations
Course Optimization Sessions
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We will review your current trainings and help you to take them from good to great.
Workshops for Teams:
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Team Vision Workout
What’s your team’s inspiring vision for how they want to work together? In this session we lead
your group through a series of questions (e.g. “if your team was a landscape, what would you
want it to look like?”). Teams leave this session with a mission statement, strategy, and shared
language that aligns and renews commitment to one another and key projects.
Team Topography Workout
In this facilitated session teams build a series of maps: personality, communication, and trigger
analysis (includes diagramming each person's personality, creating a team personality
topography map, and creating a conflict/ hot spot map with contingency plans). Topics include:
1. Team cohesiveness and trust
2. Team conflict hotspots
3. Role clarity
4. Team feedback and innovation systems
Great Mistakes Workout
Learning how to handle mistakes well is one of life’s most important skills. And research shows
that the mistake-recovery culture of a team defines its resiliency, ability to bond, and grow. In
this session your team explores and self-defines techniques for handling any mistake that
comes their way via making a series of humorous, high-speed mistakes together. They leave
with a set of team norms and guideposts to ensure capacity, growth, and resiliency.
Power Play: Engineering Happiness Workout
What is play? What role does it have in workplace learning? In this lab we explore the science
of play and play’s important role in the health and happiness of a team. The team doodles,
plants mischief, and builds a lego-fantasy land that reveals hidden secrets about what matters
to each of you. This workshop combines fun with an important dialog around what motivates
each team member to do their best work.
Williamsburg Smells (good) – Senses Workout
What’s the best smell in the world? How do you describe the scent of an apple? While we map
the scents of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we’ll rediscover our sense of smell: one of our most
powerful connections to memory, emotion, and engaging storytelling. The senses become a
metaphor for being present in life, in our projects, and in our team.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]
Additional Services:
Team Diagnostics
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Climate surveys
Culture surveys
Spot coaching
Short sessions with your managers to help them clarify their thinking on a specific issue,
build one specific skill, and create a clearer management vision.
Executive coaching
Intensive sessions with your C-suite leaders to help them build their skillsets.
Leadership summits
1 day or 2 day sequence of workshops and experiences
Meeting Facilitators
Have a difficult topic that you need help getting alignment around and clarity on? Our
facilitators are trained to help you think of the most important questions to ask and how to
put together a meeting agenda that gets results. During the meeting they will provide an
expert ear to hear through the patterns, call out difficult dynamics, and lead the group
toward action and accountability.
Retreats/ off-sites
We will help you put together a team retreat that combines action with inspiration.
Choose from several packages and a series of experiences, including a questions lab,
lego-land team vision session, and facilitation of your planning sessions.
Consulting
Our experts can provide consulting on a variety of topics, including:
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Keynotes/
conference
workshops
Onboarding
Learning culture
Work enrichment
Company culture
We will consult you on how to make your internal and external conferences more
meaningful, memorable, and delightful. We can provide a keynote speech and a series
of labs that ties to that topic.
Contact us at: www.LifeLabsNewYork.com : 917 319 4354 : [email protected]