Programs & Offerings

Dr. Donald Clifton, Tom Rath, and researchers with Gallup have been analyzing Strengths Psychology & strengths-based leadership since 1998. Three decades later, it’s rarely disputed that individuals who are aware of and can capitalize on their natural talents are happier and more productive in their personal and professional lives. Strengths-informed businesses see, on average, 6x more employee engagement and a 12.5% increase in productivity. On small teams, where every person's contribution matters, moving towards a strengths approach shifts your focus from merely fixing deficits to truly leveraging talent.

Peter Bregman's “Five Clarity Areas” comprise a simple, yet powerful framework that redefines accountability as delivering on outcomes. Focus is shifted from finding blame using accusatory tones to a far more productive communication of clarity. Developing a culture of accountability allows leaders to step back from micromanaging and correcting, instead promoting a self-sustaining culture of responsibility, motivation, and results. Combine this newfound culture shift with a tried-and-true PDCA cycle or some task/priority/time/focus management techniques, and you'll be soaring towards improved productivity, increased efficiency, and a built-in continuous improvement culture.

Kouzes & Posner’s leadership development research has spanned more than 25 years and their book, “The Leadership Challenge” has sold more than 2 million copies. Their entire premise is that exemplary leadership can be learned and excellent leaders can be developed. Their work is revolutionary in both its simplification of the notion of leadership and its real-world applications for the everyday lives of real people. The “5 Practices for Exemplary Leadership” paired with the innovative 360 degree "Leadership Practices Inventory" assessment gives business owners and team leads clear behavioral insight into which leadership practices your team already excels with, and which ones could be further developed.

Burnout is a state of decreased productivity and loss-of-focus that often results from extreme and prolonged levels of stress. Reversing burnout, or perhaps even more importantly, avoiding burnout in the first place, should be a high priority for business owners both personally and for their teams. Let us help you decode, demystify, and strategically move towards reversing each factor contributing to your burnout using an evidence-based, research-backed theory of burnout. Combine this with action-planning, a PDCA cycle, or a communication assessment to fortify your burnout barrier even further.

High-stakes conversations are the ones that matter most, yet they’re most often the ones we inadvertently handle poorly. This is less of a criticism of you, and more of a commentary on how our human brains work from a physiological and neurochemical standpoint. “Crucial Conversations” is a strategy and mindset framework widely used to enhance relationships, encourage growth, and promote open & honest dialogue by challenging everyone to work alongside our neurobiology, rather than fighting against it. Sound too pie-in-the-sky? You'll be shocked to learn just how pragmatic these techniques are. You'll walk away with more skillful confidence to navigate topics like addressing performance gaps, managing interpersonal conflict, and communicating boundaries, all of which improve employee morale, trust, retention, and performance.

Mission-driven, values-based businesses are better positioned to maintain long-term success amidst changing landscapes and shifting challenges. Concise, clear, prominent company values not only keep you focused on what matters, but also position you to make more confident and timely decisions, all the while differentiating your business from others with similar offerings. When your employees are values-aligned, they're less likely to burn out and more likely to be personally invested success. That said, it can be difficult to identify, develop, refine, clarify, and justify what those values may be. "Realistic Self Appraisal" is a worthwhile exploration into what truly makes you tick. Utilizing research backed assessments with high reliability and validity, we can walk through some surprisingly simple concepts to focus your vision today.

Every entrepreneur faces uncertainties, setbacks, rapid changes, and constantly shifting demands . As the leader of your organization, your mindset can drastically impact how well your team navigates through them. A growth mindset isn't something most people are born with, but learning how to shift into one improves your business's resilience, innovation, and ultimately its very survival. Businesses who thrive aren't ones who simply got lucky or got it all right immediately out of the starting gates; they're the ones whose owners are laser-focused on their "why" but can shift, adapt, and grow, through challenges.

A workshop simply on “gettin’ things done,” we’ll talk about productivity cycles that work, ones that don’t, and some tips and tricks to achieve more quality in less time when working as an individual or as part of a team. Prioritization, goal-setting, action-planning, and delegation tips all lay the groundwork for effective time management, task management, stress management, energy management, and focus management. We then challenge participants to 'put it all together' by examining a simple but powerful productivity cycle applicable both individuals and groups.

At Starling Leadership, we believe in our kids' incredible abilities to understand, problem-solve, and be genuinely & inspiringly curious. This is arguably the best stage to plant big seeds: •What are you really great at? •How do you feel when you make a mistake? •How do you like to help your friends and how can they help you? •What leaves you feeling more happy and less overwhelmed? •What gets you excited? •How did your friend feel when that happened? How did you know? •What do you hope to do today, tomorrow, next summer, when you're in 8th grade? Using developmentally-appropriate and stimulating pedagogy like games & challenges, self-quizzes and group discussions, these topics just become part of your child's personality rather than some big project to be tackled as an adult. Starling Nest works with parents, caregivers, and elementary & middle school educators.

Teens and young adults will always have a soft spot in the heart of Starling Leadership's founder. Jess has a decade of professional experience in Higher Education--everything from Student Conduct at a large, public, land-grant, research university, to Leadership Development at a local, public, community college, to serving as a primary resource for two drastically different populations at a small, private, mission-driven university, to some academic advising, tutoring, & serving as an Adjunct Faculty Member, to serving as a Title IX Investigator and adjudicator of the most serious cases of misconduct. Most folks would think that each of those roles was drastically different from one another, but in reality, I found myself relying on the same core, foundational, transformational skills to engage in impactful dialogue regardless of subject, content, or application. Working with a population notoriously grappling with the big things like identity, values, growth, and grounding taught me to efficiently employ only the highest-impact practices. Starling Leadership welcomes any and all opportunities to return to our roots with High School and College/University students.