Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Who are you?

Jeannie Gunter, MA PCC CEO for Transformative Training Solutions, Inc. Training and consulting executives, teams and organizations for over 20 years.
Mark Daly, JD PCC COO and Director of Training for Transformative Training Solutions Inc. Managing teams and coaching attorneys for 20 years and training/consulting for 15.

2. How do I improve team cohesiveness and productivity?

We believe that you have to improve communication. This is been proven by research over and over again, because when teams improve efficiency in communication, these multiply exponentially to create a huge impact on overall productivity. And the best and fastest way to create a more cohesive team is to start with the language – nothing new about having code words and “terms of art” that are infused with meaning.

3. What is the best way to train new managers and leadership skills?

We believe that group trainings are the best way because managers can actually practice new ways of communicating to teams and get feedback. Experiential learning is the gold standard for leadership training. So that is what we advocate. We recommend a year-long investment in training your manager for leadership, and that can be done with either quarterly trainings of a group or shorter three-month engagements for executive coaching.

4. How do we improve communication within executive teams?

We recommend training the executives in two important skills. The first is understanding personality styles and practicing how to adapt your communication strategically to people of different personality styles. The second is going to be either conflict management or positive accountability, depending on the team. We always recommend doing the personality style communication training first because you have to use this as a foundation for the other communication tools.

5. Can you provide coaching for executives who are going through organizational change initiatives?

Yes we can focus a series of coaching sessions to focus on specific issues related to change management. We use the ad car change management model along with personality style to provide executives with clarity on strategies and tactics that will improve the change management effort.

6. What’s the difference between the disc and MBTI trainings?

At the end of the day both trainings create a safe way for people to talk about their super powers and their ongoing challenges. They are both widely used and have a lot of supporting material and trainings to improve productivity and communication on teams. They are, however, designed to be used in different circumstances. In general, the Myers Briggs is used to better understand the type of position that would best fit their personality, whereas the DISC provides insight in how to communicate and adapt to communications to better communicate across personality style differences. Since we train leaders and teams on communication tools to improve productivity and morale, we prefer the DISC assessment. But this preference does not mean that we cannot create the same result using Myers Briggs. It’s just that Myers Briggs is a little more complicated than DISC to use in the heat of the moment of a conflict management tool

7. What’s the difference between the managers and executive’s leadership programs?

The management leadership skills EOIR narrowly focused to communication feedback accountability diversity and inclusion emotional intelligence conflict management and coaching skills. Whereas the executives have to master all of these plus learn how to create a mission and vision that inspires a culture change towards productivity and positivity.

8. What are the five dysfunctions of a team?

Patrick Lencioni, a fellow follower of Chris Argus, wrote a best-selling book that has been used by organizations across the country. The five dysfunctions are one absence of trust to fear of conflict three lack of commitment for avoidance of accountability five and attention to results. Because you have to work at all five at once companies usually take this on as A culture change initiative. What’s great is everyone can read the book in coming to the training ready to go. It’s also clear when assessing the team in their perceptions of which of the five

9. Why do government agencies, private companies and non-profits choose Transformative Training Solutions?

The main reason is our proven track record. We work hard to train your group to meet YOUR GOALS. Our approach works with all teams and working groups in all business configurations. We also work hard to earn your trust during our free consultation.

10. What is the key to your success as a consultant?

Everybody understands that we are 100% committed to improve the emotional intelligence and performance of leaders, teams and organizations. We model the effective behaviors during our trainings so that participants learn faster. And yes, Transformative Training uses proprietary, unique, effective, integrated programs for team building, leadership training and organizational development – informed by the research of William Marston, Kurt Lewin and Chris Argyris.

11. How do we start to work together? How can I get a proposal?

Click the request for proposal button and send us your contact information. We will contact you within 24 hours, discuss your situation and objectives, and send you a customized proposal.

12. What is the proprietary 3 step process based on the research of Kurt Lewin and Chris Argyris.

This process is how we decide what programs to provide your team. We start with the First Step: Unpacking the Problem. We encourage you to start with our Free 2 Minute Online Team Assessment to clarify your unique challenges and strengths in 5 areas of dysfunction that covers any organization or team. This quick assessment is designed to be efficient and effective in identifying what you see as your team’s challenges in the areas that most impact organizational health.
We believe it is critical to quickly to compile a good data set and create baseline indicators of your team’s strengths and challenges. Together, we will use this information to create an effective, high value, customized program and deliver your proposal in 24 hours.
The Second Step: Training and Re-Framing: We start with our free confidential initial consultation. Start by filling in your request for proposal on our website, or you can schedule your appointment online – no phone tag or email chains. During our Free 20 Minute Initial Consultation we will analyze your strengths and challenges to quickly develop the best way to present new perspectives and behaviors to your team. We have the skills, education, and time in the trenches to determine how to deal with your team’s resistance to change. We have seen teams fail and succeed and bring that background to your consultation.
Because many teams don’t trust one another, we always work for getting team buy-in for the training from the beginning. We want to bring in new perspectives and behaviors appropriately, so we start by clarifying your goals and priorities regarding your training, and then discuss what the team can actually handle in a training. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Our consultation will propose a training to cover your intended results within the team’s capacity and comfort level. We will clearly describe the techniques we use to teach new perspectives and train new behaviors.
The final step is Step Three: Reorganize and Repack. We provide a Training or Coaching Proposal that is custom tailored to meet your specific learning objectives within 24 hours via email.
We then negotiate the proposal. Most clients take the information and discuss our findings and recommendations with other stakeholders in the organization. That is OK and encouraged. We know that getting buy-in from the beginning – especially when the executives approve of the training – improves the effectiveness of the training. Stakeholders might suggest new goals or priorities to include in the training and request changes in the program. Sometimes stakeholders want to address a current challenge head on, avoid discussing certain issues, or take a more theoretical approach to the training. We have also been requested to meet with other teams in an organization by executives that want to expand the training to include the whole company wide yearlong training and coaching package. This is why we always anticipate a free follow-up consultation, where we avail ourselves to meet further with you and any stakeholders during the contract process clarify and modify the proposal.
Our Letter of Agreement will finalize and formalize our mutual commitments to the scope, dates and times, location and cost of the training. It also specifies the room requirements, extra costs and terms of cancellation and rescheduling.

13. How can I provide my team with information on how to manage stress in a positive way, contribute to the project, speak up so they can be heard and take advantage of opportunities instead of engaging in a negative manner?

Most leaders provide information in the context of a meeting. You can have separate strategic meetings to present the company vision on how best to manage stress and collaborate on projects, then have more tactical meetings on specific behaviors and their impact on these goals.

With the word “stress”, remember one person’s stress is another person’s thrill. Fast paced people can appear to be addicted to stress. However, we believe that positivity in the workplace is the key to managing stress, and some people do not have a natural tendency towards positivity. We can hold one another accountable in a positive way and give feedback too.
“Managing stress” is important when team members are facing burnout. When we manage anything, we use systems and measure results. In our belief, managing stress in team members usually requires time and attention in many different personal domains – physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual domains might need to be supported. For team members, our 3 month coaching packages are recommended for this. Long term stress management is achieved when participants clearly understand their strengths and have lots of support in place to work on their challenges. DISC is the best strength/challenge assessment, in our judgement, for coaching participants.
As for the team as a whole, you as leader need to have strategic and tactical meetings where you explicitly focus on these issues. You request participants to bring support requests and ways to improve contribution on projects. Let the negativity arise… What prevents them from speaking up so they can be heard? What is not fair? These are perfect examples of tactical challenges that could be figured out and decided on by the team. In this way you create more collaborative decision-making opportunities for the team, which increases the positivity on the team as you model how to use the wisdom of the team as a personal trusted resource with which to engage often.

14. Our new consolidation project is generating a lot of fear and unrest. Many of the questions that are so important to the teams are yet unanswered such as what the HR aspect will look, like including pay and benefits as well as how the operational side will look. How do we improve morale?

We look to the research by Chris Argyris and Kurt Lewin that shows improvement of morale by providing training programs designed to make their lives easier at work. Some companies are afraid to get everyone together in order to avoid a lynch mob mentality that can arise in poorly executed company meetings. This brings morale down because the message is ‘We don’t trust you and do not value your input on this consolidation project.” Other companies have hired us to present trainings on change management, constructive feedback, positive accountability and conflict management and participants are able to improve their ability to stay engaged and focus on company goals while navigating structural uncertainty.