Vera Polyakova

Leading others is a linguistic act. It is about making effective requests of others, securing promises and commitments, and getting results. Consider the following questions:

• Do you frequently hear excuses from others instead of getting results?
• Are you frustrated because people say one thing, but do another?
• Do you feel powerless when people make promises and don’t follow through?
• Would you like others to take responsibility and get things done in a timely manner?

You will experience in-depth coaching on issues that matter to you most. This is a unique opportunity to not just talk about accountability and integrity, but to experience it on a deeper level and embody the mood, language, and actions of impactful leadership.

You Will Learn How To

• Enhance your team’s commitment and follow-through.
• Make and honor requests.
• Secure and listen to commitments.
• Reduce “knee-jerk” responses to frustration.
• Restore your integrity in case you were the one dropping the ball.
• Deliver legitimate complaints when promises are broken.
• Eliminate gossip.
• Gracefully hold people accountable.
• Manage moods and emotions.
• Have difficult conversations and coach people to take action.

Have you ever considered how effective leaders get extraordinary things done in teams, organizations, communities, and nations? These leaders engage in effective and transformational leadership practices that include:

1. Being authentic and self aware of one’s own leadership style, strengths, and limitations.
2. Using the power of language and conscious communication to: create meaning and transform conversations from a language of blame to a language of personal responsibility and from complaints to commitments.
3. Optimizing self and modeling the way by clarifying personal values and aligning actions with shared values.
4. Embracing and inspiring a shared vision with exciting possibilities.
5. Challenging the process by seeking innovative ways to change and improve, taking risks, getting small wins, and learning from mistakes.
6. Enabling others to act by building trust, establishing collaborative goals, and sharing power.
7. Encouraging the heart by recognizing others’ contributions; celebrating values, individual excellence, and victories; and by creating a spirit of community.
8. Stepping up and leading with courage!

This session will explore the power of linguistic leadership and conscious communication by creating more awareness of your own leadership and communication styles. We will also practice effective communication techniques designed to improve your performance as a leader.

You Will Learn How To

• Better understand the causal relationship between conscious communication and effective leadership.
• Have a clear picture of your own leadership style, strengths, and challenges.
• Be prepared to practice specific communication techniques aimed at improving your performance as a leader.

Congratulations on your promotion to Division Director at the Sunshine State Hospital! As Division Director, you are responsible for the delivery of the department’s clinical, educational, and research missions. You have the support of the Chair who has built a fine organization over the past several years. He’s looking forward to great things from you! During this session, you will be running a division within a simulation. There will be established goals at the beginning of the session. You will be introduced to business and financial concepts, then, given a number of scenarios, apply this information within a group decision-making exercise.

The goal for this session is to gain an understanding of the application of business concepts and their impact on clinical, educational, research, operational, and financial outcomes.

Program pre-requisite: Financial Acumen Program

You Will Learn How To

• Assess and make decisions based on the following drivers: market, patient, employee, and business.
• Analyze operational and financial metrics.
• Identify opportunities to increase efficiency in operations.
• Recognize the connections between various clinical/business factors and outcomes.
• Improve profitability associated with the business.

This leadership session is based on ancient wisdom and practices from the text and philosophy of the book Art of War, by Sun Tzu. The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy and leadership in the world. It has had a huge influence on Eastern military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu recognized the importance of positioning in a flexible, terrain-based strategy. The position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of its competitive players. He taught that strategy does not mean planning by working through a to- do list, rather it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions, similar to a terrain. Planning works in a controlled environment. However, in a competitive environment, competing plans collide, thereby creating unexpected situations.

You Will Learn

We will present a unique framework for learning how to think and design actions for producing important change and transformation in challenging and dynamic times. At the end of this session, and using a hands-on approach, participants will learn how to structure an effective transformation and how to:

• Assess the situations we find ourselves in.
• Design actions to change our situations.
• Identify factors that impact successful change initiatives.
• Understand how to develop a Terrain Based StrategyTM.
• Develop orthodox versus unorthodox strategies.
• Apply the learning to our professional and personal lives.

• Are you stressed by constant conflict with others?
• Are you hesitant to have that “difficult conversation” with a person that you are having a conflict with?
• Are you looking for ways to create an environment where your team feels safe in using dialogue as a primary tool for dealing with differences?
• Are you busy figuring out how to assert your point rather than listening to the other person’s perspective?
• Do you find yourself dealing with all conflict situations with the same approach every time?

Program Overview

Conflict is natural - and even necessary. As a leader, your ability to challenge others’ way of thinking tends to generate a richer range of options, which ultimately leads to better decisions. Becoming a conflict competent leader will provide strategies that you can use to ensure that crucial conversations, healthy back-and-forth moments, remain constructive and focused on the issues. Leaders who embrace conflict as positive will find increasingly engaged, productive teams - and discover that they themselves are better positioned to lead these teams to success. We also know from research that individuals who are the most influential - who can get things done, and at the same time build on relationships - are those who master their crucial conversations.

You Will Learn

• To be more aware of your primary approach or tendency towards dealing with conflict.
• How to use different approaches when dealing with conflict, depending on the nature of the situation and the individual(s) involved.
• The outcomes of conflict - using the stimulus/response model.
• How to break down the elements of conflict.
• To apply your knowledge and skills around conflict that exists in the workplace, using real world case studies.
• The ABC model for effective conflict resolution.

Program Overview: 

If you find balance sheets, income statements, ratio analysis and other financial concepts intimidating, you are not alone. Many healthcare professionals feel the same. However, in challenging and more competitive markets, leaders from every function within the organization must deepen their understanding of basic financial concepts. Why? The more you know about how your organization makes money and delivers value to stakeholders, the more you can identify ways to boost revenues, to contain costs, to best communicate ideas to achieve funding, to identify new resources, and to contribute to the organization’s sustainability in other ways. Healthcare and not-for-profit organizations are unique and complex business and financial models that require a deeper level of understanding. As a physician understands the critical functions of blood circulation in the body, an effective leader must understand the circulation of cash in the business world. Financial Acumen, maintaining and applying a broad understanding of financial management principals, represents a competency that a leader must possess to ensure that decisions are fiscally sound and responsible.

You Will Learn How To

• Apply general financial accounting principles to direct organizational actions.
• Read and evaluate financial statements and their applications.
• Assess the role of profitability, cash flow, risk, and cost drives in creating value.
• Accurately identify the potential financial impact of various strategies.
• Prepare, justify, and/or administer the budget for a program area.
• Effectively create and manage budgets.
• Monitor the overall performance of the organization and adjust the allocation of finances based on progress against goals.
• Best communicate ideas to achieve funding.