The Strategic Conversations Executive Method is a high end individualized boutique program for senior leaders.

It is for you if you are a talented key decision makers who wants to reach new levels of leadership excellence.  You can learn to harness the power of diverse brains in connected conversations for the good of your organization. 

Yes, you can make your leadership more influential! Experience conversations flowing easily, conflicts being resolved or dissolved, and the creation of a whole new level of engagement, connection, and innovation happening in front of your eyes.

Have you ever experienced any of these negative patterns?

• Too much valuable time spent fixing misunderstandings and conflicts.

• Conversations where words are thrown around but nobody listens.

• Long ineffective meetings that don't lead to action.

• Bogged down or failed change efforts.

The easiest way to douse the fires of conflict, and build together an agile and innovative organization is by leading through conversations. 

You can learn to use the latest neuropsychological and leadership findings to create the right brain cocktail with your people that will result in collaboration and connection for outstanding results.

Find out more by scheduling a call directly with Dr. Ada

In the new business environment, results are not achieved through command, authority and control. Instead, an entirely new approach to leadership is required. Today your leadership needs to be grounded in strong relationships, conscious influence, keen perception, comfort with risk taking, and facilitation of conversations. All of these become easier if you understand how to control the chemical cocktails that brains mix while in conversation.

The Strategic Conversations Executive Method  effectively helps you and your organization work together and accelerate results in the face of emerging business challenges--with the help of the perfect brain cocktail!

No matter if you are . . .

• A new executive just moved to a senior position;

• A seasoned senior leader faced with new challenges; or

• A leader of a team mired in perpetual conflicts which affects their performance,

you need effective communication skills. The risks you face in forging new relationships, dealing with conflict and change, and finding ways to have more influence are extraordinary opportunities for personal growth. 

You need to learn the skills that will make you successful in today’s cutting-edge business environment. You will then be more effective working globally, connecting with investors, working with your boards of directors, or with your peers. 

Learning how to leave negative patterns behind and move from conversations that miss the mark to powerful transformative conversations that trigger productivity, innovation, and engagement is to your ticket to success in the complex contemporary business environment.

Your personal challenges coupled with the rapid pace of shifts in the global landscape make it imperative for you to choose the Strategic Conversations Executive Method as an essential part of your development process. You can become a forward-thinking leader in this 21st century!

What if in 12 short months you could acquire the methodologies and frameworks that allow you to move from conversations that miss the mark to transformative conversations® that trigger growth, innovation, and new insights in your organization? Strategic Conversations Executive Method offers a powerful process to

• Help you and the leaders you coach become more effective at their jobs.

• Provide a map for staying in control in stressful situations, widen your vision, and handle confrontations more easily.

• Provide tools for making change easier and more widespread in the organization.

• Develop clearer verbal skills for better understanding and more effective communication.

• Improve specific leadership skills, by learning how to facilitate dialogue. Whether it’s being more assertive, a better coach, converting planning into action, or increasing collaboration skills, it all happens through dialogue.

• Plan and lead sustainable change initiatives effectively by learning how to facilitate the kind of conversations that elicit cooperation with reduced resistance to change. (It's all in knowing how to balance the chemical cocktail in your brain and in the social brain of the organization)

• Create a viable future for your organization in collaboration with your team.

What are some of the skills that executives need today?

A recent study by the Stanford Business School found that nearly 43% of senior decision makers ranked handling conflict as the highest area in which they need the most personal development. Another recent 2015 study by the American Management Association,"Business Skills That Set High-Performing Organizations Apart,”  details the skill sets necessary for C-level executives to raise the bar on company performance. Here is the list:

• Conflict management,

• Influencing others,

• critical thinking,

• problem solving,

• decision making,

• execution, and

• coaching.

If you think about it, all of these skills involve people and communication. Successful senior leadership requires astuteness about others: their emotional and strategic personal drivers; their self-interest, overt and covert. These relationship competencies rest on a foundation of self-knowledge, self-awareness. You can’t know the truth about another without knowing it about yourself. It also requires a higher level of communication effectiveness.

Often the issues facing top leaders reach beyond the individual. They involve the leadership team, their board of directors, or the overall business strategy and context. In those cases, I can not only coach the leader, but also consult with the leadership team, coach individual executives, and help facilitate an ever expanding dialogue that sheds light on the entire system.

The Strategic Conversations Executive Method is designed for you, as a highly talented key decision maker.  It includes:

• A variety of assessment and feedback tools to help you identify your strengths and areas of needed development.

• Science-based tools to understand what goes on inside the human brain while you’re having conversations.

• A practice that will help you highjack your fight/flight response and instead be able to control your attention and emotions.

• Proven strategies for having more influence.

• A better understanding of people's issues and how to resolve or dissolve conflicts.

  You will be able to use this information to create a whole new level of engagement and influence with those you lead.

You will achieve peak performance and gain more influence inside and outside the organization. Learn to lead using the skills that the 21 century and a global economy demand. 

If you are ready to show up, own up, and grow up you are in the right place!

Below are some of the results YOU can expect in this program (You can also CLICK HERE  to read about the results others have experienced): 

• Develop crystal clear verbal skills for better understanding and more effective communication.

• Conquer negative attitudes by developing more positive and effective ones, leading you to more influence and success.

• Develop collaborative skills for conflict resolution and conflict prevention.

• Improve facilitation skills for collaboration and change through dialogue.

• Lead and manage cultural diversity by encouraging and listening to all the voices in your team.

• Effectively plan and lead sustainable change initiatives with reduced resistance to change.

• Manage your energy better by understanding and managing the conversations inside your brain. You will improve your efficiency, reduce your stress level, and optimize results. There's nothing like using the power of your whole brain.

These are just a few of the areas where you can improve your potential.

How do I know I can help you?

I left Cuba many years ago, yet today in the “free” world, the scenario in many workplaces is not very different from what I experienced back in Cuba. I have sat in meetings in which everyone (except maybe one person) sits in silence, with eyes downward, afraid to ‘tick off’ that one overbearing person. I have walked into workplaces where there is no buzz of conversations anymore. All you hear is the clicking of keyboards. I have been in meetings where there are only a series of monologues with nobody really listening or engaged, and nobody daring to speak their minds. I have seen leadership teams that are ineffective because they lack effective leadership communication.

Therefore, when I did my Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a concentration in Organizational Behavior, Leadership, Dialogue, and Change, I put all my energies into learning everything I could not only on these subjects but also on how our neuropsychology affects all of these. Through my work and further continuing training, I have learned that everything a leader does is very closely tied to the conversations they have.  

I am a conversation expert consultant and change advisor. My mission is to lead a movement of people that connect and help each other be better leaders by having open dialogue in conversations. Thus my individual Strategic Conversations Executive Method is centered around leadership communication, to help develop leadership skills for this new millennium.

I’m good at connecting with others and in turn helping people connect with each other.  As a Latina, I understand the power of "familia" (family) and supportive relationships. In most organizations, many of the problems that executives face are due to disconnection and silos. I can help you discover how much more you can accomplish through collaboration and connection.

What is included in the Strategic Conversations Executive Program?

The process of this program, which uses a coaching style, helps you define your core challenges, see where you’re starting from, and where you want to go. It doesn't only give you new skills but supports you in transferring those skills back to your everyday work. It gives you feedback on your progress. It helps you untangle the most challenging issues. It transforms your leadership! What follows is a description of how a typical Strategic Conversations Executive Method is designed. Keep in mind that this is NOT a cookie-cutter program. We will design together an individualized program that fits your specific needs for the challenges you are facing in your leadership right this moment.

1.  Becoming partners. The essence of this program is the forging of a trusted relationship in which we become conversational partners. A dialogue develops, a systematic process of inquiry, discovery, reflection, and learning that helps you get unstuck from your dilemmas. We will start this journey together by. . .

• Joining together and finding what are your challenges as a leader.

• Assessing personal and leadership strengths, weaknesses, and level of competencies. This includes formal and informal evaluation. Standardized testing as well as interviews with the closest people around you.

• Testing and challenging your ability to own your part of the issues.

• Giving you continuous feedback on observations.

• Establishing a contract.

• Setting realistic and measurable goals for the program.

2.  Action Planning. It goes beyond the understanding of dilemmas. It includes helping you get to action, become unstuck, address challenges, and create a plan. If includes:

• Going from venting to designing a specific plan.

• Identifying the personal side in the pattern of the situation.

• Addressing systemic issues of organizational and role alignment.

• Planning on how to engage your team in conversation when planning actions, thus diminishing resistance.

• Deciding how much direct presence of the coach is needed during your implementation plan.

3. In the moment strategizing. Many executives find this most useful, others shy away from it. It requires Dr. Gonzalez presence at the leader’s place of conducting business activities and interactions. This will involve an additional expense for you, since you will be responsible for all costs of the visit. The benefits and ROI for increased effectiveness are enormous. This can be done in three different ways:

• group facilitation, when you interact with a group meeting (like for visioning, strategizing, data collecting, planning, deciding, implementing, or evaluating). Dr. Ada offers suggestions along the way, or takes a facilitator role, or stops the meeting at critical times to offer on-the-spot evaluation and feedback or to engage the group in a reflective process. We work equally with everyone.

• coaching of the leader in the group. This is done usually when you have already had a significant amount of strategic coaching. Here you are coached in real-time, to help you realize your goals with the group.

• if it’s not possible to take Dr. Ada to your place of work, you can record a group meeting and send it to Dr. Gonzalez. Dr. Ada will then review it and in a face-to-face virtual meeting through Zoom give you feedback.

4. Weekly or bi-weekly strategic sessions. This can be done in person or over the phone, internet, or other electronic means. Strategic Conversations open a space for inquiry and reflection. In the busy life of top leadership, it's hard to commit to taking the time to reflect. Yet, only by taking time for inquiry and reflection do learning and growth happen. That’s why this is one of the most important parts of coaching. It includes:

• Evaluation of effectiveness, strengths, competencies, and challenges.

• Celebration of achievements.

• Identification of key recurring patterns that were either successfully broken or that remain ingrained.

• Assessment of the alignment of roles.

• Development of a plan for the next steps.

Besides evaluation being an integral part of each strategic session, we'll have specific planned times over the time of the engagement for evaluation of the process. Progress is measured by where the leader is in relation to those goals. Also, by how others see progress being made.

5. Evaluation of gains and ending of the contract. After the agreed-upon time comes to an end, it’s time for a broad evaluation of what has been accomplished and what are next steps. Sometimes the time together is enough for you to feel confident you can keep growing on your own.  Other times, we both might decide it would be best to extend the time of engagement. There are leaders that feel that, like great athletes, they can benefit from having a long-term coach. Someone that brings a perspective that comes from years of knowing the leader, the company, and what he needs to do as a senior leader to successfully drive the company forward.

Smart senior decision-makers and progressive organizations realize the value of a good strategic program and invest in it. When you factor time saved in ineffective meetings, misunderstandings, conflicts, lack of engagement, and resistance, executives tell me they calculate the ROI in their investment to be at least 150%. If you include the stress and emotional toll it takes away, and the relationships and connections gained, it becomes priceless!

Take Action!

What about you? Are you being successful? Are you going to last in your position? Or are you blind to issues that could derail you? Do you have the skills needed for the future to be excellent at your job?  

You can continue to...

• be lonely at the top,

• burn out quickly, and

• be part of the statistics of failure,

OR you can take control of your development and career path and make this Strategic Conversations Executive Program part of your "must-have" arsenal.

For over 25 years I have successfully worked with leaders and organizations in different parts of the world, helping them: increase productivity, improve communication between departments, reduce conflict, handle change effectively and massively increase the effectiveness of their teams through the power of transformative conversations.

Now, I would like to offer you and your organization the same opportunity. I will be happy to discuss with you how I can help with your particular issues and answer any questions you have. I will make sure you get all the information you need. Just schedule an appointment at the bottom of the page.   

Don't wait any longer. Send me an email. Take action NOW!

Or, if you prefer,  schedule a free one-on-one half-hour exploratory strategic conversation where we will evaluate your challenges and needs.  During this session we will explore:

• your present biggest challenges and gain clarity on what you could do about them.

• hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success with leadership and team building.

• Your readiness for emerging leadership challenges.

You will leave the session energized and ready for bigger success.

To claim this special exploratory conversation schedule a 30 minutes session in my calendar.  I look forward to speaking with you!

You can also call us at +1 (302)399-3915