Jim Dance operates The Walter Strayer Company – a Leadership Training and Consulting Services firm based in Upstate New York, serving clients nationwide. For nearly thirty years, his singular focus has been to help managers apply the concepts of leadership that have the greatest impact on the performance, productivity, morale, and attitude of employees. He gets to work with wonderful, smart, high-caliber managers, bosses, and leaders from client organizations all over America pursuing organizational excellence. His clients have included NADA, GM, AAA, Toyota, and many others.

Read more about Jim and The Walter Strayer Company

The course program is a combination of facilitated content, participatory learning activities, case study exploration, discussion, and video-based discovery.

• The foundational elements consist of:
  •  A Self-Assessment of leadership behaviors, skills, and attributes, establishing a benchmark against nationally-recognized metrics from which to build a blueprint for development.
  • A Statistical Analysis of employee productivity data points.
  • Identification of current, real-time management issues of participants.
• The curriculum is then structured into the identification and explanation of the 16 Generally Accepted Vital Concepts of Leadership, exploring common pitfalls and specific actionable tools for each.
• Workbook & assessments provided; note-taking strongly encouraged.
• Opportunity provided for discussion of participants’ specific example issues to illustrate the application of the concepts.
• This is Walter Strayer’s signature Leadership Development Program deployed for thousands of automotive industry managers nationwide, including all graduating classes of the NADA Dealer Academy since 1999.

1. Business Physics – Identifying the critical data points and the prerequisite steps necessary in order to get staff-members to take ownership of their tasks and accept and embrace responsibility for their own performance.
   1. What do all great leaders know about the boss/employee relationship?
   2. The 4 crucial areas that highly effective leaders start with.
   3. What is leadership? What is management? What is the difference?
2. 4 House Management theory – Discovering the 4 primary areas of focus for the leader and learning to identify, manage, and balance these competing elements of organizational leadership.
   1. Identifying the most frequently overlooked area of focus in business.
   2. Learning how one of the most successful companies in American business history has achieved remarkable growth by focusing specifically on that overlooked area.
3. Poker in Business – Learning to effectively identify and manage the priorities of the manager/boss/leader.
   1. Discover a powerful system for significantly better management of tasks, activities, and time
   2. Learn from one of America’s foremost business minds the four vital skills for improving execution and performance as a leader
4. F&V  – The behavioral analysis process for dramatically increasing the effectiveness of leadership & management relationships with staff. 
   1. How to significantly improve one’s Performance Potential.
5. Social Learning Theory – The incontrovertible prerequisite to the effective management of people.
   1. How to establish more powerful credibility and greater positional leverage.
   2. The Four leadership traps to avoid at all costs.
   3. What does ‘leading by example’ mean?
6. Propulsion Theory – What causes people to move forward…or not?
   1. What is motivation?
   2. Can you really motivate others?
   3. What do employees want, anyway?
   4. How does a leader energize staff?
7. The Chemistry Factor – Unraveling the biochemical mysteries of employees’ behavior and motivation.
   1. What really drives employees’ actions?
   2. Can you as a leader impact that driver? If so, how?
   3. Learn how to create receptivity to input in your staff.
8. Employee Engagement – Learn the most effective approach for getting employees to be more fully engaged with their work.
9. Algebra in Leadership –How great organizations bring about development and growth with their people.
   1. What is the primary job of the manager-supervisor-leader?
   2. Learn the systems the great companies have put into place in order to achieve such extraordinary levels of sustained success.
10. Pygmalion Management – The most-often-overlooked key ingredient to managing performance and productivity, from Harvard Business School.
    1. Statistical analysis of the labor pool.
    2. Study the powerful and compelling research from Harvard Business School regarding management.
11. The Triquation Process – How to manage for productivity improvement.
    1. Explore how one of the most successful companies in business squeezes significantly more productivity out of its employees. 
12. Creating Self-Discovery – The critical first step in employee development.
    1. Learn an easy-to-master skillset for leaders.
    2. Discover how employee growth really happens.
    3. Learn how to establish control with discretion.
13. The Law of The Cheetah – Find out why employees don’t do their job.
    1. Understanding the root of 50% of employee performance issues.
    2. Discover a specific tool to dramatically improve productivity
14. Inertia, Entropy, & PSP – Root cause analysis on employee issues.
    1. Can people change? If so, how?
    2. How to finally overcome performance and productivity problems.
    3. A practical operating system for delegation and accountability.
15. Curing Management Frustration – The single element that distinguishes great leaders from average bosses.
    1. 3 Steps to get employees to execute tasks better.
    2. A powerful training model used by the best organizations in the world.
    3. Dealing effectively with employee issues and providing constructive performance conversations.

16. Niagara Falls – The fascinating, hidden secret of highly effective leaders

Upon completion of the program, participants will have learned:

• A statistical analysis of employee performance issues and their root causes.
• The impact of workgroup culture on performance and how to manage it.
• How to identify and manage leadership priorities. 
• A comprehensive understanding of the quadrant theory of human behavior – understanding the workplace behavior of self and others.
• How to manage the credibility of the leader.
• A deep understanding of employee motivation.
• How emotion and logic fit together to drive employee performance and behavior.
• How the effective leader sees, engages, and teaches staff.
• How to use neuroscience to enhance employee engagement and learning.
• Understanding the connection between employee engagement and customer experience.
• How to create powerful guided self-discovery with employees.
• Why employees don’t meet expectations and how to manage through that.
• How to deal with performance and behavior challenges.
• A proven training model that works.
• The six basic functions of the supervisor.
• How to create more productive energy within the leader’s AOR.