Team-Building and Leadership Retreat

Turning Lofty Goals into Action

Self-leadership is not getting the attention it deserves in professional development. Yet, it is a critical factor that distinguishes high achievers from others. This hands-on retreat journey of self-awareness and team building is an opportunity to ascertain and harness your untapped self-leadership and team-building strengths, both as an individual and as a team member, in a practical and non-threatening way. The objectives are to improve performance at work, and build and sustain collaborative and mutually supportive relationships in the day-to-day work environment, as well as at home and elsewhere in the community.

The program addresses some of the most-acute obstacles to individual and team performance. It is designed for the whole team. By gaining a deeper self-awareness and a genuine knowledge of what turns professionals into high achievers, you will be able to:

• Build trust and respect, and collaborate better;
• Contribute to building a winning team with your management and peers
• Prevent a host of interpersonal crises;
• Manage conflicts, difficult people and awkward situations assertively.

To deliver a stimulating, enjoyable and engaging learning experience, Alain Martin, the retreat leader, will help you practice in a friendly atmosphere, overcome obstacles, harness individual differences constructively, discover new ways to support each other more effectively, by deploying and tailoring your specific strengths to various contexts and situations. Using proven psychometric-assessment tools, you will uncover the drivers of interpersonal compatibility in order to elucidate and effectively work with your teams, vendors and clients, among others.

The seminar weaves together cutting-edge theory and and best practices, current and exemplary-leadership stories, short and powerful inspirational videos and proven team-building instruments.

Back to work, you will assume more leadership, without the benefit of authority, by acting with a greater confidence, skill, courage and empathy, under normal conditions, a crisis or a conflict situation.

Much of your time during this workshop will be invested to sharpen your skills to deliver top performance and build a winning team. We believe learning occurs most readily when quickly applied to real-life situations you care about. Therefore, we want you to do some thinking before the workshop about two interpersonal situations you may have some difficulty with on the job, e.g. working together as a team, brainstorming effectively, negotiating priorities (with your board, senior executives or peers), dealing with difficult people, enforcing deadlines. Who is involved? When does it occur? How do you usually handle the situation?

This interactive retreat is practical in every sense of the word by virtue of several unique features:

1. You will leave with proven techniques and skills to effectively manage various interpersonal and team issues.
2. The curriculum integrates a rigorous, thorough and practical approach.
3. You will acquire the best available course materials, totalling a substantial market value. You will use both FIRO-B and SDI, two powerful instruments to help them examine and improve your relationships, openness, trust, and communication with others.
4. The retreat workshop leader is also unique. Alain Paul Martin will coach you to turn your potential into a lifelong success. He works with senior executives, marketin and sales professionals, scientists, team leaders, executive assistants and other professionals. He knows firsthand about the competitive pressure to excel, the client's inelastic deadlines and gruelling demands facing these professionals.

1. The pre-readings.
2. Books on time management, life and career planning providing practical tips for managing your time for a better quality of life. The objective of these course materials is to keep the participants current and growing professionally at their own pace long after the seminar.
3. Consulting Psychologists' FIRO-B: This non-judgmental self-scoring tool helps users understand interpersonal compatibility and build high-performing teams through openness and trust, and improve communication skills and relationships.
4. Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI): This instrument helps you improve relationships and diagnose and manage conflict. It increases self-understanding and provides insights into what motivate others, both under normal and stressful conditions.
5. One road map (Harvard University Global System^TM) features a step-by-step framework for planning, and managing personal time. This road map details the annual, monthly, weekly and daily tasks considered essential to high achievement. With a novel and original 3D design, this laminated 22 x 34" instrument constantly reminds you of the most important questions in time management. When kept in sight, it helps you reduce the workload and focus on what really matters by paying attention to details that count without losing track of the big picture.

An international expert on exemplary leadership and principled negotiation and the Chief Architect of Harvard University Global System™, Alain Paul Martin is a member of the 2014 Ship of Excellence Faculty which includes Nobel laureates and other remarkable leaders. He is a Harvard University's Fellow in Advanced Leadership (2012), an alumnus of Harvard Business School (1997-99), with training in negotiation and mediation at Harvard Law School.

Alain delivered leadership seminars at the Ivy-League Summit held at Harvard University and led presentations on strategic thinking and risk management to graduate students and fellows, both at Harvard and MIT. He led principled negotiation and project management seminars in Europe, the Americas and Asia for companies including Boeing, Bombardier, Desjardins Financial Group, PEMEX, EON Renewables, Teck Metals, Textron Bell Helicopters and governments.

A bar-certified trainer, Alain continues to conduct ethical negotiation workshops for lawyers, judges, legislators and policy makers. An innovator and patent holder with advanced technology and operations-research background, Alain advises boards and executives of financial, biotech firms and government agencies. He led international projects in several countries in engineering, infrastructure, software development, finance, corporate turnaround and R&D.

He was an Executive Member of Canada’s Prime-Minister Committee on Government Reform. In collaboration with Dr. Brian Morrissey, Alain drafted recommendations that ultimately led to the creation the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Together, they subsequently studied the policy lessons learned in the United Kingdom about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and the new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Alain advised the Director General of the UNESCO to undertake a major overhaul to strengthen the essence of the organization in Paris and throughout the world with a greater focus on vital priorities, principle-based leadership and strategic issues.

Alain Martin was a member of the Graduate Management Faculty of the University of Quebec where he taught management of change and ethical negotiation skills to graduate students, both English and French. He also led, for several years, advanced risk-management workshops for executives, team leaders and engineers assigned to nuclear-power projects. He is a member of the French Society of Mathematics (SMF) and the author of Harnessing the Power of Intelligence, Counterintelligence & Surprise Events. He was honored by the Presidents of Harvard University and Harvard Alumni Association for his “Leadership, Vision and Service to our Community” during the ten-year period between 2001 and 2011.

We will deliver our one- to three-day retreat sessions in the location of your choice.

For groups of less than 35 participants, we recommend ideal venues for synergistic teamwork combining experiential learning and both indoor and outdoor recreational activites such as The Cloister at Sea Island (Georgia), the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge (MA), le Château Frontenac in Québec City, Banff and resorts in Spain (Barcelona, Elgiego's Marqués de Riscal, Las Palmas, Madrid) and France (Aix-en-Provence, Loire Valley, Paris, Strasbourg).

Our PDI Campus in Ottawa-Gatineau near the scenic Gatineau Park in Canada is also an option. Our high-security campus features a main conference room, a separate dining room, small syndicate rooms for teamwork, a syndicate room with a bay window can be also used as an interpretation or videoconferencing booth. Used as a backup conference room, the dining room has the same equipment as the main room. Each room has two large sliding blackboards, flip charts, audio and DVD players, Wi-Fi and a high-speed broadband Internet connection. Projection screens and ceiling-mounted digital projectors for PPT presentations are also available. The walls of each conference room hold 4 large (8x4 feet) display boards for teamwork.