Jam Session Archives

Our focus in this session is on rethinking our approach to idea generation on our teams. Art will share 3 slightly counter-intuitive (and research backed) approaches to dramatically improving idea-generation practices in the workplace, and we’ll be soliciting your ideas as well. 

In Session 2, we blow up pre-existing ideas around goal-setting in our organizations and explore ideas to turn these often misused, discarded, or empty words into BIG Promises that promote personal learning and create positive organizational impact.

For this session, our focus is on rethinking how you engage with others when seeking support, offering constructive input, or suggesting new ideas. While we all have the same words at our disposal, as a wise person once offered, some individuals are simply better at stringing them together.

In this session, career expert Julie Winkle Giulioni joins Art Petty to share insights and ideas from her forthcoming book, Promotions Are SO Yesterday—Redefine Career Development/Help Employees Thrive. Whether you are managing and supporting the development of others or interested in gaining great ideas for your career development, this is a must-attend session.

In this session, we’ll share ideas, approaches, and tools to help all of us find the “magic” with our teams. After all, we can use a bit of “extraordinary” in our organizations and professional lives about now. I’ll share my ideas and you bring yours to help us all. After all, we’re smarter together!

There’s almost nothing more frustrating than working hard and delivering results and not getting the recognition or advancement you believe you deserve. Perhaps next on the frustration scale is wanting to make a significant impact through and with your team but being consistently left out of the big initiatives.

For any individual motivated to lead and guide transformation or change, both grit and finesse are essential for survival, not to mention success. Your change initiative is sometimes directly challenging someone’s view of “It isn’t broke, why fix it?” And then politics and turf wars enter the picture. In this session, we’ll share hard-won tips and approaches that will help you survive and thrive in your transformation initiative, regardless of size.

It turns out that many individuals are uncomfortable engaging with the executives in their organizations either in small talk or via updates and presentations. That’s too bad because good executives are hungry to hear ideas, observations, and even constructive criticism. You might be surprised by how interested your executives are in what you have to say. Now, all you need to do is find the courage to approach and engage them!

For most of us, personal growth comes over time and in fits and starts. Yet, there are things we can do daily or at least regularly to improve our effectiveness, keep us in learning mode, and help us differentiate ourselves in the workplace. In this session, I share a few of my favorite personal-professional growth hacks and we’ll mine the audience for yours!

The research is clear: developing as a manager is some of the most difficult work most of us will encounter in our careers. The transition from contributor to manager is filled with obstacles and potential pitfalls. And, for those with time on the job but without ample training and coaching, their styles and approaches are defined through a series of experiences—many of them bad. Whether you are developing as a manager, or developing managers, the Manager’s Operating System can help get it right from day one on the job.

The best CEOs understand they impact their organizations when they face up to the big bets, often in the face of strong resistance. The same goes for each of us in our careers as we take on new jobs or advocate for big changes in our firm’s approaches or strategies. (I can personally identify six big bets that change the fate of my career for the better, albeit not without a lot of sleepless nights.)

Of the many challenges we’ve faced in the past two years, getting this one right for our people and teams is one of the most important and vexing to navigate. In this session, I’ll share ideas, research findings, and lessons learned while leading and managing global and distributed technology organizations in virtual mode during my career. And of course, in these jam sessions, it’s all about tapping into the wisdom of the crowd.

I’m on record describing one-on-ones as some of the most valuable real estate on a manager’s calendar. These sessions are opportunities to engage, share ideas, identify plans to eliminate obstacles and frankly, in this stressful world, just connect. Unfortunately, from my workshop and client surveys, the manager and employee one-on-ones are some of the most frequently canceled or misused meetings. This is a problem. Learn how to not only run these crucial sessions but make them effective for growth.

Leaders are made, not born, and in all cases, it’s your commitment to serving and guiding that matters, not your title or level on the organization chart. I find great leaders in front-line managers, individual contributors and indirect managers, including team leads, project and product managers. In this session, I share insights and ideas gained from working with and supporting the growth of thousands of leaders at all levels, and we tap into the group’s wisdom to help us all.

Gray Zones–every organization has them, and these represent your opportunity to showcase your leadership, strengthen your internal network, and help your organization and team members knock down lingering problems. In this session, Art shares his experience and approach to leading and succeeding in gray zones and we work together to cultivate ideas for uncovering these opportunities and building teams and coalitions to innovate and collaborate in pursuit of solving these challenging issues.

Given the events of the past few years, it’s no wonder so many professionals are looking for something more in their work. In this session, Art shares ideas and approaches for reigniting your energy and enthusiasm at work by finding purpose in your role and daily contributions. We’ll work together to add to the ideas and even discuss how we can help our team members do the same.

With a nod to the late, great management thinker, Peter Drucker, who identified 5 key questions to keep you learning and growing in his classic article, Managing Oneself, we’ll add five more and talk about each of them. Expect to leave here with ideas you can use immediately to assert ownership over your learning, growth, and of course, your career.

As much as we might think our challenges are unique, long experience coaching and developing managers at all levels consistently uncovers some common challenges that get in the way of progress. We’ll explore 13 common manager challenges and highlight ideas to solve them.

We all encounter challenging moments in the workplace that test our ability to keep our cool and navigate the tension. We risk either responding in kind or withdrawing–neither of which are winning approaches. I share the tools and approaches I teach to my executive coaching clients.

There are common challenges that almost every professional faces on their journey. In the words of the dean of coaching, Marshall Goldsmith, What Brought You Here Won’t Get You There. Find insights on what the best coaching clients do to succeed as they strive to level up and scale their impact.

This session featured Adam Bryant, Managing Director/Partner of The ExCo Group, former New York Times Columnist and author of the just-released The Leap to Leader–How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership. He will provide insights on the challenges of scaling from manager to leader!

Leading coach and author Joel Garfinkle joins Art Petty to help solve the mystery of just what is “executive presence” and describe how we cultivate it. Joel is the author of the recently published book Executive Presence–Step Into Your Power, Convey Confidence & Lead with Conviction.