Training Industry, the leading research and information resource for corporate learning leaders, prepares the Top 20 report on critical sectors of the corporate training marketplace to better inform professionals about the best and most innovative providers of training services and technologies. Selection criteria includes:

• Breadth and quality of program and service offerings.
• Industry visibility, innovation and impact in the leadership training market.
• Client and customer representation.
• Business performance and growth.

“This year’s Top 20 Leadership Training companies, selected from our most competitive sector, offer comprehensive and innovative approaches to strategically addressing learning needs at all leadership levels,” said Jessica Schue, market research analyst at Training Industry. “With their array of high-quality leadership programs and cutting-edge technology offerings, including solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence, these innovative providers ensure dynamic development for learners, transforming workplaces in the process. By offering accurate and diverse metrics and a range of delivery options, these providers effectively equip leaders to meet the evolving needs of the modern workplace.” 

For more information on the Top 20 Leader Training companies, click here.

About Crucial Learning
Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Influencer, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

CONTACT: Jordan Christiansen +1-801-995-5458, jordan.christiansen@cruciallearning.com

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The Top Workplaces USA awards offer recognition to midsize and large organizations, including those with operations in multiple markets. Categories included companies with more than 2,500 employees, organizations with 1,000 to 2,499 employees, organizations with 500 to 999 employees and organizations with 150 to 499 employees. Energage ranked the top 100 employers in each of the four categories and then listed the remaining winners in alphabetical order.

Crucial Learning came in 25th in the 150 to 499 employee category. To see each of the lists, click here.

Awardees are identified solely based on employee feedback gathered through the Energage employee engagement survey. Companies were chosen based on the results of surveys taken over 12 months in 2023.

The award comes on the heels of Crucial Learning also being named to the national Top Workplaces for Remote Work by Monster and a Top Workplace in Utah by Salt Lake Tribune, including being named No. 1 in the state among midsized companies.

About Crucial Learning
Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

The post Crucial Learning Named to National Top 25 Workplace List appeared first on Crucial Learning.

The 2024 Top Workplaces for Remote Work award celebrates organizations with 150 or more employees cultivating exceptional remote working environments. Since the COVID pandemic in 2020, Crucial Learning has operated remotely with employees across the country while maintaining top marks in customer care and employee satisfaction. The 2024 Top Workplaces for Remote Work award is strictly based the results collected via a confidential employee engagement survey that were evaluated by comparing responses to research-based statements that predict high performance against industry benchmarks. 

In addition to this award, Crucial Learning was also named the top midsized company to work for in Utah last October.

“These awards underscore the importance of listening to employees about where and when they can be their most productive and happiest selves,” shares Monster CEO Scott Gutz. “We know that this flexibility is essential to helping both employers and candidates find the right fit.”

About Crucial Learning
Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

The post 2024 Top Workplaces for Remote Work List Includes Crucial Learning appeared first on Crucial Learning.

And these findings don’t just point to an increased call for civility, they also indicate promising signs of equalization between the way men and women are perceived in the workplace.

In 2016, a similar study from Crucial Learning found that women who spoke forcefully in the workplace experienced more of a social backlash than their male counterparts. Yet following prominent social movements calling for equity and fairness over the last few years, in a follow-up study conducted in October 2023, both male and female respondents rated men more negatively for their aggressiveness, indicating a shift in the way we perceive gender at work.

“Many of us have hoped that increased attention on the bias women face in the workplace would lead to greater equality,” said Emily Gregory, researcher and coauthor of Crucial Conversations. “Of course, inequalities still exist, but our results suggest society may be starting to hold men accountable to the same standard as women in the workplace when it comes to aggressive behavior.”

In the study (click here for full data report), respondents were asked to watch a short video clip of a man or woman expressing concerns about a project in a meeting with a group of their peers. The person in each video either expressed their concerns calmly and respectfully, or loudly and aggressively, while all having the same script. Respondents each saw one of the clips (male or female, neutral or aggressive) and answered questions about their feelings towards the actor’s demeanor.

Respondents penalized both the man and woman in the aggressive videos in areas of status, competency, and perceived value, or how much salary they believed the person deserved compared to the neutral videos. For example, the aggressive man lost almost $8,000 in perceived salary value compared to his neutral counterpart.

In an open-ended survey question, respondents were asked to provide three adjectives to describe the video subject. The adjectives used to describe the man in the videos were more negative than those used to describe the woman; for example, among the top five words used to describe each, no negative adjectives were used for the woman (assertive, direct, determined, strong, confident) while three of the five used for the man were negative (stubborn, aggressive and rude along with passionate and determined).

In addition, the less control a respondent believed the video subject had, the lower they rated the subject across all measures, including competency, status, leadership ability and perceived value.

“Being civil isn’t the same as being passionless,” said Nancy Smith, researcher and vice president at Crucial Learning. “You can advocate strongly for your beliefs as long as you’re in control. It’s those men and women who can exhibit passion without aggression who will find more listening ears than those with less civility.”

About Crucial Learning

Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

The post Study Suggests Men & Women Pay Tax on Aggressiveness at Work—Indicating Greater Gender Equalization in the Workplace appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Crucial Consulting offers both off-the-shelf solutions as well as customized consulting support for clients looking to lead behavior change of any kind, even if prior attempts have failed. In past engagements, Crucial Learning consultants and their clients have seen impressive results:

• HCA Healthcare reduced nursing turnover created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Lockheed Martin won a $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter contract.
• Spectrum Health improved hand hygiene compliance from 60% to 90%.
• Newmont Mining reduced serious injuries by more than 70%.
• AT&T improved employee satisfaction by 20% and retained all key subject-matter experts through a reorganization.

“We are thrilled to offer comprehensive consulting services that will guide leaders and their teams to influence team- or system-wide behavior change and achieve impressive results,” said Andy Shimberg, CEO of Crucial Learning. “Our consulting philosophy is founded on the principle that behavior leads to results. When you replace unproductive, destructive, or mediocre behaviors with vital behaviors that lead to success, results are inevitable. Our team has the behavior change model and experience to help our clients do just that.”

Clients will partner with Crucial Learning consultants and master trainers to identify the behaviors standing in the way of their success and then create a behavior-change strategy to achieve their critical business results. Crucial Learning consultants are the leading experts in the application of crucial skills and are skilled practitioners in applying the award-winning Crucial Influence® Model to create rapid and sustained behavior change.

“At Crucial Learning, we’re continuously striving to provide ways to support and strengthen organizations and, most importantly, the people who work for them,” said Mike Morhardt, Chief Revenue Officer at Crucial Learning. “Crucial Consulting adds to our mission to create flexible learning experiences that teach proven skills for solving life’s most stubborn personal, interpersonal, and organizational problems.”

More information about Crucial Consulting can be found at CrucialLearning.com.

About Crucial Learning

Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

CONTACT: Jordan Christiansen +1-801-995-5458, jordan.christiansen@cruciallearning.com

The post Crucial Learning Launches New Consulting Solutions appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Core Strengths is home to the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI 2.0), a best-in-class assessment that delivers powerful personal insights into why we behave the way we do and how we relate to others. People learn how their core motives and values drive their behaviors, both in productive collaboration and in moments of conflict. The self-awareness gained from these insights helps people improve their performance and strengthen relationships.

People experience the SDI 2.0 assessment through the Core Strengths Platform which allows clients to access their individual assessment results as well as the results of their colleagues. This broad access to results extends the life of the assessment and ensures anyone can access valuable relationship intelligence on-demand to improve team collaboration and performance.

Effective immediately, Crucial Learning will acquire the Core Strengths products, technology, processes and workforce. In coming months, the SDI 2.0 and Core Strengths Platform will be integrated into the Crucial Learning product suite which includes the award-winning courses Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®.

Crucial Learning leadership says the acquisition allows them to broaden their solutions and better serve their clients.

“We have been looking for a world-class assessment tool to help us respond to client interest and demand,” said Andy Shimberg, CEO of Crucial Learning. “We are confident we’ve found the right partner in Core Strengths. The SDI 2.0 meets our high standards of quality and client experience. Not only does it deliver performance-enhancing personal insight, but it has also helped organizations improve collaboration, teamwork and bottom-line results for the last 50 years.”

The SDI 2.0 assessment and corresponding Core Strengths learning solutions are complementary to the Crucial Learning offerings and will help clients experience the following:

• Improve relationship intelligence. The SDI 2.0 measures people’s core motives, how they experience conflict, their strengths, and how those strengths can be overdone. With these four views, it delivers personalized insights to help people develop trust and build productive relationships.
• Apply dialogue and accountability skills more effectively to increase collaboration. The SDI 2.0 reveals cues as to why people experience conflict, stress and tension. When armed with these relationship insights, participants can use dialogue and accountability skills more effectively.
• Build better teams. When people learn why they behave the way they do – how their core motives and values drive their behaviors—and when they have this same insight about others—they can build healthier, happier relationships and more effective teams.

Ultimately, the pairing of the Crucial Learning skill-based content and unique ability to produce world-class learning courses with Core Strengths’ assessment and platform represents an exciting new phase of growth and opportunity for the organization.

“We are thrilled to add the Core Strengths products and team to Crucial Learning,” said Shimberg. “Not only does this acquisition allow us to better serve our clients, but we are better equipped than ever to deliver on our mission to improve the world by teaching people skills to improve themselves.”

The acquisition was made effective on January 1, 2024.

About Crucial Learning

Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in the areas of communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations®, Crucial Accountability ®, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. cruciallearning.com

About Core Strengths

Core Strengths’ mission is to make work better by helping people improve their relationships. Built on 50 years of science, Relationship Intelligence (RQ) empowers leaders and teams to build trust, generate commitment, and drive results. Over 5 million users in organizations worldwide rely on Core Strengths to assess personality, develop employees, and build winning teams.

MEDIA CONTACT: Brittney Maxfield, +1-801-755-2809, brittney.maxfield@cruciallearning.com

The post Crucial Learning Acquires Core Strengths—Adding the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI 2.0) Assessment to its Suite of Award-Winning Courses appeared first on Crucial Learning.

“If we let fear and a sense of threat build our conversation, then very quickly our motivations will deteriorate. We won’t talk to understand but to pummel. Everything we say afterward will be injurious and hurtful and will make repairing the relationship in the future harder. If, on the other hand, I show persistent curiosity about your viewpoint, I show respect. And as the authors of Crucial Conversations observe, in any conversation, respect is like air. When it’s present nobody notices it, and when it’s absent it’s all anybody can think about.”

Read the rest of the article

The post New York Times: The Essential Skills for Being Human appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Crucial Learning was also singled out for the company’s high-ranking managers as well: “This Provo-based company is in the business of teaching people to communicate and to deliver their best possible outcomes, with virtual and in-person courses on such topics as industry-specific communication, leadership and time management.

Managers apply what they preach, according to the survey, as employees value their consistent one-on-one feedback sessions.

‘We work together really well, and our conversations are helpful to give me perspective on the company and why decisions are made as they are,’ someone wrote about their manager. ‘I know my boss has my back and provides feedback when there are things on which I need to work or areas where I can grow.’

The Top Workplaces in Utah list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey. The confidential survey uniquely measures 15 culture drivers that are critical to the success of any organization including alignment, execution, and connection, just to name a few.

The post Crucial Learning Named Top Workplace In Utah appeared first on Crucial Learning.

Based on the New York Times bestselling book, Crucial Influence draws on case studies of some of today’s most remarkable leaders and the research of renowned behavioral scientists to explain why people do what they do and how you can help them change—quickly and permanently.

At the core of this research is a powerful yet simple model, the Crucial Influence Model, for changing behavior. All leaders, from new managers to seasoned executives, can utilize the model to identify the personal, social, and structural levers that influence both motivation and ability, and how to use these levers to guarantee behavior change. Research shows that when leaders use at least four of the six sources of influence, they improve their chances of changing behavior tenfold.

“The most important problems you and I face – as leaders, as family members, as citizens and as human beings – are influence problems,” said Joseph Grenny, coauthor of Crucial Influence. “They are problems that will never be solved until some human or humans behave differently. This course will better equip every leader at every level to do what the world’s most successful leaders do: influence rapid, profound, and sustainable behavior change to achieve important results.”

In the reimagined and streamlined course, learners will enjoy new videos that reflect a modern and inclusive workforce and exercises immersed in practical tools to help busy leaders at every level of the organization solve everyday leadership challenges. Crucial Influence is an engaging course rich with group discussion, real-time practice, and group support and coaching. It is available in on-demand, virtual, in-person and blended learning formats.

Learn more at https://www.cruciallearning.com/crucial-influence.

About Crucial Learning

Crucial Learning improves the world by helping people improve themselves. We offer courses in communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, Crucial Influence®, The Power of Habit™, and Getting Things Done®. CrucialLearning.com.

CONTACT: Jordan Christiansen +1-801-995-5458, jordan.christiansen@cruciallearning.com

The post Crucial Learning Releases Updated Crucial Influence Course appeared first on Crucial Learning.

In their new study conducted in March 2023, Connection is Retention: Lessons from Leaders with Unusually High Nurse Retention, Crucial Learning and AONL studied 1,559 nurse managers and 562 clinical staff at hundreds of US hospitals to understand the drivers behind record-high levels of nurse attrition.

Researchers found that widely adopted practices intended to improve connection and reduce turnover do little to achieve these goals. Specifically, when it came to employee rounding, the practice seemed so irrelevant that employees often didn’t seem to know it had happened. For example:

• 81 percent of managers reported that they round regularly.
• And yet, only 36 percent of clinicians say their managers round regularly.

Joseph Grenny, lead researcher, cofounder of Crucial Learning, and coauthor of Crucial Influence, adds insight into this gap. 

“As we dug into this curious and concerning inconsistency, we concluded that the most likely explanation for the gap is that rounding is being done in a way that is meaningless to the real concerns of frontline nurses,” Grenny said.

And identifying the real concerns of frontline nurses is where the research makes its greatest contribution.

When looking for successful outliers, the study identified select nurse managers who reported higher rates of retention than others in similar sized units and hospitals who faced similar market conditions. Results showed that nurse managers in these surprisingly high retention areas were unusually effective at creating connection by offering three things: care, growth and help.

Ultimately, nurses who reported that their nurse managers offered care, growth, and help were more than 80 percent more likely to intend to continue with their work indefinitely. Here is what offering care, growth and help looked like, according to nurses’ first-hand accounts.

• Care – I feel a sense of belonging and believe my manager cares about me as a person.

“My nurse manager came in on her day off to provide snacks and certificates for Certified Nurses Day. She provided a nice gift to all the staff working that day. This was a thoughtful act that made me feel appreciated.” – Nurse Respondent

• Growth – My manager takes an active interest in my personal and professional growth.

“I had mentioned to Charlene that I wanted to grow in my career. She took initiative to put me in positions to learn new tech, open hearts, etc. Most recently she helped get me into a bachelor’s program.” – Nurse Respondent

• Help – My manager steps in to help when I need it. 

“I couldn’t tell you who the director was at my previous hospital. The managers stayed in their offices. Joe is always walking around and asking me how I’m doing. Last Friday, I had four patients, and one was difficult to turn. Joe [jumped in without being asked]. I’ve never seen anything like it.” – Nurse Respondent

Other related findings included:

• Nurses who planned to stay with their organization three or more years were far more likely to rate their manager highly on care, growth and help:
  • CARE: 3 times more likely
  • GROWTH: 2.5 times more likely
  • HELP: 2 times more likely

And yet, their perceptions of rounding frequency were no different from those expecting to quit much sooner.

• In departments with unusually high stress (due to inadequate staffing, high patient load or challenging shift structure) the differences became even more substantial. For example, there’s almost a 60 percent higher chance that a nurse intends to stay in their job despite being in a high-stress job if they score high on HELP. 

In analyzing the data and fist-hand accounts from 1,090 nurses, Grenny and his co-researchers from AONL, Robyn Begley, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, Chief Executive Officer, AONL and Chief Nursing Officer, SVP Workforce, AHA; and Beverly Hancock, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, and Senior Director of Leadership Development at AONL, extracted the following best practices demonstrated by nurse managers for creating a culture of connection—best practices that can be replicated in nursing teams to improve retention.

4 Best Practices for Creating a Culture of Connection in Caregiver Teams

1. Connection is about feeling not frequency. No one reported feeling connected because of a certain frequency of interaction. What they did report was some meaningful moment—an interaction that showed presence, planning, personalization or follow-up.
2. Always be collecting dots (ABCD). Hospitality guru Danny Meyer creates unique moments of connection with his hundreds of thousands of guests by admonishing team members to always be collecting dots—gathering key information about others to build strong personal connection. Great nurse managers do the same. A nurse might mention something about a son studying karate, a new motorcycle, or feelings of inadequacy. These dots are gold when the manager records them, reflects on them, and uses them to inform ways to show care, growth, and help.
3. Connection = Sacrifice. Meaningful moments require sacrifice. People perceive you value them when you show you’re willing to sacrifice things they know are scarce to you: your time, money, ego, or other priorities. This doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune or an eternity.You just have to use enough of these four scarce resources to show you value care, growth and help.
4. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Keep the promises you make. Nurses universally equate follow up with sincerity. If you make even the most modest care, growth or help commitments, they backfire if you fail to follow up.

Begley says these recommendations should help overwhelmed nurse managers in what is often the most challenging role of their careers to create teams of engaged and satisfied nurses.

“We recognize these recommendations might sound daunting to already overwhelmed nurse managers. They should not,” says Begley. “The first two don’t require time, they simply require thought. In fact, the first, Connection is about feeling not frequency, suggests that time spent today in ritualistic employee rounding might be recovered and repurposed. Our study suggests that replacing any recovered time with the second two activities will yield dramatically different results in engagement and retention. These are things managers are doing consistently and successfully in units just like yours and if replicated, will make a difference in your team.”

To download the full study, visit cruciallearning.com/connection.

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Media Contact: Brittney Maxfield at 801-755-2809 or Brittney.maxfield@cruciallearning.com.

About Crucial Learning
Crucial Learning offers courses in the areas of communication, performance, and leadership, focusing on behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, called crucial skills. Our award-winning courses and accompanying bestselling books include Crucial Conversations® for Mastering Dialogue, Crucial Conversations® for Accountability, The Power of Habit™, Getting Things Done®, and Crucial Influence®. We’ve spent thirty years helping hospitals and health systems around the world reduce avoidable medical errors and improve patient care and staff experience. CrucialLearning.com

About the American Organization for Nursing Leadership 
As the national professional organization of more than 11,000 nurse leaders, the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) is the voice of nursing leadership. Our membership encompasses nurse leaders working in hospitals, health systems, academia and other care settings across the care continuum. Since 1967, the organization has led the field of nursing leadership through professional development, advocacy and research that advances nursing leadership practice and patient care. AONL is an affiliate of the American Hospital Association. AONL.org.

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