SHANA MERLIN
TOPICS
Improvisers perform quickly and confidently as a team, with incomplete information, insufficient resources, constant change, high stakes, and a fun, fastpaced environment.
Couldn’t you use some of that in your organization?
Merlin Works Team Building & Organizational Training Programs offer group training, workshops, games, activities, and exercises that are fun, challenging, and develop corporate leadership skills.
TEAM WORKS - INTERACTIVE TEAM BUILDING PROGRAM
(Topics Addressed: Attitude, Communicating, Conflict Resolution, Creative Thinking, Humor, Innovation, Listening, Risk Taking, Team Building)
This program brings teams together to operate with more unity and productivity. The exercises in this workshop focus on communication, creativity, taking care of our partners, and accepting/building on others’ suggestions. People are on their feet most of the time, playing, having fun, and learning what it means to be part of a team. Team Works is perfect for new teams, project groups, meetings, or corporate retreats.
- Bring your team together to form a cohesive unit.
- Help individuals see themselves as part of a group.
- Carry fun into a stressful work environment.
- Improve communication & group creativity.
- Solve problems and overcome obstacles together.
LEADERSHIP WORKS - TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP WITH COMMITMENT, CLARITY, AND AUTHENTICITY
(Topics Addressed: Communicating, Education, Innovation, Presentation Skills, Team Building)
The old model of topdown leadership is being replaced with crossfunctioning teams and collaboration. Business and innovation move too fast to have a single leader or plan. Gain the skills of becoming and improvisational leader: connection, flexibility, clarity, and authenticity. Learn how to use presence and ingenuity not just to set the course, but to drive the bus.
- Be a bold leader without attachment to “how things should go.”
- Increasing collaboration and contributions from everyone on the team.
- Honing your messages for clarity and usability.
- Improve your presentation and communication skills.
- Have everyone around you work toward a common goal.
SALES WORKS - GROUP TRAINING THAT FITS YOUR NEEDS
(Topics Addressed: Effective Listening, Authentic Communication, Building Relationships, Influence and Persuasion)
Learn to navigate difficult situations and improve sales in this invigorating and interactive session. Minimize conflict and simplify negotiation as we explore the tools of positivity and persuasion. In our four step process of opening up, blending listening to go deep, and using the seven persuasion signals, participants will be able to strategize a plan for their next salary negotiation, sales call, vendor conflict, or any interpersonal challenge.
Sales Works is perfect for anyone in sales, customer relations, management, and more…
- Enjoy an authentic sales process based on presence, not pressure.
- Reduce stress and increase work environment positivity.
- Remove obstacles standing between you and your goals.
- Gain courage and tools to tackle difficult but necessary conversations.
- Improve your partnerships in business and at home.
- Increase your ability to get to “yes” in your sales calls.
COMEDY WORKS - A PRIVATE OR A PUBLIC COMEDY PERFORMANCE
(Topics Addressed: Humor, Entertainment)
Reach for the stars with a dynamic and entertaining performance from the Merlin Works talented staff. Put on a show that your organization will always remember by bringing improv comedy to the stage. Four of our professional funny makers will put on a unique show, making up the characters, scenes and songs on the spot, with the help of audience suggestions and our professional musicians.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS - IMPROV SKILLS FOR WORK AND LIFE
(Topics Addressed: Attitude, Change, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Creative Thinking, Education, Humor, Innovation, Listening, Risk Taking, Sales, Team Building)
This interactive presentation introduces the power of presence and positivity into your organization. In a Culture of Yes, new ideas are accepted and encouraged, people take more risks and are more fun to work with, and collaboration happens quickly and constantly. Using the fundamental principle of “Yes And” from the world of improvisation, this presentation is full of fun, quick interactive exercises that you can take away to change your everyday work and home life.
MEETING WORKS - HAVE FEWER, FUNNER AND MORE PRODUCTIVE MEETINGS
(Topics Addressed: Communication, Creative Thinking, Education, Humor, Innovation, Listening, Risk Taking, Team Building)
Recent research says that executives average 23 hours per week in meetings and 49% of participants considered unfocused meetings & projects as the biggest workplace time waster and the primary reason for unproductive work days. In this session you’ll learn tactics to reduce meeting attendance and make meetings the meetings you are going to more efficient and (dare we say) more fun. From premeeting planning, to structured meeting styles, to postmeeting follow up, participants will do handson training that will improve any meeting they are running. Stop steamrollers before they start, draw out the quiet experts in the room, be strategic with your slide deck and keep your agenda on track. By energizing and activating meetings, hopefully we can get out of meetings a little faster and a little happier.
- Gain premeeting strategies for agendas, email, calendaring and more.
- Gives tools for how to structure meetings
- Learn facilitation skills to help everyone have their say, while keeping on track
- Engage everyone at the meeting, even those who are quiet or checked out.
- Prevent people from steamrolling meetings
- Learn how to synthesize meeting decisions and conversations into actions
FEEDBACK WORKS – GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK FOR GROWTH
(Topics Addressed: Attitude, Change, Effective Listening, Authentic Communication, Building Relationships, Influence and Persuasion)
We all need feedback on our progress and achievements from time to time. But asking our boss or others can be intimidating. Learn the right questions to ask during a review or after a presentation and how to handle the feedback good or bad with courtesy and professionalism.
- Improve your ability to get important information out of the confusing things people say to you
- Gain useful feedback from those you manage and those who manage you
- Learn to take the game seriously and yourself not, to maximize your potential and your career growth
MEDICINE WORKS – EFFECTIVE MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS CME
Tired of sitting through boring trainings that do nothing to improve your daily struggles with patients, staff, administration and more? Medicine Works offers a fun, interactive training that participants found “ ‘tremendously’ relevant to the care of patients” (Shochet, et al)
MEDICINE WORKS: Effective Medical Communication for Doctors, Nurses, Administration and Staff
With hands on activities, instant feedback, and practical learning, the engaging exercises in this workshop focus on presence, connection and blending, communication and collaboration. People are on their feet most of the time, playing, having fun, and learning what it means to be a better medical professional moment to moment.
Medicine Works is perfect for Medical Schools, Continuing Medical Education (CME), Practices, Insurance Programs, Hospitals, and more. Benefits include:
- Improving patient care
- Increased patient compliance
- Better outcomes
- Higher value interactions
- Malpractice Reduction
- Increase rapport and connection
- Learn tools to smoothly handle errors
- Increase Interprofessional Collaboration
- Improve communication and clarity
- Increase collaboration and contribution from all team members
- Make everyone you work with a little more fun to be around
Medicine Works uses these tools and techniques to make big changes in a short amount of time:
- Presence
- Be more open and flexible, ready to connect
- Increase efficiency by focusing on the most important thing: the patient in front of you
- Don’t get thrown by the unexpected
- Blending
- Learn how to blend verbally, physically, and emotionally with diverse audiences
- Increase rapport, connection, and likability
- Diffuse tense or charged situations
- Communication
- Learn the two words that will increase your collaborative abilities
- Make sure you and the people you are working with are catching all the important information
- Ask the right questions to get the most important information as quickly as possible
Partnered Program Offerings with The Art of Change LLC
PERSUASION WORKS - INFLUENCE AND THE ART OF PERSUASION
(Topics Addressed: Attitude, Change, Communicating, Conflict Resolution, Creative Thinking, Listening, Sales, Team Building)
Learn to navigate difficult situations in this invigorating and interactive session. Minimize conflict and simplify negotiation as we explore the tools of positivity and persuasion. In our four step process of opening up, listening to go deep, unlocking information gates and using the seven persuasion signals, participants will be able to strategize a plan for their next salary negotiation, vendor conflict, or any interpersonal challenge. Persuasion Works is perfect for anyone seeking to resolve conflicts faster and conduct negotiations more effectively.
- Reduce stress and increase work environment positivity.
- Remove obstacles standing between you and your goals.
- Gain courage and tools to tackle difficult but necessary conversations.
- Improve your partnerships in business and at home.