Whether working with your highest performers or the ones with the most room for growth, smart leaders are constantly contemplating how to motivate and influence their teams to succeed. So often we rely on external rewards – like motivating a horse to run with the carrot on a stick – yet these can only work for so long. In this workshop, we take a deep dive into the psychology of motivation, and explore specific strategies to directly influence your teams to operate at peak performance.
Development Training
Leaders Aren’t Born – They’re Made.
We create transformative team + leadership development experiences that move beyond traditional training methods. We partner with financial services teams to build stronger collaboration, deepen trust, and develop adaptive leaders who excel through market shifts, regulatory changes and technological advancements. From teams of portfolio managers and investment analysts to credit officers, risk managers, and rising financial talent, our interactive, fully customized methodology ensures meaningful engagement and practical application.
Suggested Leadership Workshops: Finance
The DNA of Engagement & Motivation
Leveraging Motivation to Spark & Inspire Engagement
Learning Objectives:
- Explore the three types of motivation and engagement, taking a pulse on current organization-wide strategies and opportunities for the future
- Experiment with three unique theories to immediately increase intrinsic motivation
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Engagement + Motivation
- Talent Strategy + Development
- Leading with Values
- Active Listening
Learning Objectives:
- Determine personal approach to conflict conversations, and discover the five differing conflict styles
- Identify benefits and potential obstacles for each style to clarify effective conflict communication strategies
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Adaptability + Assertiveness
- Consensus Building + Alignment
We Can Work It Out
An Experiment with Conflict & Consensus Building
While frequent conflict can certainly be taxing or uncomfortable, disagreements can often lead to enhanced respect, open-mindedness, and innovation. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to understand various reactions to conflict, and discover which response is most appropriate for a given situation. Participants leave this session with a deeper understanding of their natural communication style during times of conflict, and a refreshed outlook on how to approach these conversations in the future.
Building The Dream Team
Adjusting Styles To Enhance Relationships & Build Trust
In this workshop, participants will discover the elements of their working style and communication preferences within four key dimensions: how we like to communicate, how we take in and process information, how we make decisions, and how we organize our lives. Through group learning, individual reflection, and group discussion, participants will walk away from this workshop with an increased confidence in their ability to articulate their needs to others, and heightened ability to adjust their styles to meet the preferences of others. This session takes a humorous and informative look at how we operate, providing us with the tools to adjust our styles to work effectively with anyone.
Learning Objectives:
- Clarify leadership and communication preferences, and develop a “user’s manual” to articulate our findings
- Discover the attributes, behaviors and common blind-spots of natural preferences, and explore and understand the same attributes and behaviors of opposing types
- Highlight specific actions we can take when working with someone who leverages opposing preferences, and develop a plan to adjust our styles with at least one current colleague
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Collaboration + Trust
- Openness + Awareness
Learning Objectives:
- Define the CURRENT STATE and FUTURE STATE of the team’s collective goals and objectives
- Experiment with design thinking methodology to begin ideation of creative, implementable action plans to fully realize your team’s ideal future state
- Leverage positive psychology to create future-focused, behavior-based outcomes
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Strategic Thinking + Goal Setting
- Creativity + Innovation
- Positive Psychology & Growth Mindset
Shift Happens: Innovation in Times of Change
Leveraging Design Theory for Strategic & Creative Transformation
In times of change, innovation isn’t just an advantage—it’s a necessity. This workshop equips participants with practical tools and strategies to embrace uncertainty, reframe challenges as opportunities, and foster a culture of creative problem-solving. Using principles of design thinking and adaptive leadership, teams will explore new ways to generate ideas, test solutions, and drive meaningful change, ensuring they stay agile and future-focused in an ever-evolving landscape.
Why Choose Us for Finance Leadership Training?
Ready to strengthen communication, teamwork, and confidence within your financial services organization? The Leadership Laboratory delivers team + leadership development workshops that are engaging, research-driven, and tailored to your company's distinct environment. Our evidence-based workshops are strategically designed and hands-on, geared towards helping your teams and leaders step up into the next level.
Financial services leaders possess exceptional capabilities, and we're committed to elevating those talents even further. Whether your team includes banking directors, wealth advisors, compliance managers, or fintech executives, The Leadership Laboratory creates dynamic, science-backed workshops that build upon existing strengths, increase leadership confidence, and unlock enhanced collaboration, innovation, and results. Grounded in positive psychology principles, our approach emphasizes development over deficits to drive sustainable, meaningful behavioral transformation within your organization. Our research-based financial leadership workshops utilize proven methodologies crafted specifically for finance professionals, delivering quantifiable results that inspire long-term, positive behavior change.
The Leadership Laboratory operates nationwide with both in-person and virtual financial services leadership development workshops. We proudly serve financial organizations across the country, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Building tomorrow's leaders today.
The Leadership Laboratory works across multiple industries - including start-up and established technology firms, non-profit and government agencies, finance companies, healthcare organizations and more. We are proud to collaborate with individuals and teams of all sizes.
Contact us and say hello! We're excited to get to know you and share our ideas on learning + leadership development.
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Collaborating Partners
“I laughed harder than I have in a while!”
Our workshop was engaging, informative, rejuvenating and pure fun. I laughed harder than I have in a while! This was a phenomenal way to get more comfortable as a team.
— Director of People, SpotHero
“You made this easy to apply and implement”
You listened to our needs and adapted on the spot to incorporate leadership lessons. Every element was backed up by research, and you made this easy to apply and implement.
— VP / HEAD OF PEOPLE, WARBY PARKER
Meet Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is the founder of The Leadership Laboratory, and leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning & leadership development to his work. As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Patti LuPone, as a recording artist for Netflix series Sense8, and at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center. In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator for high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2016. As a Learning & Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked as a one-on-one coach and group workshop facilitator to organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries, including technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel. Jacob holds a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master’s of Science in Communication from Northwestern University.