What does it truly mean to be resilient? In times of uncertainty and change, how can we cultivate an environment that empowers individuals to adapt, persevere, and move forward with confidence? This workshop explores the key mindsets, behaviors, and communication strategies that strengthen resilience at every level—within leaders, teams, and ourselves. By fostering trust, adaptability, and a forward-thinking culture, participants will gain the tools to navigate challenges with clarity and create a foundation for sustained success.
Leaders Aren’t Born – They’re Made.
We design comprehensive team + leadership development experiences tailored for director level leaders navigating the critical middle-leadership space. We partner with director teams to strengthen cross-departmental collaboration, cultivate executive readiness, and develop influential leaders who excel through organizational complexity, team scaling, and strategic implementation. Our director leadership workshops transcend conventional management training to deliver practical, research-based experiences that address the unique challenges of leading both up and down the organizational hierarchy.
Suggested Leadership Workshops: Directors
Resilience Through Change
Creating a Culture of Trust in Times of Uncertainty
Learning Objectives:
- Define the concepts of positive psychology, trust, and resilience, and explore the building blocks that allow this to prosper in an individual level and within a team environment
- Explore the five common traps where individuals get stuck, and practice the escape route strategies to help ourselves and others to break free
- Design a team environment where trust can thrive, and open dialogue is encouraged
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Emotional Intelligence
- Adaptability
- Effective Communication
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:
- Differentiate between the concepts of COACHING and MENTORING in our leadership style
- Experiment with coaching methodologies to enhance our skill set, and determine the strategic questions that inspire others to feel empowered to act
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Coaching for Empowerment
- Asking Strategic Questions + Active Listening
- Talent Development
Coaching to Full Potential
Empowering Others through Coaching Conversations
In making the transition from individual contributor to leader, we rely on a new skill set that focuses on inspiring and motivating the people we work with. In this series, participants will focus on people and project leadership skills, specifically as it relates to the topics of coaching and motivating to inspire those we work with to take action. Through knowledge-sharing and discussion based learning, and an opportunity to directly experiment with coaching methodologies, participants will have the opportunity to learn from and alongside each other, and connect these practices to specific action plans to retain and grow their top talent.
Why Director Level Leaders Choose The Leadership Laboratory
Director level professionals occupy a pivotal position in organizational success, bridging senior strategy with frontline execution. The Leadership Laboratory provides director leadership development workshops that are engaging, evidence-based, and crafted to address your specific leadership context and responsibilities. Our data-driven director workshops are thoughtfully structured and interactive – empowering directors to lead with greater confidence and impact.
Directors demonstrate exceptional operational knowledge and team management capabilities, and we're focused on elevating those skills with strategic leadership competencies. Whether your director team encompasses operations directors, marketing directors, HR directors, or department heads, The Leadership Laboratory builds targeted, research-validated workshops that enhance existing strengths, develop executive presence, and generate improved cross-functional leadership, strategic thinking, and organizational influence.
Our approach emphasizes capability expansion and leadership growth to create sustainable, meaningful development throughout your organization. Director leadership training requires nuanced understanding of mid-level leadership dynamics, including managing competing priorities, developing high-performing teams, and effectively communicating across organizational levels.
Our director level leadership workshops focus on essential competencies including strategic delegation, conflict resolution, performance optimization, and stakeholder influence. We recognize that director leadership development must address the unique position of translating executive vision into operational reality while building and motivating teams to achieve ambitious goals.
The outcome is strengthened leadership effectiveness, enhanced team performance, and improved organizational alignment that positions directors for continued career advancement while driving exceptional results in their current roles.
The Leadership Laboratory operates nationwide with both in-person and virtual healthcare leadership development workshops. We proudly serve healthcare organizations around the world and throughout the United States across the country, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Typical Size of Director-Level Leadership Development Workshops?
At The Leadership Laboratory, we customize each learning experience to align with your team and culture. Traditionally, we recommend between 20 – 30 participants per workshop, though often work with groups as small as 5 to as large as 5,000+. Knowing your audience size can help us to design a workshop partnership to maximize engagement and participation, and honor each participant at their respective knowledge and experience level.
Are Director-Level Leadership Development Workshops Available Both In-Person and Virtually?
Yes! All of our programming can be facilitated on-site, virtually, or in a hybrid format (virtual facilitation to an in-person audience). For both on-site and virtual workshops, we traditionally recommend a lead time of 6 – 8 weeks to get your top choice of date for a facilitated partnership.
How Do We Choose Director-Level Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
When working with a new partner, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. One of the first questions that we ask is “what would you like this audience to do differently as a result of this collaboration?” – in other words, what are the skills or behaviors you’d like this group to have, or the knowledge they want to possess?
Once we know and define these learning objectives, we can work backwards and partner with you to determine what content can support in making those goals a reality. For a sample list of workshops, feel free to check our Workshop + Experiments pages, or browse the Workshop by Industry or Workshops by Role pages for additional recommendations.
How Long are Director-Level Leadership Development Workshops?
Each of our workshops is designed to be approximately 2.5 – 3 hours in length. For on-site partnerships, most groups opt for two back-to-back workshop topics to create a full day of learning. For teams looking for sessions outside of the standard length, please contact The Leadership Laboratory to discuss more customized options.
Can We Customize Director-Level Leadership Development Workshops?
Yes! At The Leadership Laboratory, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. As we collaborate with you to learn more about your goals, we can incorporate information about your team’s culture, organizational strategy, and industry trends to design an experience that truly resonates, with easy-to-apply concepts that lead to long-term, positive behavior change.
We know that each participant has their own unique learning goals, and have designed our leadership development experiences to customize our content to each person in the moment. We kick-off each workshop with an opportunity to learn more about the goals of each participant in the room, and align the experience to what is most top-of-mind for them. This differentiated learning allows us to adjust to each unique participant, as well as honor the diverse perspectives, roles, and experience in the room.
Does The Leadership Laboratory Work with Individual Director-Level Professionals?
At The Leadership Laboratory, most of our workshops are designed for teams or groups of leaders within organizations. As we focus on customizing each leadership development experience to the unique elements of each organization’s culture and team’s communication style, our work is focused on sessions that departments or groups within the same organization can participate in together, as opposed to sessions that individuals can sign up for on their own.
For individuals looking for one-on-one development, The Leadership Laboratory offers select executive coaching and thought partnership opportunities. Feel free to reach out directly for more information.