Skill Builder Topics 2026

This session provides practical tools for navigating difficult conversations and maintaining productive dialogue in workplace settings. Participants will explore why communication breaks down under stress, how common responses such as withdrawal or defensiveness impact relationships, and how individuals can stay engaged in constructive conversations. Through engagement, discussion, and thoughtful reflection attendees will explore strategies to communicate more effectively, listen with greater clarity, and strengthen a culture of open and respectful dialogue.

Core Learning Objectives:

• Identify common breakdown points in workplace communication, including how stress responses such as withdrawal and defensiveness impact dialogue and relationships.
• Recognize how communication patterns influence trust, collaboration, and psychological safety within teams and organizations.
• Apply practical communication strategies to stay engaged in difficult conversations, improve clarity, and contribute to more open and respectful dialogue.

Multitasking is often treated as a professional strength—but research shows it significantly degrades focus, decision-making, and performance. In today’s notification-driven work environment, employees are rarely doing one task at a time, even when they believe they are.

This session explores how constant digital interruptions fragment attention and increase cognitive fatigue, and why the human brain is not designed for sustained task-switching. Participants will learn how attention actually works, how modern tools undermine it, and how small, realistic changes can improve focus without slowing work down.

Rather than promoting rigid productivity systems, this talk offers practical strategies that align with real job demands and modern collaboration norms.

You were promoted for delivering results, then the job got chaotic. You hold the hardest job in the org: you are accountable for outcomes you do not fully control, executing a strategy you did not write, across a team pulled between competing priorities. When work stalls, it is rarely because people stopped caring. It is because execution is a skill no one teaches. This hands-on session treats it as a craft you can learn: practical, direct, and free of hype. Bring one real priority you are responsible for right now.

Here’s what you’ll walk out with:

• Spot the five places execution leaks on any team
• Fix your biggest one first, with a tool you can use this week
• Tell whether your team’s execution is healthy or quietly breaking down
• Drive delivery without burning out your team or yourself

This is for you if you are:

• A manager, aspiring manager, team leader, or project leader in any industry
• A self-employed professional or founder responsible for delivery
• Anyone accountable for turning plans into results, or looking to build that skill

Can you say “imposter syndrome?” High performance often feels like we have to be pushing harder, expecting more, and being tough on ourselves when we fall short. But self-judgement does not always produce better results—and over time, it can undermine confidence, our ability to recover from challenges, and workplace relationships.

This interactive session explores self-compassion as a measurable and practical self-leadership skill. Participants will consider how the way we respond to ourselves during stress, mistakes, uncertainty, and disappointment influences both well-being and performance. We’ll explore how self-compassion differs from complacency or lowered expectations. Ultimately, greater self-awareness, kindness, and accountability can help us recover more effectively, make clearer choices, and sustain our capacity to be present.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the qualities of self-compassion and understand how each can influence resilience, motivation, performance, and relationships.
• Apply practical self-compassion strategies when experiencing stress, setbacks, mistakes, or difficult emotions.
• Identify how strengthening self-leadership and resilience doesn’t require sacrificing accountability or high standards.

Many of us were never taught how to navigate conflict in a way that preserves both our relationships and ourselves. Instead, we avoid, accommodate, or push through. This session invites participants to rewrite that story. Through practical strategies and reflection, you’ll discover how conflict can become an opportunity to build trust, strengthen relationships, and lead with courage.

Participants will leave with:

• A new perspective on conflict as a catalyst for connection and growth.
• Practical tools for regulating emotions during difficult conversations.
• Respond with curiosity instead of reactivity.
• Navigate difficult conversations while maintaining authenticity, boundaries, and connection.

In this session, Emily Gravel-Fletcher (part-time cowgirl, full-time creative strategist, and owner of Free Rein Creative and Six Horse Ranch) will guide you through a practical process for naming your why in language you can actually hold onto. You’ll learn how to use it as a real decision-making compass that cuts through competing priorities and helps you choose what actually matters. Leave with simple, sustainable ways to keep that why front and center every day.

In this interactive session, we’ll explore how mindfulness can help us cultivate more joy even when life and leadership feel demanding. Rather than adding another task to your to-do list, we’ll practice three simple skills that can help us become more present, receive the good that is already here and build our capacity to hold both challenge and joy at the same time.

NOTICE — Practice present-moment awareness by coming into direct contact with what is actually happening right now.

RECEIVE — Learn to slow down and fully take in pleasant moments instead of rushing past them or immediately moving on to what’s next.

ALLOW — Expand your capacity to hold more than one truth at a time. Something can be hard and joy can still be here too.

Through an experiential mindfulness practice, a simple guided meditation and reflection, you’ll have an opportunity to experience these skills in real time. You’ll leave with practical tools for creating more space for joy while working, leading and pursuing meaningful goals in a way that is more grounded, resilient and sustainable. p.s. Chocolate treat included!

Have you ever reached the end of a busy day and wondered who was really running your calendar—because it did not feel like you? We all have the same 24 hours, yet it is surprisingly easy to fill them with responding to what is urgent, what others need, and what is right in front of us, while the people, priorities, and goals that matter most keep getting pushed to another day.

Time blocking is not about squeezing more into an already full calendar. It is about becoming intentional with the time you have. In this interactive Skill Builder, you will learn a practical, flexible approach to deciding what deserves your time, protecting your priorities, and creating space for the things you keep saying you want to do, even when real life does not cooperate.

You will leave with simple tools you can put to work immediately, along with a challenge: Does your calendar reflect what you say matters most? If not, it may be time to take it back.

Why is it that even when we know what to do, we don’t always do it? Sometimes we even do the opposite! We want health, then eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. We want peace, but then over-schedule. And sometimes even focusing on improving our behavior doesn’t seem to help. The truth is, our lives become a web of habits that either help or hinder, and you must learn to make your habits work FOR you.

In this highly interactive session, you’ll discover:

• The one bold move you must make to reach any goal.
• The insight that turns follow-through from struggle to automatic.
• The habit audit that shows you what to do next.

Estate planning isn’t just for the wealthy or the elderly. It’s for anyone who wants to have a say in what happens to them, their loved ones, and their assets when life takes an unexpected turn.

In this practical, plain-language session, estate planning attorney Rachel Murphy will break down the essential documents every adult should consider — including financial and healthcare powers of attorney, wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations. You’ll learn how these tools protect you while you’re living, help ensure your wishes are honored after your death, and make things easier for the people you care about.

You’ll leave with a clear understanding of what you need, why it matters, and a simple checklist of next steps you can take right away.

Have you ever felt tension between what you felt you should do and what someone was pressuring you to do? Have you ever said “yes” when you meant “no” simply to avoid conflict or friction? So much of our daily stress is a consequence of our inability to say no. This is not a skill we learn at school, or a practice commonly celebrated in the workplace. This workshop will provide you with tools and practice to say yes to yourself by saying no to others.

Learning objectives:

• Consider reasons people often say yes when they want to say no
• Discover the powerful benefits of saying no
• Consider questions to ask when determining your yes or no
• Learn and practice a process to deliver a positive no
• Identify tips for success to communicate a candid and caring no

Please come prepared to the workshop with several examples of times when you wish you had said “no” (but said “yes” instead).

You’re working hard to build something meaningful: a career, a business, a life you’re proud of. But are you building yourself with the same intentionality?

Most high-performers focus on what they can measure: productivity, output, and results. But sustainable performance requires different things than just working on what can be counted. The Real STRength Framework integrates STATE (how your body feels and functions), TRAIT (who you’re becoming through mindset and emotional growth), and RELATE (your connection to purpose and others).

In this interactive workshop, you’ll:

• assess where you’re strong and where you’re neglecting yourself through a STRength Check,
• learn how working in only one or two dimensions creates dangerous gaps and missed potential, and
• be introduced to a Future Walk, a simple practice that integrates all three dimensions to help you stop reacting and start leading your life.

You’ll leave with clarity on your STRength gap, a personalized integration plan, and a tool you can use immediately to reconnect to what matters most and design the future you’re working toward.

Every leader has a story worth telling. Stories about leadership, including our own, create connection, inspire action, and preserve community memory. This interactive skills-builder aims to demonstrate how employing Oral History can strengthen critical leadership skills and core competencies, including intentional preparation, active listening, empathy, and interpersonal communication, while ensuring the stories of women are captured, preserved, and shared.

Participants will learn to:

•  Apply ethical Oral history best practices to interviewing and storytelling.
• Reframe personal and professional experiences as stories worth capturing, preserving, and sharing.
• Develop open-ended, neutral, and meaningful questions.
• Practice active listening and recognize when to pause, probe, or change direction.

Participants will receive:

• Introductory technical training on TheirStory™ oral-history software.
•  A resource toolkit, including questionnaire-development worksheets, legal release forms, and project-planning checklists.
•  Free access to TheirStory™ through June 2027 and ongoing support from the Idaho State Historian.

Come ready to listen, learn, and discover the stories that only you can tell.

It’s Never One Thing. It’s Always Everything.

What if some of your greatest leadership strengths were shaped long before you ever thought of yourself as a leader?

We don’t lead from this moment alone; we lead from every moment that shaped us, often in ways we don’t recognize. Through reflection, conversation, and guided experiential practice, participants will look beneath the leadership qualities they already know and deepen their awareness of the experiences that shaped them. Because awareness creates choice, and choice changes how we lead. The most important leadership tool you carry is your self-awareness. You are your map.

Participants will:

• Establish a baseline of the strengths and qualities they currently recognize in themselves as leaders.
• Identify 1–3 life experiences they may not have realized were shaping how they lead today.
• Explore how to intentionally draw upon those experiences and the strengths developed in their current and future leadership.

Many ambitious professionals feel torn. They want more flexibility and greater control over their time, but don’t want to compromise the career they’ve worked hard to build. The good news? You don’t have to make that tradeoff.

In this session, you’ll learn how to turn your professional experience into a consulting business where career success doesn’t come at the cost of the people and priorities that matter most. We’ll cover how to identify your consulting focus, find your first opportunities, and start building in a thoughtful, low-risk way. Whether your goal is additional income, greater flexibility, or eventually leaving corporate, you’ll walk away with a practical roadmap and the confidence to explore what’s possible.