SPEAKER'S CHALLENGE Short Courses The following topics are offered as short courses. Individuals are invited to sign up and attend our next offering. If you want a particular course or topic presented to a whole group at your location, please contact us (below) and we can discuss the tailoring of content, timing and rate suitable for your audience. People Skills Courses: In every sphere of our lives, understanding people is paramount. Few of us have any specific training in improving ourselves, understanding and relating to others, and creating and managing environments in which people will thrive and be productive - at home, at school and at work. Speaker's Challenge fills the gap with a series of powerful courses directed to specific types of audiences. Mastering Human Drama All humanity is engaged in drama. Our lives unfold like Shakespearean plays, replete with the joys and tragedies that are repeated in every culture century after century. We can be swept along in the tide of the script as it plays out, or we can become master playwrights and change both our destinies and our daily victories and sorrows. This course explores the outer limits of human life skills and how we can relate better to our selves and to others around us. Improving Human Productivity Technology has often been the focus for improving productivity and replacing that variable element in the workplace called people. But for those of us whose livelihood and productivity depend on our own human abilities to think, create, and perform from day to day, what can we do to help ourselves and our co-workers and employees be at our best game? This course covers much that people do not know about how our minds really work, and how we should treat ourselves and others, in order to improve how we produce. Thriving in Diversity Why do we need to learn more about differences? Aren't we already tolerant enough? The simplest answer is that our world and our minds are not yet sufficiently removed from the eras in which people were routinely and systematically suppressed or destroyed because of who they happen to be. We need to go over it because there are always remnants, deep inside, of the traits that plagued our histories. We have learned to suppress them in the name of political correctness, but they still exist in the depths of some of our thoughts and emotions. It is not enough just to eliminate sexist, racist, homophobic (etc.) thought and action. Old habits need to be replaced with new ones. Tolerance is just a bare beginning. Welcoming, valuing, opening to connection, communicating and supporting are all skills that we sometimes still ration according to who we are with. This course challenges all participants to view the remnants and to envision new skills and attitudes that we could build, that would help us not only deal with diversity, but create vibrant organizations and societies that thrive upon it. How to Book a Course: To check out course timetables for individuals, or to arrange a course for your group or organization, just email Howard Rubin at howardrubin@envirodesic.com and leave your phone number and time zone. He will get in touch and help figure out something that will fit your schedule. We are also listed with LocoLobo Events (Corporate Entertainment, Musician Booking, and Event Planning) under "New Artists". For further information about Speaker's Challenge and an assessment of our capability to help your organization, contact Howard Rubin, President of Small & Rubin Ltd. at the address shown on the contact page.