Yes And Innovations is a leadership-training and human-capability-development company founded by Brett Duggan.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team help organizations transform talented employees, technical experts, managers and founders into trusted leaders.
Organizations often promote people because they are exceptionally good at their jobs. Technical ability and subject-matter expertise, however, do not automatically prepare someone to lead.
New managers may become stiff or nervous. They may overspeak and underlisten. They may struggle to delegate, motivate people, navigate difficult personalities, present ideas or adjust their communication style. Meetings become longer. Presentations become harder to follow. Difficult conversations are delayed or avoided.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations develop the human capabilities that turn talented people into effective leaders.
Yes And Innovations uses the proprietary NeuroSpontaneity System™ to help leaders remain calm, communicate precisely, earn trust and respond flexibly to what is actually happening.
Schedule a Strategy Call With Yes And Innovations →
When Organizations Need Leadership Training
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations frequently work with organizations facing leadership transitions, communication problems or declining engagement.
An organization may need leadership training from Yes And Innovations when:
- Experienced leaders are preparing to retire.
- Promising employees need to move into management.
- Engagement, retention or employee satisfaction is declining.
- Technically brilliant employees struggle with communication and people leadership.
- Managers have difficulty delegating or motivating employees.
- Meetings are long, repetitive or unproductive.
- Leaders avoid difficult conversations.
- Teams experience uneven communication or poor participation.
- Presentations lack clarity, confidence or connection.
- Existing leadership training has become predictable, theoretical or stale.
- The organization needs to develop its next generation of leaders.
Brett Duggan believes that good leaders do more than produce results.
Good leaders create other good leaders.
The leadership training offered by Yes And Innovations helps organizations build that continuing leadership pipeline.
Leadership Training Must Be Practiced
Many leadership-training programs give participants more information. Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations believe information matters, but knowing what a leader should do is not the same as being able to do it when the pressure is on.
Leadership training from Yes And Innovations uses a three-part learning model.
One-Third Teaching
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team teach useful leadership concepts, provide supporting sources and explain why particular communication and leadership behaviors work.
One-Third Practice
Participants in Yes And Innovations leadership training work through thought problems, games, exercises, simulations and realistic leadership challenges.
One-Third Discussion and Review
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations facilitators help participants examine what happened, receive constructive feedback and connect the experience directly to their work.
This combination allows Yes And Innovations to turn leadership concepts into practiced leadership abilities.
Practice Leadership Before the Moment Matters
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations incorporate challenges from participants’ real workplace experiences.
A group might identify behaviors that make meetings difficult:
- Interrupting
- Repeating questions
- Dominating the conversation
- Disengaging
- Becoming distracted
- Resisting direction
- Preventing other people from participating
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations facilitators then place participants into small groups. Some participants portray the challenging team members. Other participants practice leading the interaction using the flexible communication strategies taught by Yes And Innovations.
The goal is not to embarrass anyone or produce a perfect scripted response.
The goal of the Yes And Innovations leadership simulation is to help leaders remain centered, read the situation and respond effectively without taking another person’s behavior personally.
Through leadership training with Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations, participants learn flexible strategies for:
- Redirecting interruptions
- Engaging withdrawn team members
- Balancing competing voices
- Maintaining authority without shutting people down
- Setting boundaries without damaging trust
- Adjusting communication to different personalities
- Moving between warmth and seriousness
- Motivating people without relying solely on position or power
The Yes And Innovations approach to flexible leadership and status play helps leaders remain respected without becoming feared or disliked.
The NeuroSpontaneity System™ for Leadership Training
Brett Duggan developed the NeuroSpontaneity System™ as the central training framework used by Yes And Innovations.
The leadership training provided by Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations draws most heavily from three NeuroSpontaneity elements:
- StoryGenesis™
- Somatic Resonance™
- Magnetic Influence™
Together, these Yes And Innovations training elements help leaders develop story, presence, flexibility and influence.
StoryGenesis™ With Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations
StoryGenesis™ helps leaders tell captivating stories, both spontaneously and through careful planning.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations teach leaders to connect information with personal, organizational, cultural and historical stories. These stories capture attention and help important ideas attach to the listener’s curiosity and interest.
StoryGenesis™ also helps leaders understand that leadership stories operate on several levels. A leader can shape:
- The story of a team
- The story of a company
- A personal leadership biography
- The story that employees tell about their work
- The internal story that affects the leader’s confidence and behavior
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations use StoryGenesis™ because story helps people connect.
Somatic Resonance™ With Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations
Somatic Resonance™ develops the vocal and physical presence required to show up like a leader.
Brett Duggan brings 35 years of professional performance experience to this element of Yes And Innovations leadership training.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations teach that a real leader should not have to shout to be heard by everyone in the room.
Through Somatic Resonance™, Yes And Innovations helps participants develop:
- Effortless vocal power
- Grounded posture
- Flexible vocal range
- Reduced visible nervousness
- Confidence projected through the body and voice
- Awareness of how to read a room
- The ability to command attention without forcing it
- The ability to show up physically and vocally in a way that fits the moment
Somatic Resonance™ helps Yes And Innovations participants develop greater command of their space, their message and the room.
Magnetic Influence™ With Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations
Magnetic Influence™ helps leaders draw people toward them, remain flexible and motivate teams without relying solely on authority.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations use Magnetic Influence™ to help leaders balance assertion with invitation.
Participants learn to remain visible and heard, adapt to changing interpersonal dynamics and help people move toward a shared objective.
The proprietary Magnetic Influence™ techniques remain inside Yes And Innovations training. The organization sees the result: a leader who communicates with greater confidence, flexibility and influence.
Authority Without Rigidity
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations do not teach leaders to adopt a permanently serious personality.
Leadership does not mean dominating every conversation, raising your voice or becoming someone employees fear.
Brett Duggan teaches that strong leaders can move between warmth and authority. They can listen without becoming passive, set boundaries without becoming rigid and remain grounded when another person becomes challenging.
Yes And Innovations leadership training helps participants:
- Stay calm and centered under pressure
- Remain present with what is actually happening
- Listen without immediately becoming defensive
- Communicate with greater precision
- Adapt to different communication and learning styles
- Delegate more effectively
- Motivate people authentically
- Handle difficult conversations sooner
- Present ideas with confidence and clarity
- Earn trust across different personalities and roles
- Lead engaging, productive meetings
- Project leadership physically and vocally
This is the flexible, human-centered leadership that Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations develop.
What Organizations Can Expect From Yes And Innovations Leadership Training
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations believe leadership development should produce changes people can observe, not merely certificates of completion.
After working with Yes And Innovations, organizations may see:
- More efficient communication
- Shorter, more productive meetings
- Clearer messages and emails
- Stronger presentations
- More captivating and memorable stories
- Better delegation
- Better-motivated teams
- Fewer delayed or avoided conversations
- Greater meeting participation
- Increased trust
- Improved collaboration
- Stronger employee engagement and retention
- More capable leaders emerging from existing teams
- Teams working together with greater efficiency and enjoyment
The ultimate objective for Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations is an organization where employees can honestly say, “I like working for this company.”
A Leadership Transformation From Yes And Innovations
During a recent two-day leadership program, Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations worked with a participant who was visibly uncomfortable presenting to a group of only ten colleagues. Anxiety disrupted the presentation. The participant skipped material, lost cohesion and commented aloud about how poorly the presentation was going.
After two days of targeted adjustments, practice and supportive feedback from Brett Duggan, the Yes And Innovations team and fellow participants, the same person delivered a dramatically stronger presentation.
Other participants responded:
“Wow, that was a great presentation.”
“I did not know someone could improve that quickly with some clear adjustments.”
“I really saw the real you come out while you were in front of the group.”
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations know that profound transformations can happen, but Yes And Innovations does not promise instant mastery. Most participants make steady, meaningful improvements from their individual starting points.
Leadership training from Yes And Innovations can produce immediate changes in awareness and performance. Long-lasting improvement develops through continued practice, feedback, coaching and reinforcement.
Leadership Training for Brilliant People
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations specialize in working with organizations filled with brilliant people who have spent years mastering technical, analytical or specialized fields.
Their intelligence is not the problem.
These talented professionals may simply have had fewer opportunities to practice leadership communication, influence, delegation, storytelling and physical presence.
The leadership training developed by Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations is especially effective for introverts and technical professionals.
Participants discover that their intelligence can be accessed and expressed in a new way — one that is exciting, challenging and enjoyable without requiring them to become someone else.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations have experience in:
- Technology
- Finance
- Insurance
- Startups
- Fortune-ranked organizations
- Universities
- Professional education
- Organizations with highly specialized employees
Although Yes And Innovations has deep experience with brilliant technical and specialized professionals, Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team customize leadership training across industries.
Who Works With Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations?
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations provide leadership training for:
- Newly promoted managers
- High-potential employees
- Frontline supervisors
- Mid-level managers
- Senior leaders
- Experienced executives
- Founders becoming the public face of their companies
- Technical experts moving into management
- Intact leadership teams
- Mixed leadership cohorts
- Successful individual contributors preparing to lead
Yes And Innovations can develop a leadership program for a single cohort, an intact team, a group of emerging leaders or an entire organization.
Customized Leadership Training From Yes And Innovations
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations do not deliver the same generic leadership workshop to every client.
Before an engagement, the Yes And Innovations team speaks with organizational decision-makers and gathers input from participants.
These conversations help Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations understand:
- The organization’s culture
- Current leadership challenges
- Communication problems
- Desired outcomes
- Participant needs
- Real situations leaders must navigate
Yes And Innovations customizes the leadership program in advance and continues adapting while the work is happening.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team practice what they teach. They are NeuroSpontaneous.
Participant responses, real-time observations and post-program surveys help Yes And Innovations evaluate the experience and shape continued development.
Yes And Innovations Combines Team-Building With Skill-Building
Leadership training from Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations creates the energy and connection associated with excellent team-building, but it goes further.
Yes And Innovations combines team-building with leadership skill-building.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations strengthen the individual so the team becomes stronger. Yes And Innovations strengthens the team so the individual becomes stronger.
Participants frequently tell Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations that they learned more while having more fun than they expected. Participants continue discussing the Yes And Innovations workshop and applying its lessons after the experience ends.
Yes And Innovations workshops are engaging because engagement is part of the method — not decoration added to the training.
Yes And Innovations Leadership-Training Formats
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations offer:
- Leadership keynotes
- Half-day leadership workshops
- Full-day leadership workshops
- Two-day leadership intensives
- Multi-month leadership programs
- Yearlong organizational partnerships
- Executive coaching with Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations
- Leadership cohort coaching
- In-person leadership training
- Virtual leadership training
- Customized combinations of training and coaching
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations can deliver leadership training at the client’s workplace, at an off-site facility, virtually or at another location anywhere in the world.
Yearlong Yes And Innovations partnerships may include organization-wide surveys, a detailed leadership and communication audit, individual coaching, cohort sessions, leadership challenges, manager check-ins and progress reviews.
Shorter Yes And Innovations engagements can include targeted follow-up and reinforcement based on the organization’s needs.
Why Choose Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations?
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations bring together professional performance, emotional intelligence, academic pedagogy, executive coaching and organizational training.
Brett Duggan is the founder of Yes And Innovations and the creator of the NeuroSpontaneity System™.
Brett Duggan brings:
- An MFA
- University teaching experience dating to 2010
- 35 years of professional performance experience
- 12 years of executive coaching experience
- Experience as an LSU professor
- Keynote-speaking experience
- Filmmaking experience
- Applied-improvisation expertise
- Experience leading teams
- Leadership-development work involving Fortune-ranked companies
- Experience training award-winning speakers
The wider Yes And Innovations team includes experienced coaches, professional facilitators and university professors with advanced degrees, teaching experience and backgrounds in performance, communication and organizational development.
Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team have tested, reviewed and refined their leadership-training methods through years of participant feedback, changing workplace challenges and practical application.
The result is leadership training from Yes And Innovations that is professional, substantive, emotionally intelligent and genuinely enjoyable.
Leaders Who Create the Next Generation of Leaders
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations help organizations develop leaders who:
- Communicate clearly
- Remain grounded under pressure
- Motivate people
- Earn trust
- Lead productive meetings
- Deliver stronger presentations
- Navigate difficult conversations
- Create the next generation of leaders
Schedule a strategy call with Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations to explore a customized leadership-training program.
