Valerie Cade

Professional Speaker and Business Consultant
Calgary, Alberta

What Valerie is Passionate About

Bully Free at Work: Creating a Respectful Workplace

What can you do when ‘extending the olive branch’ doesn’t seem to work anymore? Handling workplace bullying is actually 180° different than ‘working with a difficult person’. Traditional conflict resolution does not work when dealing with someone who is highly oppositional. That’s why this session is different.

Here’s What You Will Learn and Experience:

– What is Workplace Bullying exactly?
– How is workplace bullying different from working with a difficult person?
– How to determine if you are being bullied or not – and what to do about it.
– The approach to take with a difficult person vs. a bully – they are they different!
– What motivates a bully? Why do they do it?
– The top common bullying tactics used and how you can overcome them.
– What to do if you are a target: specific steps to cope and gain your confidence back.
– The best thing you can do to help someone else who is being bullied.

You will gain the full awareness, hope and implementation to help cope with and stop workplace bullying and disruptive behaviors both personally and organizationally. You will have restored hope and feel inspired once again!

The Politics of Workplace Bullying: Creating Civility & Accountability

If it’s not rational, it’s political! How much time and energy have you already invested into tying to navigate through and deal with disruptive behaviors? Handling these disruptive, abrasive and bullying behaviors successfully requires some non-traditional training. This advanced session is more than ‘winning with difficult people’. Without this kind of training, you’re in the battlefield unprotected.

What You Will Learn:

You will leave with a blue print implementation plan of:

– Being able to create trust with all stakeholders and lead them through, not around the ‘issues’.
– How to lead through the “he says, she says” scenario with employees. How to handle the ‘who do I believe’ challenge.
– A process you can use to fully understand ‘what happened’ and how to resolve staff issues, disagreements and any disruptive behavior.
– A plan to limit time spent worrying and trying to assess and help everyone and still remain effective.
– What to do if you feel you’ve displayed bullying behaviors – how to recover and create true respectful followership.
– Understanding when and how to hold a 3-way mediation and when to hold an intervention: they are different!
– What to do if you don’t have the support you need and – How to support those that reach out to you for help.

You will leave with a renewed sense of confidence because you will know what to do!

The Behavioral Economics of Building Trust

Wouldn’t it be great to know how to handle others ‘who don’t get it” and to be able to lead them to a win-win understanding with ease?!

This inspirational keynote will help professionals want to ‘work through anything with anyone’! This session helps to remove defensiveness with understanding through humor, relevant examples and creates the ability for participants at all levels to be able to approach others easily. You will be able to narrow the inter‐personal gaps between co‐workers and figure out ‘why do they do what they do’ in order to create a respectful workplace for all.

– You will be inspired through humor and specific insights, which will give people an open mind to hear you;
– You will be able to identify your “most difficult situation” at work and be able to have a “here’s what I can do about it” plan;
– You will find that while it is often natural to take things personally, it is not productive. But how do you take things professionally? This will show you how!

How To Build Goodwill So You Can Say What You Need To Say!

Have you found yourself in situations where the ability to communicate tactfully, yet with confidence, would help you get what you want? Most of us also want to do that in a way that is not at the expense of others or ourselves. We can ignore these conversations, but doing so will become the number one reason for low morale and lack of accountability, and these avoidance situations can be turned around if you have a “safe” way to approach one another.

– Learn how to address things sooner and remove hesitation and fear.
– Creative ways to stop giving excuses when you rather not confront an issue.
– How to hold some accountable (yes, you can and you can still keep your job)!

This session gives everyone tools on ‘how to say it’, but not at the expense of yourself or others…in a classy and uplifting way!

Why You Need Valerie

Valerie is an award-winning presenter who is considered one of North America’s top experts in the field of coping with and stopping workplace bullying. She is the Founder of Bully Free at Work, which is dedicated to helping you cope with and stop workplace bullying, and the author of the best selling book “Bully Free at Work: What You Can Do To Stop Workplace Bullying Now” which is currently distributed in over 100 countries.

With a solid organizational development background, not purely an academic or an “opinion based” approach, Valerie’s style is not only informational, but inspirational; you will feel hope to turn the corner – even with the most challenging situations.

For the past 20 years, Valerie has led hundreds of sessions throughout North America, Europe, China and Russia, with a relevant, humorous and heartfelt approach combined with a true sense of wisdom. She has a stand up comedian presence while still talking seriously and strategically about the realities and implementation of workplace bullying in organizations.

In addition, Valerie has earned the Certified Speaking Professional Designation (CSP), which is the highest earned speaking designation in the world with less than 1000 recipients worldwide… and as one of the first females in Canada! In addition, Valerie’s ratings as a presenter average 4.9/5.0 for all size audiences.

As CEO of one of Canada’s largest training companies for 10 years, Valerie helped turn this near-‐bankrupt company into profitable success. In addition, her work in creating inspired workplaces, where people “want to”, helped raise satisfaction levels in organizations to over 80 – 90% -‐ sustained.

Valerie was the 2002 National President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and has received the President’s Award for distinguished service – twice! She was also unanimously voted by the National Board to receive the “Spirit of CAPS” Award for her outstanding contribution and professionalism to the speaking industry worldwide.

Valerie has genuine compassion and she is knowledgeable and well researched. She can turn a lifetime of hurt into hope.

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Why You Will Love Valerie

“Valerie’s presentation on “Bully Free at Work” hit many different and positive notes with the staff at Camrose Association For Community Living. Her vibrant spirit and personal stories added to the overall presentation. Valerie presents the information in a simple to follow manner and provides inspirational tools that will grow any organization.”

Wanda Harberg
Director of Human Resources, Camrose Association for Community Living

“In Valerie’s keynote address, “Encouraging the Encouragers” Valerie immediately captured our attention and kept it with her enthusiasm, energy and sense of humor. She inspired and encouraged us so we could go back to work feeling energized and recharged. I would highly recommend Valerie as a competent, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic speaker for any of your future workshops and conventions.”

Karen Giacobbo
Manager, Queen Alexandra Place, Conference Coordinator: Alberta Managers

“I write to thank you for the excellent workshops you facilitated on Bullying in the Workplace at the University of Virginia. The workshops were not only informative and full of strategies for addressing bullying situations but were also engaging and thought provoking. Your presentation fulfilled all our objectives of increasing awareness and informing participants of practical tools that they could immediately put to use.”

Brad Holland
Ombudsman & ADA Coordinator, University of Virginia

“A conceptual breakthrough in understanding workplace bullying and how it really affects people and organizations. More importantly, Valerie’s content is filled with great common sense how-to’s that are easy to understand and implement. Right on the mark!”

Darrell White
Senior Vice President, Community Savings Credit Union

“Valerie, your evaluations were the highest of any speaker at the Virginia State SHRM Conference! Your ability to establish rapport and engage our audience was absolutely effective and energizing. Your expertise in understanding workplace- bullying goes far beyond the academic world- you are practical in your approach as well as relevant and inspiring! We’re so glad we had your Bully Free at Work session certified for educational credits. You are a gifted speaker – I am confident that every audience would find value and inspiration in your presentations.

P.S. Thank you for filling in at the last minute due to our speaker cancellation delivering “How to Build Trust With People You Don’t Understand, Don’t Connect With, But Have to Work With” to a packed room (word got out!). You received a perfect score and inspired us to go back to work energized, confident and able!”

Gwen G. Partenheimer
SPHR, Virginia State SHRM Society of Human Resource Professionals, Virginia

“First of all Valerie, may I once again thank you for your outstanding preparation, “above the bar” presentation with awesome style and relevance, and the complete acceptance and admiration of each and every one of our Pharmacy group attendees at our conference. Over the past 18 years, you are the first one who helped us not only gain an insight in going from “first class to world class”, who adrenalized our motivations to come forward, but most importantly, made us feel better about ourselves. And you did it in such a naturally genuine “conversational” style. Thank you!”

Larry Surkan
Pharmacy Director, Home Office, Federated Co-operatives Limited, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

“Thank you for the excellent presentation you gave us! You are a class act and an absolute pleasure to work with. Not only were we impressed (again) with your knowledge, but your natural delivery ability, honesty and approachability made workplace bullying far more accessible to the audience than it might have been otherwise…you truly are delightful and we love your sense of humor!”

Kris Bojda & Linda Cherry
Business & Industry Liaisons, Alberta Employment & Immigration, Alberta

“You delivered an excellent session! You kept the audience’s attention, they laughed and cried! You gave them the tools they needed. I would recommend you in a heart beat to other leaders and meeting planners looking for an effective approach to stopping workplace bullying.”

Lynn Gough
Union Representative, Education, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE)

“Words cannot even begin to describe the overwhelming positive reaction that SAP employees had to Valerie’s Session – “Bully Free at Work: Creating a Culture of Respect.” We were fortunate enough to come across Valerie’s work online and after just one phone call, were able to connect directly with Valerie and get our desired session on the calendar. It was so easy!

From the initial phone call, to her flexibility with our delayed vendor approval process, to her arrival and departure, Valerie and her team were flawless.

Employees were completely engaged. Valerie’s charisma and ability to relate to the audience made her session that much more enjoyable. In addition to her well-researched facts and examples surrounding workplace bullying, she peppered in personal stories and down to earth examples we could relate to.

Many employees stayed after to discuss details of creating a respectful work environment. Valerie continued until the last person left and really made each attendee feel as if they were not alone and that she was there to help. Valerie went above and beyond and offered to help some employees outside of our session and has stuck to her word in following up with all employees who were in need of help.

We were thrilled with our decision to bring Valerie to SAP. We would absolutely recommend Valerie for companies big or small, local or international as a great resource in helping employees manage workplace bullying!”

Lauren Maser
Silicon Valley Marketing, SAP Software & Solutions

“We were very impressed with the content of Valerie’s presentation and her depth of knowledge; we also very much enjoyed and benefitted from her delivery style which captivated the room. There was much anticipation before the 90 minute session and Valerie did not disappoint! The content was understandable and direct, and Valerie really helped humanize and organize a topic that is often hard to approach and get your arms around.

We highly recommend Valerie for her well-researched content as well as her amiable and appealing delivery style. In fact, we have had several requests to have Valerie join us again for another session next year. We look forward to having her back.”

Gudrun McLean
Adminstrative Assistant, Talisman Energy Inc