About Us

Effectiveness Institute is a group of training and consulting professionals who are experts in team performance. Our purpose is to build and sustain high performance cultures within client organizations and to strengthen professional relationships.

All enterprises rise or fall on the ability of diverse individuals to work together. They must give and receive feedback, resolve conflict, promote ideas, be loyal, motivate others and deal with their emotions and the emotions of others. When these individuals are committed to a common purpose — and treat each other with trust and respect — performance is maximized.

Traditionally, these concepts have been described as “soft skills.” We call them “people skills.” At Effectiveness Institute, we believe that they are the critical success factors for managers and employees at all levels of every organization.

Our Beginning

Effectiveness Institute was founded by Dr. Bill Maynard and Tom Champoux in 1980. Their collaboration goes back to the late sixties and early seventies when they were both inner-city educators at Cleveland High School in the Seattle School District. At that time, Cleveland was every educator’s nightmare. Out of Seattle’s twelve high schools, Cleveland had the highest dropout rate, highest absentee rate, highest suspension rate, and the highest number of incidents involving violence and vandalism. Bill and Tom started their work by building the collaboration and teamwork that became the primary vehicles for change. Life-skills courses were added and curricula revised. Values were stressed and improvements made in the way performance was evaluated for both students and teachers. Results started to become visible and as they did, the culture of Cleveland changed. During the next few years Cleveland High School moved from having the highest absentee rate in the city to the lowest. It also dropped from the highest rate of suspensions and dropouts to the lowest. The positive transformation was so vivid that it became a national news story. In 1980, Bill and Tom began using these same philosophies and strategies with businesses and universities and had similar results. Over the years Effectiveness Institute has served tens of thousands of leaders and teams in organizations of every size and industry, nationally and internationally, delivering measurable improvement in the way they perform.

Our Philosophy

To understand the various dynamics and critical success factors involved in organizations, and to demonstrate the importance of balance we created the Dual Performance Cycle. Organizations measure performance using certain metrics (e.g., Customer Satisfaction, ROI, Productivity, Retention, etc.). When efforts are made to improve performance, organizations commonly focus on the left side (Task/Systems) of the Dual Performance Cycle. While this is important and critical to success, research demonstrates that the right side of the cycle (People/Teams) dramatically impacts performance outcomes.

Effective people skills, such as the ability to give and receive feedback, navigate conflict, collaborate, promote ideas and inspire others, are critical for individual and team success. Balance is the key: technically competent individuals (left side) who demonstrate emotional intelligence that builds trust and respect (right side) always maximize performance.

At Effectiveness Institute, our work focuses on creating and sustaining high performance in all levels of the organization by improving the effectiveness of leaders and teams.

Case Studies

Please have a look at our case studies.

🎉 New Console Launch 🎉

50% Off

To share our excitement and celebrate the launch of our brand-new assessment platform, we’re offering a 50% discount on all store materials for the next two weeks! Use the code platform!

  • Must use the coupon code platform to get the discount.
  • No additional discounts apply during this period.
  • Offer does not include public open workshop enrollments, certifications, facilitations, shipping costs, or console admin fees.
  • Valid for any store/material order.
  • Order and payment must be completed by midnight on August 12 to qualify for the discount.