Upward Spiral Consulting Services

Our customizable consulting packages deliver high-level results to perpetually elevate performance in your organization. Check out our leadership, engagement, and transfer portal options below. 

Contact Duane Jourdeans for more info.
715-220-7810​
[email protected]

CONTACT DUANE

Let's Chase a Championship Together!

At Upward Spiral, we specialize in developing leadership and employee engagement within growth-minded professional sports organizations, collegiate athletic programs, and their stadiums/arenas. 
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Even with the best players, coaches, and support staff, a thriving workplace culture is crucial to a true championship organization. Challenges in a post-COVID environment, management and policy changes, and working with 3rd party employees are not easy to navigate—and they impact how people feel at work. Chasing excellence includes understanding how your employees feel. Positive emotions can enhance employee engagement and negative feelings can hinder it: both directly impact fan experience. 

We utilize the 3Es of improvement: Explore, Engage, Evaluate. As a neutral party, we will effectively connect with both leadership and employees to explore what is going well, what can be improved, and what actions can be taken. Multiple focus groups, researched-based surveys, site visits, action plans, assessments, trainings, and growth measurement are all a part of our process. We will immerse ourselves in your organization and assist you in perpetually increasing performance and your home stadium advantage.  

Your success is our mission!

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Master the Transfer Portal:
Attract and Retain the Best; Maximize Performance

Athletes choose their college destination and enter the transfer portal for a variety of reasons, but one major motive deals with how they feel.
Do they feel valued?
Do they feel cared for?
Do they love the culture? 

What if you could build a skillset that would consistently attract and retain the athletes you want in your program?
What if you could maximize the potential of the athletes in your program?

 The solution? -- Assessing and developing the emotional intelligence (Ei) of you and your staff. Through packages including surveys, workshops, and assessments, we can help you and your team raise levels of Ei. 

Emotional Intelligence is a set of skills that help us better perceive, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and in others. Collectively they help us make intelligent responses to, and use of, emotions.

Leaders with high-level emotional intelligence . . .

• are Self-Aware. They understand the way they feel and the impact their feelings can have on decisions, behavior, and performance.  
• are Aware of Others. They perceive, understand, and acknowledge the way others feel. This skill helps identify the things that make people feel valued, listened to, cared for, consulted, and understood.
• are Authentic. They openly and effectively expressing themself, honor commitments, and encourage this behavior in others. It involves honestly expressing specific feelings, such as happiness and frustration, providing feedback to team members about the way they feel, and sharing emotions at the right time, to the right degree and, to the right people.
• use Emotional Reasoning. They use the information in feelings (from themself and others) when decision-making. It involves considering their own and others’ feelings when making decisions, combining the information in feelings with facts and technical information, and communicating this decision-making process to others.
• utilize Self-Management. They manage their own mood and emotions, time and behavior, and continuously improve themself.  A person's mood can be very infectious and can therefore be a powerful force. 
• ​Inspire Performance. They positively influence the way others feel through problem solving, feedback, recognizing, and supporting others' work. It involves creating a positive environment for others, helping others find effective ways of responding to upsetting events, and effectively helping people resolve issues that are affecting their performance.

What are benefits of emotionally intelligent leadership?

• enhanced engagement
• increased trust and communication
• positive connections and relationships
• increased resilience
• high-level performance
• Overall, people will gravitate towards your program AND they want to stay.​

Check out what we have been doing in Minnesota!

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Testimonials

"With Duane’s guidance, we aspire to become a model for best-practice on workplace communication and environment while looking to continue our commitment of fan experience excellence. He is positive, outgoing, and proactive while looking to uncover solutions to help model leadership and create a positive culture in our workplace.”

Jeff Munneke, Vice President of Fan Experience
​Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx

“Duane’s information was vital in attacking new challenges, so we could keep our front-line staff top-of-mind; their success is our main key to success with our guests. We look forward to continuing our work together.”
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Steve Sawyer, Director of Event Services and Hospitality
​Target Center