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We Transform Underperforming Teams Into High Achievers.
Guaranteed.

You don't do anything by yourself; your team is your superpower.

Steph Curry
Golden State Warriors, Four-time NBA Champion,
Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), Nine-time NBA All-star 
Colleagues Working Together

What We Do

We Develop
High-Impact Teams and Leaders

Our Consulting and Training Services Increase Revenues and Profits By:

Proof:

Organizations waste an average of $97 million from ineffective team dynamics for every $1 billion invested due to poor project performance.

 

Source: "The High Cost of Low Performance from The Project Management Institute (PMI),

Developing High-Impact Team Dynamics 

Proof:

Disengaged employees only return in value 60% to 80% of their salaries in comparison to fully engaged employees returning over 120% of their annual salary. Highly engaged business units see a 41 percent reduction in absenteeism and achieve 59% less employee turnover.

Source: Human Capital Institute, Gallup

Elevating Employee 
Engagement

Proof:

Clarity of purpose, goals and roles are the essentials for high collaborative behaviors.
When employees don’t understand the company’s purpose, what the organization is trying to accomplish and how their jobs support those goals, they can't fully contribute. Yet only 28% of respondents to a PWC survey report feeling fully connected to their company’s purpose. HRB reports collaboration improves when the roles team members are clear. 

Without role clarity, team members waste time and energy, instead of doing the work


Source: PwC’s strategy consulting, HRB 

Improving the Clarity, Alignment, and Behaviors of Teams and Leaders

Our Flagship Programs

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QUICK START PROGRAM

When teams are not working like teams, this multi-module 90-day quick-start program will help rapidly improve team communications, collaboration, and creativity.  The goal of this course is to support leaders in creating a team culture that follows the Five Behaviors of Cohesive Teams and The Working Genius. Every team member boosts work passion, productivity, and team performance.

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FLAGSHIP PROGRAM

This program will transform department heads, managers and supervisors into high value coaches. Managers will learn  single most important habit proven to increase team member engagement.  This program combines, Gallup Q12 survey feedback with Clifton Strength Coaching to help managers understand the 14 core needs of every employee. Plus attendees will see an innovative platform designed to support the delivery of high value meaningful meetings, weekly.

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FLAGSHIP PROGRAM

The Course is for cross Marketing Departments together with their External and/or Internal Agency Partners, to learn how to rethink, reorganize and innovate together using the Appreciative Inquiry Process.   Participants will form and lead a mini-Apprecaitive Inquiry Summit to lead by doing.  Starting with the practice of developing an egoless, emotionally safe workspace for all. Then cross-client/partner teams will focus on co-creating new approaches, strategic solutions, and new concepts to achieve a big goal or solve critical challenges.  Given the ever-increasing marketing complexities of data, channels, technology, and talent skills combined with rapidly shifting consumer demand, this program will help marketing and agency leaders re-think, adjust, and re-align relationships, responsibilities, and processes, together, by tapping into the creative wisdom of a Whole Marketing/Advertising EcoSystems.

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Let's Talk About Your Team's Challenges.

Contact us to schedule a discovery consultation.

What Makes Our Approach Unique

We are experts at integrating and customizing our four-prong approach to adult learning with the industry's most proven leadership, management and team development programs into one consistent learning journey

Appreciative Inquiry

We use appreciative inquiry in every learning journey to form authentic team connections and increase vulnerability-based trust. High Impact teams operate with constant psychological safety that allows team members to ask questions, share ideas, and debate solutions without hesitation.

Clarity Confirmation

We start with the clarity and alignment of the mission, culture, and roles between the organization and the team before behavior change. Without seeking clarity first, confusion and conflict follow.

10/20/70 Adult Learning Method

We use the 10/20/70 approach to workplace adult learning and behavior change. Hands-on, job-specific practices and training, used by championship sports teams, are essential to creating high-impact teams and leaders.

Module-Coaching-Module Journeys

We use the module-coaching-module development method because new concepts and behaviors take time to be processed and implemented

For a fast response, call 818-264-8480

Hello, 
I Love Building High-Impact, Collaborative, Creative Teams

My name is Russell M. Kern

I am the CEO and Founder of Kern and Partners. We are a Strength-Centric Appreciative Leadership and Team Development Consultancy. Our unique approach to culture development is built on the globally proven organizational development principles of Appreciative Inquiry, to unlock and harness the strengths and genius of every team member. Our mission is to help grow customer engagement, revenues and profits by elevating employee engagement, passion, and work fulfillment. We are expert at providing the highest-quality, most industry-proven team and leadership development programing in the form of customized learning journeys, to achieve our client's goals. I have loved team development, team coaching and elite leadership principles since gaining my economics degree at UCLA. I was fascinated by the huge leverage human capital can have on business performance, when it is highly aligned to the culture, mission and strategy of an organization. Over the past 40 years, I have had the privilege of building, growing, teaching, coaching and working with hundreds of high-performing marketing and ad agency teams within the largest corporations in the world. Given the dramatically shifting societal values, climate impacts, and technology changes surrounding us, I started Kern and Partners with the vision to inspire new ways to approach creating new levels of peak team performance, globally. My mission is to bring the most recent, relevant, evidence-based, high-performance team and leadership development programs and services to mid-size and enterprise organizations. ​Our passion as a consultancy is to help change behaviors that transform cultures. However, changing adult behavior in the workplace is not a quick or easy task. Organizational research shows single exposures to a given concept does NOT change behavior in the long term. That's why when we deliver content, we use consistent, repeated, engaging learning methods with practice and coaching to optimize comprehension and application of peak team and leadership principles that resonate across today's four-generational workforce along with practice of principles and lots of support for the various applications.  ​This trifecta of learning methods and habits change. Our assessments, program modules, and 1:1 coaching, customized learning journeys, and innovation summits will help your teams build new levels of trust between themselves. For it is trust that enables each of us to bring our whole self to work. We exist to help you foster a culture of emotional safety, company pride, and work joy, that supports the accomplishment of important goals.   Kern and Partners focuses on behavioral and cultural changes within organizations. Our philosophy is to unlock the genius sitting within your teams and then harness team member brilliance for dramatic new levels of innovations and results, with high levels of  passion. ​We believe the essence of creating high performing teams is helping team members and their leaders practice communicating frequently, with honesty, sincerity and an open heart. ​When team members communicate with authenticity, sensitivity and vulnerability, the huge rewards from team unity are realized. ​Please join with us  in lifting up all those around us by helping to create modern work cultures for the new digital age. ​I look forward to meeting you and learning more about you and your organization.  ​Sincerely, Russell M. Kern CEO/Founder

Our Client
Experience

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What Clients 
Say About Us

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Zarnaz Arlia

Chief Marketing Officer

Emplifi

"Russell brought us his wealth of knowledge and experience in the areas where my team could use extra support. He has a fantastic track record of delivering training sessions that are not only informative but also engaging and impactful.

 

My team received top-notch team development and marketing skill training catering to their exact needs, with engaging sessions that empowered them to excel in their roles and achieve outstanding results."

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"Russell Kern has had my respect not just as a creative marketing leader, but for his talent and wisdom in developing teams, especially marketing and agency teams. 

 

Russell’s delivery is warm, friendly, engaging and easy to understand. There is not a lot of preachiness in the way things are articulated. He is conversational. His material is grounded in reality and concrete demonstrations.

Russell's trainings on team behavior and creativity come from the scientific core of human behavior from his expertise in Neuro-marketing. He is a rare find."

Jeff Biesman

Chief Marketing Officer

National Debt Relief

Our Team Development Insights

Contact Us If
Your Teams Are:

  • Not working as a team

  • Not communicating or collaborating

  • Lack trust between team members or with their team leader

  • Disengaged

  • Lost the joy of working together 

  • Unsure of their role, responsibilities, or mission 

  • Spending unproductive hours in endless meetings

  • Unclear on the value of their work to the success of the organization

  • Not feeling their work aligns with their personal values or if their meaningfully contributes to the greater good

  • Not delivering high impact, high value work

  • Not feeling safe to share their ideas or suggestions, worrying about judgment or retribution

 

  • Uncertain of their future or quietly quitting after dramatic team changes such as layoffs, restructuring, or a merger/acquisition

  • Worried about how the changes are going to affect their career and their family's security

Our Strategic Partners

UK's top team-performance development organization serving clients globally.

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Grandmaster Facilitators of Delivering High Performing Teams and Leader Development Journeys

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A neuromarketing agency that offers an exclusive process combining neuroresearch, neuromessaging, neurocreativity and neurotraining, helping creative teams communicate with more effectiveness.  

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Netherlands-based Cross-Silo is expert at connecting human systems with resilience, leading to greater team and organizational performance

Let's talk about how we can drive value for your marketing organization
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© 2025 Kern and Partners, LLC All Rights Reserved.

Partners located in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Charlotte

Contact: Info@kernandpartners.com

Office: 818-264-8480

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