Managing Relationships & Addressing Conflict

How can we embrace conflict as a teacher and an evolutionary force in our groups, organizations and even personal life? What information and skills will help us resolve conflicts in our workplace?

This session will enable you to:

• Gain new perspectives on conflict and conflict resolution

• Understand that there are different types of conflict and that it is often best to engage each type differently

• Heighten awareness of how we personally respond to conflict

• Learn about how our fellow participants come into relationship with conflict

• Gain some practical approaches to conflict including useful tools and strategies

Collaborative Skills & Group Facilitation

Skillful collaboration is facilitated by an open mind and heart, keen powers of observation of self and others, compassionate communication, a whole-systems view and a willingness to witness and experience transformation. This workshop will promote these qualities while seeking to enhance leadership skills, self-awareness and a capacity to contribute to positive change at any scale. Participants will be introduced to a variety of group work and collaborative leadership tools.

By practicing presence, expanding our awareness of self and others and unlocking our creativity, we can realize our potential as inspired and skillful facilitators or participants in any group system. In this workshop, we will work to improve our practical facilitative tools for decision–making and conflict resolution, as well as develop the courage to imaginatively embrace emergence.

Participants can expect to:

• Learn how to think in terms of whole systems

• Learn about compassionate communication skills, group culture and ground rules

• Be introduced to a practical and comprehensive facilitator’s tool box

• Explore and better understand group dynamics, group leadership and facilitation

• Be introduced to group stage theory and explore patterns of group evolution

Thinking Like a System

Increasingly, organizations are using the language of systems in talking about their work, but what does it really mean for an organization to orient systemically? This half-day workshop for mission-driven organizations introduces participants to the principles of systems thinking and helps participants identify ways to advance systems-informed strategy in the context of their own work.

Participants will be able to:

• Identify different aspects of a “systems approach”;

• Describe how their organization is acting systemically and list ways it can move further in that direction;

• Put key systems change frameworks and tools to work;

• Revisit their organization’s theory of change with a systems lens.

The Art of Facilitation

Skillful collaboration is facilitated by an open mind and heart, keen powers of observation of self and others, compassionate communication, a whole-systems view and a willingness to witness and experience transformation. This workshop will promote these qualities while seeking to enhance leadership skills, self-awareness, and a capacity to contribute to positive change at any scale. Participants will be introduced to a variety of facilitation skills and tools through both presentation and hands-on exercises.

By practicing presence, expanding our awareness of self and others and unlocking our creativity, we can realize our potential as inspired and skillful facilitators. Our topics will include decision–making, difficult conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion, and finding the courage to imaginatively embrace emergence in unpredictable meetings.

Participants can expect to:

• Explore and better understand the role of a facilitator and core facilitative practices

• Learn about compassionate communication skills, group culture, and ground rules

• Learn how to develop and use criteria as an aid to complex decision-making

• Be introduced to a practical and comprehensive facilitator’s toolbox

• Learn strategies to address hurtful transgressions in group work