We support corporate, small-business, and non-profit organizations, teams, and partnerships in removing blocks and opening channels to stronger relationships and greater success. We help uncover both challenges and opportunities, and create the space to have the critical, meaningful conversations that are so often avoided.
We guide. We advise. We bring structure to decision-making processes. We focus on the needs of everyone in the room. We recognize the power of relationships. We look for both the concrete-practical and the heart centered-symbolic meaning in experience design. We speak with key organizational voices, often at multiple levels of an organization, in order to best reflect the organizational context in our work.
FACILITATION We facilitate meetings, retreats, and organizational gatherings for professional staff and board members. We guide participants through important and sometimes difficult conversations, while also developing support and structure that assists in creative, positive, practical, and strategic outcomes.
Areas of Facilitation: Quarterly Leadership Team Retreats, Board Meetings, or Partner Off-Sites: Too often organizations are so focused on day-to-day management that they don’t regularly take the time to step back and solve the big issues, develop strategy, and vision for the future. We design and facilitate experiences that meet your goals and push you to go further and deeper in your conversations and planning.
Difficult Conversations: Oftentimes, organizations or teams are stymied as to how they might move forward with difficult conversations around strategy, culture, or interpersonal dynamics. Our team brings years of experience in facilitating difficult conversations between people in professional, volunteer, and community settings. We design with your goals in mind and support and challenge you in identifying what is most important and how best to get there.
WORKSHOP DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION We work with and listen to organizations to design intentional, creative, playful workshops that meet people where they are and challenge them to stretch in their knowledge, skills, and mindset. We provide the big ideas, the how-to, and the time to practice and make it their own, so teams walk away with immediate learning that they have already started to use.
We design with organizational and team goals in mind. We design to hear all voices in the room. We design in partnership with organizational representatives. We design with relationship at the forefront.
Areas of Workshop Design and Implementation: Laboratory: We design spaces in which teams are encouraged to explore, learn, and create adaptations to projects, programs, and systems. These laboratories help jumpstart thinking about what new directions might be possible. *This may be standalone or part of ongoing work.
Personal and Team Professional Growth: Workshops relating to emotional intelligence, visionary leadership in any role, communication, and team building. We both implement our standard workshops in these areas and develop workshops tailored to specific organizational need.
Up Front: Many people, both those comfortable and those uncomfortable in front of groups, rely on instinct to manage and engage their audience. In this workshop, we support participants in developing two core mindsets: first, responsibility for the audience and second, permission to lead when in front. We share general approaches and specific tools for engaging and managing audiences of different sizes and ages. We engage participants in identifying their negative habits in front of groups and share ways in which to replace those habits. Engaging, experiential, challenging, and fun (at least for many), participants combine these mindsets and skills to step up front with confidence and skill. *Note that this is not a session that will help people with a true fear of speaking to groups. We are happy to share fantastic resources for individuals who struggle with even the idea of speaking to groups.
Personality, Personality Assessments, and Interpersonal Relationship: Beginning with personal and/or team assessments, such as a 360° review, Immunity to Change Mapping, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)®, Clifton Strengthsfinder®, FIRO-B®, PMAI®, and organizational/team scans, we support individuals in better understanding themselves, expanding how they see and understand others, and building skills to take this learning and put it into action to improve and enhance team functioning and organizational interpersonal relationships.
Team Development: We provide a series of workshops complemented by individual or small-group coaching in between sessions, taking what could be a one-off impactful experience and creating an ongoing opportunity for your team to learn, experiment, reflect, and grow both as a team and as individuals.