People care about what will happen in their future. They may not agree on how to get there, or even where “there” is. They may have different degrees of hopefulness – from the deeply cynical to the determined optimist. They may feel anxiety, dread or even excitement about the possibility of change or about a new project.

Whatever is true for you and your group, I can offer facilitation that meets them where they are, and help them construct a clearer future – whether its a new strategic plan, defined values, a new project, a comprehensive workplan or an agreement on how to work together.

As your facilitator, I will:

• Integrate a thorough understanding of your business and an appreciation for your current organizational culture, norms and history
• Design a strong and focused agenda so that the outcomes can be realized in the time available
• Ask powerful questions to positively and respectfully engage participants
• Address building community and connectivity within the group while also accomplishing tasks
• Steer between the right amount of structure and flexibility in delivering key outcomes for the meeting
• Draw upon a diverse library of facilitation methods (including some that I also teach, such as appreciative inquiry and solutions focus)
• Match my style of facilitation to your event – high energy and playful, focused and task oriented, or reflective and thoughtful
• Anticipate different styles and information requirements in the group (including working effectively across a wide range of abilities)
• End on time

Team communication agreements build relationships, which in turn, turns out to be the best investment in building resilience and productive energy.

One of the best vehicles to assist teams (and other groups) to navigate and create a great work environment is to create a customized Team Communications Agreement.

Through a series of smaller conversations, team members will:

• clarify what they need from each other to do their best work
• articulate values that are important to team members
• define principles team members will use to problem solve/make decisions related to their work and work interdependencies
• outline steps that team members will follow to resolve conflicts or address issues with one another

The team agreement can be customized to topics that are important to the team.

Most often groups want agreements on:

• how they’ll solve conflicts,
• how they’ll talk to each other
• what they want their meetings to be like.

But sometimes groups may have very specific issues that they want to have addressed:

How to handle gossip about group members,

How to address body language that is dismissive or disrespectful

How to address a member of the group who isn’t doing their share of the work

What’s acceptable regarding ranting or expressing strong emotions?

My aim in any workshop is to:

• Engage people first of all with themselves, so that they connect deeply to their own experience of the topic that we’re exploring
• Offer high quality conversations and experiences with other learners to pique their curiousity and stimulate new ideas
• Excite people about what might be possible for them, through my content, stories, questions and reflections

Topics include:

• Appreciative listening (a game changer)
• How to have those conversations you’d rather avoid (difficult and courage-based ones)
• Understanding conflict, credibility and building trust with people at work
• How to navigate emotions (yours and theirs)
• How to find the intersection between our need for boundaries and boundless empathy (and avoid burnout)
• How to facilitate meetings and better conversations
• Practices for self-care while at work

Participants report the workshops are:

• highly practical and focused on what you can do differently tomorrow
• relevant to your organization and staff, and based on solving real issues
• engaging – experiential, thought provoking and fun
• worth their time – focused on the best of what really works
• adaptable – to many different contexts and purposes, increasing the value of the time you’ve invested
• applicable – and easy to adopt (including a toolkit of practices)