To provide employees with knowledge about the power of the ‘Positive’ for creativity and action. To gain an understanding of Appreciative Inquiry which refers to both a search for knowledge and the theory of intentional collective action and will of a group. To provide participants with tools for looking at what is working well for them and what they now need to do from an appreciative perspective, spending little time processing “what’s wrong.”

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an appreciation of how positive thinking can generate positive results

· Look for ways to use the appreciative approach

· Learn and practice a process for using this approach as a way of planning

· Become aware of how much can be accomplished when looking through a positive supportive lens

· Evolve a set of core values for the purpose of answering the question “What Matters”

TOPICS COVERED

· Appreciative Inquiry theory and research

· The Provocative Proposition

· The importance of follow through

· Strategies for using this model

Instructor: Beverly Kimble – over 12 years experience in OD and training. Her specialty is organizational learning and executive coaching - Phone 703-757-7591 Email – bevkimble@hers.com

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Authentic Trust for Productive Outcomes

Trust is chosen

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To evolve an understanding of trust that includes: its evolution, its maintenance and its renewal. To gain an appreciation of authentic trust and its economic value in organizational life. To explore participants’ experiences of trust and to practice trusting conversations. To develop an understanding of trust that fosters improved relationships and collaboration.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an appreciation of how trustworthiness and trust works

· Delve into everyday life experiences where trust has been broken and assess the need for repair

· Learn how trusting can build motivation and creativity

· Become aware of how building trust can reduce transaction costs and how it reduces uncertainty about the future

· Appreciate the ways differing individuals approach trust, how the context of the situation determines the level of trust, and how the duration of the relationship determines trust

TOPICS COVERED

· Trust in organizations

· The High-Trust, High-Performance link

· The high cost of fear

· Strategies for building a high-trust workplace

Instructor: Beverly Kimble – over 12 years experience in OD and training. Her specialty is organizational learning and executive coaching - Phone 703-757-7591 Email – bevkimble@hers.com

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The Art of Coaching (6 to 9 months)

Being in service to others

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To acquire coaching skills. That involves believing in the capacity of people to lead lives of integrity and to find and cultivate their authentic selves, to create a safe, supportive environment that produces ongoing mutual respect and trust. To learn to become skilled observers of themselves, to be self-corrective and self-generative. To teach the participants how to support others so that they grow into their potential and prosper into productive, motivated, happy workers.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Develop skills that allow them to enter into the learning process of another and to improve their ability to learn

· Learn how to encourage, support, counsel and inspire coachees

· Learn how to become stewards of the planet, communities, and employees

· Evolve skills that empower people to create a future they truly desire based on what they passionately care about.

· Learn how to help others recognize the previously unseen possibilities that lay within their grasp.

· Practice coaching skills with others and get feedback

· Observe others coaching and be coached

TOPICS COVERED

· Coaching conversations

· Learning through language, body, emotions, and spirit

· The Power of the observer

· Observing and giving feedback

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Coaching and Accelerated Learning

Being in service to others

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To learn about coaching and its benefits for organizations and individuals. To explore what it is and what it is not. To gain an understanding about coaching and its connection to deep learning and to understand the difference between teaching, training, consulting, and coaching.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Explore the benefits of coaching vs. traditional managing

· Look at the ways they learn and their “enemies of learning”

· Explore the generative power of language

· Experience coaching through practice

· Learn how to use questions, specifically “What Matters?” for the purpose of exploration and looking at things differently

· Gain an appreciation for how “living in the questions” can be a great source of learning

TOPICS COVERED

· Various kinds of conversations

· Body, emotions, and language

· Powerful questions

· Triple loop learning

· Observing and giving feedback

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Critical Reflective Thinking

Using new ways of thinking to make effective, socially-responsible decisions

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To help upper middle-level and senior-level managers and executives expand and strengthen their ability to make effective decisions through a variety of innovative techniques. The focus will be on identifying how we generally go about structuring and examining problems and on finding new ways to look for solutions.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Experience the importance of allocating adequate time for critical reflection in order to facilitate learning

· Learn to identify how language shapes thinking

· Practice lateral thinking and using the dialectic to enhance creative decision-making

· Gain an appreciation for the value of exploring several alternative future images

· Examine the methods of problem solving by people and groups such as Albert Einstein, Leonardo daVinci, and Barbara McClintock, James Watson and Francis Crick, and John Kennedy's key advisors

TOPICS COVERED

· Critical reflective thought

· Structured dialogue practice

· Lateral thinking

· Double- and triple-loop learning

· Scenario planning

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Diversity - Ways of Knowing

Appreciate the multitude of ways there are to understand and view the world

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To help leaders of teams and those concerned with creating positive contexts for cross-functional, multicultural, and high-performing teams understand and appreciate the value of "difference." The course will become a laboratory for learning as we explore multiple ways of knowing and understanding the world. The focus will be on how our attitudes and cultures affect our ability to see problems clearly, and how our individual biases and experiences affect our creative abilities.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an appreciation of diverse sources of knowledge such as experience, emotion, embodiment, revelation, humor, imagination, intuition and the senses, as well as cognition.

· Use experiential learning to discover and practice new ways of listening and to become aware of everyday events as they unfold

· Develop a sensitization to the differences among persons' experience, backgrounds, origins, characteristics, ways of learning, ways of doing things, and ways of knowing

· Become aware of difference that emerges from gender, ethnic origin, race, age, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, occupation, knowledge, ability, class, and just being human and the benefits understanding those differences create

TOPICS COVERED

· Self as a social being

· Howard Gardner's 8 forms of intelligence

· Emotional Intelligence

· Cultural practices, values, and points of view

· Inclusive egalitarian behavior

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Directing the Outcomes of Light and Shadow

Discover the gifts our dark side offers by acknowledging them

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To assist all employees expand their awareness of both the dark and light side of themselves, of others, and of their organization. To see that everything that casts a light, also has a shadow – all solutions simultaneously create difficulties, etc. To explore together how to reconcile our darker impulses, find the gifts they offer – and reclaim our wholeness.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Explore what “Know thy Shadow, know thy self means

· Learn how small acts, gestures and words of care, concern, kindness can transform organization culture

· Improve their understanding about ethics and the ever-present possibility of ‘wrong doing’ manifesting itself in public life

· Enhance their abilities to reflect on the daily behavior of their organization or group

· Improve their understanding of how ordinary people can readily engage in harmful acts, even administrative evil, while believing that what they are doing is not only correct, but good, and what we might do to prevent such behavior

TOPICS COVERED

· Carl Jung and Shadow

· The Milgram and Stanford experiments

· The Marshall Space Flight Center and the Challenger disaster

· The Holocaust and the role of the bystander

· Letting your light shine

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Emotional Intelligence – Growing Interpersonal Relationships

Uncover the learning potential of Physical, Emotional, Cognitive, and Spiritual Intelligence

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To explore a view of deeper, wider learning. To discover the many ways there are to know and to learn how emotional, physical and spiritual learning can function in the workplace. To gain an understanding of how our emotional intelligence works, where it comes from, and develop ways to enhance our use of it.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Look at the possibilities for learning

· Assess how well they learn in the area of emotional intelligence

· Look at how self-awareness, social awareness, social contribution and self-care contribute to our emotional intelligence

· Develop an action plan for improvement in their EI

· Practice skills that increase awareness and create center

TOPICS COVERED

· Daniel Goleman’s research

· Emotions and Moods and their impact on action

· The Hard Case for Soft Skills

· Optimism

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Empowerment, Accountability, and Integrity

Engender service, partnership and legitimate power

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To give employees at all levels of the organization an experience where they can determine what empowerment means in their everyday work lives, what it means to be accountable and to explore integrity, their own and the organization’s. This workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to delve into several case histories plus look at their own experiences, and then practice what empowerment, accountability, and integrity might look like in various settings.

RESULTS

Participants will:

Gain an appreciation of how they might become creators of the organization of which they are a part
Take account of the risks associated with becoming empowered
Look at how accountability to self and others can manifest itself and how it can improve everyday work life
Learn how self-esteem and self-respect can be built through accountability
Explore the power of language to empower ourselves and embody integrity
Learn how to be more astute observers of themselves
Practice creating the kind of stewardship they would like to see in the whole organization

TOPICS COVERED

· Empowerment – what it is and what it is not

· Language and its generative nature

· Integrity – sound moral values and principles and taking responsibility

· Emotional intelligence and how it renders accountability and empowerment

· Stewardship vs. parenting

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Ethics - Navigating Moral Pathways (part 1)

Learning how we got to where we are

Audience: All Leaders

PURPOSE

To help executives, upper-middle-level and senior-level managers discover how the history of Western thought shapes everyday practices, worldviews, and relationships in organizations today. The course traces the emergence of five fundamental dichotomies that permeate Western culture and frame moral issues in organizations. A second part called Alternative Moral Pathways explores alternative ethical frameworks that foster more productive and sustainable organizations.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Trace the development of six dichotomies:

à reason versus emotion

à the universal versus the particular

à mind versus body

à public versus private

à individual versus social

à subjective versus objective

from Greek philosophy, through Christian theology, and the development of scientific thought to their manifestation in our most taken-for-granted everyday assumptions about ourselves and how the world works

· Explore how and why these ideas have limited Western moral theorizing to a preoccupation with rights and justice, and have devalued care, trust and virtue as central moral concerns.

TOPICS COVERED

· Philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders from Socrates to Heidegger, from Copernicus to Einstein, from Saint Augustine to Karl Barth

· Old heroes

· Language that creates polarized thinking

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Ethics - Alternative Moral Pathways (part 2)

Alternative ethical frameworks for a better quality of life

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To help executives, upper-middle-level and senior-level managers discover a multitude of alternative ethical frameworks that foster more productive and sustainable organizations. The course continues to view five fundamental dichotomies that permeate Western culture and works to uncover ways to evolve Both-and rather than Either-or thinking. Its first part called Navigating Moral Pathways explores how the history of Western thought shapes everyday practices, worldviews, and relationships in organizations today.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Work together to seek alternative philosophical frameworks that will enable us to step off the narrow lines and out of the constricted boxes of our current polarized, ways of thinking and acting

· Gather data that explores new ethical thinking that is more appropriate to the way the world is today

· Together develop new ethical frameworks that seem reasonable for sustainable organizational life and discuss with the group

TOPICS COVERED

· Ideas from alternative thinkers such as Victor Seidler, Carol Gilligan, Barbara McClintock, bell hooks, and others

· The beginner's mind

· New heroes

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Everyday Ethics (in three parts)

Using collaboration to evolve right-doing

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

This workshop will assist employees in the development of an ethical framework that they support and actively live by. It will broaden their understanding of what ethics and moral behavior looks like and how to inspire important principles in the groups where they work.

RESULTS

Participants will:

Experience several moral dilemmas that happen in everyday life and reflect on what they believe are “right” behaviors

· Understand the various strategic safeguards that can provide adequate checks and balances to potential errors in judgment and abuse of power

· Explore the impact of language on how we see and think about power and ethics

· Learn how to be more astute observers of themselves, and their organization

· Practice reacting to situations in moral, ethical ways

· Together develop an ethical framework that they would like to live

TOPICS COVERED

· A practical framework that addresses complex ethical questions

· Power for ‘right doing’

· Integrity and accountability and how they assist ethical decisions

· Diversity and its role in ethics

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Expanding Feedback Loops for Enhan cing Productivity

Learning how to improve relationships, collaboration, and structures through feedback loops

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To help employees understand how to create feedback loops for improving communication and outcomes (through processes, systems, and structures), and for aligning strategic efforts among stakeholders. By regularly integrating feedback loops across functions and levels, people enjoy an increased awareness of opportunities for being more effective and efficient in the use of resources for serving customers. An on-going awareness of 1) what works and doesn’t, 2) what needs to increase or decrease, 3) what needs re-visioning and simulation, and 4) what needs to change or be reinforced – all improve individual and team learning throughout an organization

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Learn how feedback loops are important as self-corrective and self-sustaining systems in organizations

· Improve understanding of the different functions of feedback loops and how they serve the whole organization/system

· Learn how to embed feedback loops across an organization to capture intelligence, self-correct, and reinforce what’s working well

· Learn how to use feedback loops at the interpersonal level to facilitate effective communication, mutual understanding, and productive outcomes

TOPICS COVERED

· Biological organisms and how the survive, adapt, and grow

· Types and levels of data that are captured by feedback loops

· The non-linear nature of feedback loops: how information cascades through networks, improving intelligence and capacity to adapt in the environment

· How inadequate feedback loops makes the work of an organization harder and less satisfying

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Humility and Self-esteem

Strengthening and using these characteristics in the workplace

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To help all employees enhance their awareness of their character, feelings, motives, values, behaviors, and their capacity for ongoing self assessment. To help them learn to realistically, self-assess and present their own knowledge, abilities, and experiences.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Look at multiple kinds of behavior and assess to how humble or not that behavior appears

· Explore why it seems to be highly valued or not privileged

· Learn to recognize exaggeration or boasting with regard to accomplishments and what it means to put accomplishments in perspective

· Explore the value of "The Beginners Mind"

· Learn what it takes to have high self-esteem

TOPICS COVERED

· Humility - what it is and what it is not

· How practicing humility can foster more effective communication and reduce negative conflict

· Emotional Intelligence

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Language in Thought and Action

Using myth, narrative, storytelling, and metaphor as a means to insightful fresh understanding

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To provide an appreciation of the power language and rhetoric have on organizational life. To discover the impact the stories we tell have on organizational behavior. The focus will be on the use of alternative metaphors and stories and how they can change an organization's culture.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Learn to recognize the pervasiveness of narrative structures in organizational life

· Practice listening to stories and storytelling

· Look at the impact of stories

· Gain insights into the impact certain words have; learn to reframe statements to achieve mutual understanding

· Experiment with the use of alternative metaphors to describe their group or organization and trace out the potential ramifications of those metaphors

TOPICS COVERED

· The importance of the context in which events unfold

· Construction

· The Language of social control

· Oververbalization

· The confusion of levels of abstraction

· The open and the closed mind

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Leadership and Complexity Science

Innovative implications of complexity science for leadership

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To help executives, managers and team leaders become aware of the principles of complexity science and develop an appreciation for the type of leadership that is appropriate to organizations undergoing turbulent change or growth. To apply these leadership lessons to one's personal leadership style and practice new ways of leading their organization.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an understanding of business as a biological system

· Apply new scientific understanding to the business arena

· Explore their personal leadership style and contrast it with the leadership style required for complex systems

· Identify structures, processes and patterns in their organization that need to be rethought out of appreciation for this new thinking

· Take a new look at the feedback to appreciate its inherent power as organizational "life blood"

· Discover what it takes to create a sustainable organization

TOPICS COVERED

· Complexity science

· Chaos, the edge of chaos, and equilibrium

· Self organizing systems: the Wheatley, Capra Model

· Sustainability

· Personal Leadership Style

· Simulation of complex, adaptive systems

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Leadership for Change

Change - A natural part of growth

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To provide leaders who are either initiating or implementing significant change projects with the conceptual understanding and practical tools needed to see their projects within a larger, “big picture” perspective and to work effectively for long-term organizational and human growth and success.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain a conceptual overview and information about the most current research relevant to organizational change

· Learn about the normal stages of change processes and the behaviors typically associated with these transitions

· Explore ways to identify and work with resistance to change

· Practice skills needed to work with resistance to change

· Learn about practices associated with successful organizational change

TOPICS COVERED

· Change as a source of learning and innovation

· Human behavior in times of organizational change

· Building commitment to change

· Relationship between change and continuity

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Living Leadership (in three parts)

Releasing the leader within for the collective good

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To provide leaders everywhere in the organization with the skills necessary to accelerate learning. To provide participants with models, frameworks, and tools to deepen authenticity and manifest continuous learning and cultural change in organizations, first at the personal level and then by practicing the art of living leadership in their organization.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Understand leadership practices that strengthen relationships, enhance organizational awareness, and inspire innovation and productivity

· Become a more successful leader through improved emotional intelligence

· Reduce the hidden costs associated with employee retention and customer dissatisfaction

· Improve the ability to achieve productive coordinated action as stewards for goals that matter

· Gain an awareness of how to create an environment that protects and supports safe conditions for telling the truth, caring about the interests of stakeholders, and continuous learning

TOPICS COVERED

· Story telling for generative change

· Feedback for leaning, service, and growth

· Trust and its impact

· Insiders vs. outsiders

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Moving from the Present into the Future

Evolving your organization into a self-organizing, self sustaining system

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To help executives and managers learn how to assess their organization's long term sustainability and plan their next steps toward achieving that goal.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Learn to assess where their organization falls in the Edge of Chaos model

· Understand why the Edge of Chaos is the place to be and the benefits it has for future growth

· Create a plan for action

· Develop so possible actions and ways of being they can take to move them to the Edge of Chaos

· Understand that cause and effect is an outdated control paradigm

TOPICS COVERED

· Chaos theory

· Self organizing systems

· Sustainability

· The role of the leader in organic systems

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in two parts

How understanding personality preferences improves relationships and trust

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To provide employees with an understanding about themselves and others they work with to affect better communication and relationship. The MBTI questionnaire has been used for over 50 years to over 2 million people. The first part of this program is to have participants take the questionnaire and to work through the four preference scales using exercises to help them determine their type and understand what it means. The second part of the program is to work with a team to compare and contrast personality types for the purpose of working more effectively together.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an understanding about their own personal personality preferences

· Learn about the differing gift each preference brings

· Explore how your personality helps and hinders what you want to accomplish

· Work with your team to understand the strengths and learning edges due to the personality types available

· Build a chart with the personality types that can be displayed to deepen the understanding of difference

TOPICS COVERED

· The history of the MBTI and its purpose

· Communication and personality type

· Introversion, Extroversion, Thinking, Feeling, Intuitive, Sensing, Perceiving and Judging preference dichotomies

· Dominant type and stress

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Organizational Learning (in three parts)

Organizing to learn - community, participation and conversation

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To guide all employees to expand their knowledge of what it takes to excel at advanced, systematic, collective learning. To look at what strategies, tactics and practices are needed in their organization to advance more effective learning.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Consider existing models or images of organizations and how they may be insufficient for the task ahead

· Expand their thinking about the idea of moving from the organizational image of "performance" and "possession" to "practice" and "participation"

· Evolve provocative questions such as: -- How do we live virtuous lives in organizations, what makes for a good organization, allowing time to sit in the questions, not necessarily answer them

· Learn to be a more conscious "observer" of the world and work to see things that were hidden before

· Gain an insight into processes that tackle the "wicked problems" that trouble organizations

TOPICS COVERED

· Organizing - how work really happens

· Difference and innovation

· Community and its benefits

· Collaboration vs. competition

· Sensemaking

· Learning and openness

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Organizational Renewal

Organizations can manifest financial success, employee well-being, and a positive social and environmental impact

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To give cross functional leadership teams an experience in weaving together new business concepts (e.g. complexity theory, process thinking, customer-focus, "new" leadership). This opportunity will allow participants to experiment with different organizational structures, the use of self motivation derived from clear organizational identity, and building better relationships for improved communication. Participants will use this new understanding to unleash their potential and open up new possibilities for productive action.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Integrate understanding of the "new" leadership, complexity theory, customer-focus to comprehend the “wholeness” of their organizational system

· Be able to experiment in a safe environment with new ways of organizing and working together to achieve profound, effective results

· See the power of feedback loops in creating a sustainable organization

· Experience the difference between the chaos, equilibrium and the edge of chaos, in order to discern this highly creative "zone"

· Experience the value of a clear identity, free-flowing information and effective relationships in achieving organizational goals

· Increase their awareness of organizational social and environmental impact

TOPICS COVERED

· Complexity science, chaos, the edge of chaos, and equilibrium

· Self-organizing systems: The Weatley/Capra Model

· Sustainability

· The human and social context in which organizations operate

· Feedback loops and creativity

· Performance measurement/scorecards

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Receptivity/Attunement/Openness

Allowing our minds to stay open creates limitless learning possibilities

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To help all employees enhance their ability to listen, be receptive to new ideas, and reconsider even those things they feel certain about in order to expand their options for more productive work practices. The workshop focuses on enabling powerful new observations of oneself and others to improve the potential for more meaningful, productive outcomes.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Gain an understanding about the importance of listening

· Develop a sensitization to Western civilization's privilege of speech

· Evolve an awareness of the power and value of silence

· Explore the "shadowside" of ourselves and our organizations

· Learn to listen to our bodies and what they tell us

TOPICS COVERED

· Deep and conscious listening

· Dialogue and intentional conversations - developing safe spaces

· Mind-Body learning

· Engrossment, empathy and receptivity

· The other side of language - silence

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Shifting Cultural Norms and Practices

Evolving more effective cultural norms through the development of new eyes

Audience: All leaders

PURPOSE

To provide executive leaders and team leaders of all kinds with knowledge about the evolution of organizational norms and how to evolve norms that will help them realize their desired future.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Have an opportunity to look closely at what norms are in effect currently

· Gain an understanding of the multitude of possible norms

· Look at the group or organization vision and explore what norms are needed to bring about that vision

· Uncover what norms serve you well and what new norms need to be established to make the desired future a reality

· Explore relationships among norms, attitudes, and practices

· Learn how cultural norms are enforced through mundane everyday practices and talk

TOPICS COVERED

· Norms and their development

· Various possible organizational norms

· What kinds of norms foster what kinds of behavior

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Skilled Dialogue and Conversation – Create Extraordinary Outcomes

Practice using questions, suspending judgement & understanding assumptions

Audience: Team members

PURPOSE

To allow team leaders and team members an opportunity to practice alternative ways of holding conversations and communicating in group settings for the purpose of shared understanding and cooperation. Dialogue is a group communication process aimed at exploring the nature and power of collective thinking and how it shapes the culture of a group. The focus is on slowing down those conversations, identifying presuppositions, and suspending judgements. Dialogue encourages engaging in inquiry from an orientation of curiosity and wonder, and advocating with a willingness to share personal non-scripted thinking, what is behind the thinking, with the intention of exposing it, not defending it.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Practice taking conversations to a new or different level of inquiry

· Gain an appreciation for the value of listening deeply to self, specific others, and to the collective meaning of the group

· Practice suspending judgments and identifying underlying assumptions in oneself and challenging others as a way to clarify meaning

· Learn to suspend attachments to particular points of view/world views to allow deeper levels of listening, synthesis and meaning to evolve within the group

· Develop an appreciation for exploring the thoughts of each member of the group in order to generate shared understanding

TOPICS COVERED

· Dialogue as a valuable skill

· Various types of conversations

· Authenticity

· Problem solving with Dialogue

· Relationship building through conversation

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Team – Building High-performance Team Cultures

Developing the kinds of relationships that enable delivery of superior value to customers

Audience: Team members

PURPOSE

To provide team leaders and team members an opportunity to explore the concept of productive relationships and conversation as the key to high performing teams. To investigate the idea of “technology of collaboration” as an important ingredient for successful organizations. To consider the idea that language is the single most important tool for organizational effectiveness.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Learn what it means to be aggressive without anger

· The role that awareness plays in team performance

· How to use language as a tool in creating trust and building relationship

· Become aware of the value society places on individual achievement and how essential interconnectedness is to good teamwork

· Gain an understanding about how being aware is more important than being smart

· Practice teamwork and reflect on exercises assessing themselves and how effective they were

TOPICS COVERED

· Collaboration

· Language as tool

· The ecology of meetings

· The invisible leader

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Team Building -- Play and Trust

How fear hinders action and play fosters it

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To provide all employees the opportunity to become more effective at creating an atmosphere that fosters trust. To explore together the benefits of team work and what constitutes success in group work.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Look at the various roles people play in teams

· Gain an understanding of the importance of trust in group work

· Develop a sensitivity to what behaviors need to be manifested for trust to exist

· Develop insights into the culture and social structures that foster trust

· Learn what behaviors are prerequisites for trust to evolve

· Gather insights about how language and the use of metaphor can transform behavior

· Garner an appreciation for the value play and storytelling have for evolving trust and achieving results

TOPICS COVERED

· Principles of trust: sincerity, competence, reliability, and credibility

· The benefits of ambiguity

· Breakdowns and trust

· Language and trust

· Play and storytelling

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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Team Dynamics and Learning (a minimum of 30 hours)

Learn about group dynamics by participating in and studying their emergence

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To help individuals of small groups, comprised of six to twelve members, enhance their performance and increase their team's effectiveness by better understanding the dynamics of small group behavior. Evidence suggests that small group interactions have dynamics of their own and that a knowledge of and familiarity with them significantly improves one's ability to function effectively in such contexts. This workshop uses a highly experiential learning approach that allows participants to engage in intense interaction, simultaneously reflecting on their behavior and the behavior of others, in order to learn from each other.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Participate in semi-structured and unstructured learning environments, with ample opportunities for exploring various communication approaches, power differentials, multiple perceptions and other aspects of group dynamics

· Strengthen their understanding of interpersonal interactions in small groups

· Heighten their awareness of their own way of behaving in small groups

· Tap both their cognitive/thinking and affective/emotional capacities so that they are more attuned to their role in creating group contexts that enhance the relationships among group members

· Learn to be better facilitators of their own and others' learning in group settings

TOPICS COVERED

· Learning Styles

· Group norm evolution

· Self-perception and perception of others

· Language and how it affects behavior

· Effects of active listening

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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The Power of Shifting Organizational Moods/Emotions

Moods and emotions have power beyond measure

Audience: All employees

PURPOSE

To look at the mood of the organization, the departments, and the individuals to understand where an organization currently lives. To practice deconstructing moods and emotions in order to understand them and make shifts available. To gain an appreciation of the power moods bring us and to recognize our ability to alter them.

RESULTS

Participants will:

· Consider the mood of their organization and what action is available from the mood and what action is not available

· Gain an understanding of the basic moods of life by talking about their experiences of them

· Learn to appreciate that moods are contagious

· Learn about the predispositions moods set up and how to linguistically reconstruct them

· Look at the many different kinds of emotions and moods available to us and what each of them bring with them in terms of possiblities for action

TOPICS COVERED

· Moods and emotions

· The impact of moods and emotions

· The four basic moods of life

· The body and mood

Instructor: Beverly Kimble

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