Workshops

We facilitate workshops on-site for up to 35 participants. 

Dance of Leadership [download brochure]
After introducing participants to basic leadership theory, and differentiating between leading and managing, we take participants through the Dance of Leadership. 

“Very evocative.  Dr. Johnson made us look square down the barrel of leadership vs. management differences and how each should be used in an organizational context.  Her exercises were challenging.”

This workshop is based on the method Dr. Johnson developed through her research and work with executives including a powerful multimedia presentation of five leadership styles.  Two styles -- flowing and staccato -- are familiar extraverted styles.  The remaining three styles -- chaos, lyrical and stillness -- are new ways of leading that Dr. .Johnson and her colleagues discovered through their research.

“THANKS!!!!  I feel validated as a ‘leader’ and now understand why I feel more comfortable ‘mentoring’ staff versus ‘supervising and instituting strict rules.’”

We bring the insights from the multimedia presentation to life through an interactive talk that familiarizes participants with their style, and then we explore each style using multi-cultural case examples, effective situations, developmental and kinesthetic activities. We also spend time exploring the dynamics of the leader-follower relationship.  This workshop combines theory, practice and experience in a novel,  fun, moving session.

  “It was so real.  It really helped me to look at my interaction with my staff.  I now see why the style that works perfectly with some staff does not work with others.  I will work on my relationships with my followers more consciously now.”

 

Career By Design [download brochure]
The Career by Design workshop starts with having participants identify their interests, skills and values using inventories designed specifically for a multicultural clientele by Dr. Johnson.  The information from those assessments are integrated into three professional tools:

• a professional mission statement,
• a career matrix, and
• a career development statement. 

These tools help participants learn to select projects where they are most likely to succeed, determine when/how to team up with others for effectiveness, decide who to delegate projects to in their organizations, and how to enrich their jobs while positioning themselves for greater contributions.  Participants also use these tools to make and get credit for their contributions.  With career focus participants are able to achieve professional and organizational goals with less stress.  This workshop includes a workbook and audio CD that participants can use to remind them of key concepts learned during the workshop.

 

Genderspeak [download brochure]
This program is based on the research, videos, and books of Dr. Pat Heim. The program is fun and enlightening.  Participants who’ve seen it, male and female, frequently list the insights and actions they learned from this program as the most significant learning they have had for managing both work and personal relationshps.  It’s great to have a program about gender that both men and women love, and that even the ‘quant jocks’ enjoy.
Topics include:

• Gender as Culture – we link Gender to Culture and talk about what we think, do and feel when we encounter different cultures.  We return to these thoughts, actions and feelings at the end of the day.
• Video 1 – The Power Dead-Even Rule.  This entertaining and lively video uses examples from our childhood and from work to explain the ‘games’ girls and boys play and the rules about appropriate childhood behavior we learn from those games.  It also sets the first action point for us – the cultural difference with girls learning to live in a flat structure where relationships are paramount, and boys learning to live in a hierarchical structure where winning is key.  Women’s proclivity to keep power ‘dead-even’, e.g. flat, explains some of the recent research about women’s relationships with other women at work that Pat Heim covered in her recent book entitled In the Company of Women.
• Video 2 – Invisible Rules: Men, Women and Teams.  In this video we will go examines Process vs. goal focus, Leadership styles and team behaviors and assumptions that differ by gender.
• Case study – taking a case from the perspective of a man and a woman, we examine what the action options are for each in order to be effective, line by line.

 

Leading Your Multicultural Team to High Performance
[download brochure]
This team effectiveness session combines our research knowledge with observation, practice, and reflection to enhance your teams’ effectiveness. We start with increasing participants’ knowledge about what a team is, when a team is needed, how best to design a team for effectiveness, and how to evaluate team performance-team leadership.  For the bulk of the workshop we teach the five interlocking skills team leaders need to capitalize on perspective diversity.

1. Providing a clear-motivating mission.
2. Modeling inclusive leadership.
3. Coaching minorities to influence effectively.
4. Motivating with feedback and high expectations.
5. Handling culture-based team conflict with care.

The workshop includes a video case allowing participants to observe a team at work and evaluate them according to the design-effectiveness criteria , see these skills at work (or missing), and critique the team leadership skills of people in the video.   Each participant then gains practice looking at the impact of behavior on the entire team from the perspective of the video characters.  This teaches a key team communication skill – decentering.  They also prepare developmental feedback for each character. Team members then practice the skills we’ve discussed and observed.  After giving and receiving feedback on their team performance and individual contribution to team dynamics, they make a commitment to apply newly learned skills on the job.  This workshop includes an audio CD to remind participants of what they learned after the workshop is concluded.

Diversity Awareness [download brochure]
This program will assist your employees in gaining a better understanding of working with and managing individuals, groups, and organizational systems in today’s diverse work world.  The program has a mixture of experiences, theory, cases, and short texts. Significant social identities addressed include Ability, Age, Gender, Sexual orientation, National Culture, Language and/or Race-Ethnicity.  We will also tailor our program, depending on time allotted to the training, to do in-depth exploration into any one or two of those diversity dimensions.  Participants go through experiences and exercises that assist them as they examine their own assumptions, biases, stereotypes and/or identity issues.  The skills participants learn and use based on Leslie Aguilar's "OUCH! That Stereotyp Hurts" DVD, are invaluable.

“For once diversity is discussed as something more than black or white … thank you for a very broad, inclusive approach.”

We have received extremely high ratings for our approach to this topic from participants at all levels in organizations.  They tell us they learn a lot and that the course is (unexpectedly) a lot of fun.  We believe it is important to help participants relax around this topic and so we approach it in a way that is interactive and engaging.  We assume that most people do not intend to disrespect others, or to condone disrespectful treatment of others.  The OUCH! approach is powerfully inclusive because all people can identify with times they failed to address stereotyping and discounting because they did not know how to deal with it effectively.  Participants receive a copy of the "OUCH! That Stereotype Hurts" handbook to remind them of key skills learned.

“This was without doubt the best presentation on diversity and how it should be addressed within organizations that I have ever heard.  Not once did I feel I was implicitly being indicted as a racist, as in nearly all other sessions on diversity that I have ever attended.”

 

Multicultural Awareness [download brochure]
We combine culture and gender in this workshop because we treat gender as a cultural category.  Our approach is to help participants identify their own cultural values, assumptions and resulting behaviors while understanding that others may have different cultural values, assumptions and behaviors. During the workshop, participants

• discuss workplace concerns about cultural differences
• identify verbal communication habits and non-verbal behaviors that contribute to gender-culture conflict.
• determine their own cultural values-behaviors.
• discover action options for handling gender-culture conflict -- Reinterpret intent, Relate, and Resolve  -- and discuss situations in which each action is likely to be effective.
  

Participants receive multicultural values cards as a reminder of lessons learned in this workshop.

For workshop pricing and availability, please contact us.