“The bootcamp of the future is one that teaches your people how to have conversations!” – Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn
Join Deborah for Bootcamp 1 starting October 22, 2020.
More information about the Conversations Worth Having Bootcamps
What kind of conversations are you having in your workplace?
Are you tired of conversations that focus on what’s wrong, without producing actionable results? Do you want to create meaningful, respectful engagement in your organization that builds connection, fuels productivity and generates positive change?
We are almost always engaged in either internal dialogue or external interactions at work. You may not realize how much influence conversations have on the well-being of your team or organization. How often are those conversations worth having? What if you could learn to fuel meaningful engagements while energizing people to solve problems? Conversations Worth Having bootcamps do this through Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which teaches ways to find the best in people, organizations and communities by inquiring into strengths, possibilities and successes.
Research shows the need for upwards of three positive interactions to every one negative one. Most teams function at a 1:1 ratio of positive to negative. Working towards a higher positivity ratio creates more engagement.
What will you learn?
- Evidence-based practices and tools to shift the dynamics of workplace conversations from reactionary to deliberate
- The research behind this work
- Stories form different work environments
- How to stimulate higher order thinking, creativity and engagement
- A way to ask generative questions to shift conversations
- How to flip issues and challenges to the positive opposite
- A way to give appreciative feedback.
The Results
The focus of these sessions is on how to have productive conversations while strengthening relationships and generating possibilities for a future that helps everyone succeed. It provides an opportunity to give your employees the tools to be able to communicate more productively and positively. Research shows that creating a climate of positivity and openness supports engagement, performance, employee and customer satisfaction, retention and trust. The bootcamps are developed by the authors of “Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement” – Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres.
CONVERSATIONS BOOTCAMP 1: Conversations Worth Having at Work
Four weekly 1.5 hour webinars
Module 1: The Power of Conversations
- Explore the nature of the conversations and the effects they have on you and others.
- Discover the science behind negative and positive conversations, what happens to your hormones in each, and how this causes us to react.
- Experience how to choose to be intentional and stay calm under stress.
- Learn to use mindfulness tools to shift from reactionary to deliberate communication.
Module 2: Asking Questions
- Learn to ask generative questions to shift the dynamics of workplace communication problems.
- Experience the impact of AI on individual and organizational capacity.
- Discover how to choose curiosity over knowing and assuming.
Module 3: Positive Framing
- Experience flipping negative conversations to conversations worth having.
- Learn how to use flipping to frame workplace communication issues.
- Develop generative questions to fuel productive, meaningful engagement around workplace challenges.
Module 4: Step Up to Feedback
- Discover how to adopt a learning mindset to support openness and interest in regular feedback.
- Learn how to change feedback avoidance patterns.
- Adopt the use of effective feedback strategies with common workplace situations.
CONVERSATIONS BOOTCAMP 2: Strategic Conversations at Work
Four 1.5 hour seminars/webinars
Module 1: Valuing Strategic Thinking
- Understand the importance of strategic conversations and the role positive framing and generative questions play.
- Learn to adopt an AI and SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results) framework for strategic thinking
- Discover how to recognize when and why strategic thinking is important.
- Practice framing strategic conversations and asking strategic generative questions.
Module 2: Learning to SOAR
- Understand the three strategic elements (1. having a strategic plan, 2. understanding that strategy is nested, and 3. engaging stakeholders).
- Experience the use of SOAR as a positive framework for strategic conversations.
- Practice positive framing and generative questions at various levels in the organization.
Module 3: The AI 5-D Cycle
- Learn how you can engage the whole system in strategic conversations.
- Understand how the two AI practices—positive framing and generative questions— apply to the 5-D cycle.
- Discover how to identify opportunities for whole system conversations.
Module 4: Strategic Areas for Application
- Experience how to recognize and frame opportunities for strategic conversations at nested levels within the organization.
- Develop and receive feedforward on your prototype for a strategic conversation.
- Practice providing feedforward to improve conversation topics and questions.