Workshops

Negotiation + Persuasion

Civil society functions best when competing interests seek common ground. There may be winners and losers in politics but that paradigm is no longer viable in governance. The powers that prevail through politics must still contend with broad public interests. Negotiation and Persuasion are essential skills for integrating competing and conflicting interests, resulting in innovative solutions that bridge political, ideological, and social boundaries. Debate will take us only so far. Integrative problem-solving will take us much further. This Workshop provides leaders and professionals with consistent tools to approach challenges as problems to be solved rather than debates to be won. Core skills include moving beyond positions that block creativity, identifying underlying interests at the heart of people’s needs, framing problems that invite collaboration, overcoming obstacles that block or prevent information sharing, identifying solutions that satisfy multiple interests, and building productive working relationships grounded in mutual trust and respect. Advanced skills include working with scientific uncertainty and behavioral dynamics.

Collaboration + Collective Action

Collaboration holds the promise of finding integrative solutions to challenging problems. Conventional decision-making, by contrast, is inherently adversarial and pushes people into opposing corners, or to the sidelines. Inclusive and civil, collaboration has the potential to restore trust, build more resilient working relationships, and foster shared ownership of our most pressing problems. Collaboration combines practices and skills that engage participants in co-learning, creative problem solving, and cooperative governance. It can address differences in science without compromising scientific integrity. It can produce collective action towards common goals, rather than gridlock and inaction. Core skills in thoughtful and intelligent collaboration include gaining competency with the stages of collaboration, assessing the situation to determine the need, designing a collaborative process to meet the need, identifying and selecting stakeholders, designing group protocols and decision rules, collaborative learning and joint fact-finding strategies, and techniques for reaching consensus.

Adaptive + Collaborative Leadership

Adaptive and collaborative leaders recognize the human tendency to turn to positions of authority to solve our problems instead of solving them ourselves. Representative governance works in many cases but falls short in situations where people must adapt to change. In those situations, people often turn to authority figures to avoid change. Adaptive and collaborative leaders recognize this dynamic and use their authority and resources to help us face the adaptive challenges by providing and supporting a “holding environment” within which we collectively address the challenge. Adaptive and collaborative leadership is a complementary perspective, framework, and skill-set that positions leaders with the authority and capacity to help us address the adaptive challenges we must face in navigating a modern and more complex world. Core competencies include understanding the human dynamics of change and the leader’s role in managing those dynamics, distinguishing between technical and adaptive problems, focusing attention on the adaptive challenge, managing stress that leads to avoidance, and supporting a collaborative framework to address the challenge.

Social License to Operate 

The Social License to Operate is a form of social acceptance that companies earn through ongoing interactions with vested stakeholders. The social license is a critical component of a company’s reputation and effectiveness in today’s business environment and is obtained from stakeholders through meaningful and thoughtful engagement. The social license is separate from a company’s legal license and is distinctively different but related to a company’s political license. The skills and practices that firms need to obtain and maintain a social license are designed to complement and mirror the skills and practices of collaboration. This workshop provides tools to help companies move beyond engagement practices that fall short of expectations and undermine the ability to obtain the social license and towards practices that reflect community interests. Core competencies include distinguishing between components of the political and social license, assessing the local context where the social license is sought, and designing a meaningful strategy that aligns engagement practices with community expectations.

Format

The Workshops are tailored to the specific needs of participants and are best delivered in a 2-3 day format depending on the depth of knowledge and practice desired. The workshops are highly interactive and rely on role-play exercises, case studies, discussion, and self-reflection.

1-Day Format: allows the group to grasp the basic pillars of the topic but allows less time for engagement, interaction, and reflection.

2-Day Format: allows the group to grasp the basic pillars, principles, and applications in an interactive and engaging format. Allows for critical reflection between days.

3-Day Format: allows ample time to build a solid foundation of the principles, practices, and skills that are necessary for broad application, as well as a deeper dive into the human dimensions of collaboration. This format allows for the best absorption and retention of information.

Workshops can be designed as Internal, Integrated, or Specialized depending on your needs.

Internal workshops: include participants within the same agency, organization, or discipline that need similar skills.

Integrated workshops: include participants across organizations or sectors that need to work more collaboratively with each other. Integrated workshops may also include stakeholders who engage with an agency or organization to address specific issues.

Specialized workshops: include practitioners who wish to develop advanced skills in designing, managing, and facilitating collaborative efforts.