MINI-WORKSHOPS

It is common for groups only to have a few hours and still want a program that will be effective. Therefore, we have become skillful and very experienced in adapting to short time frames.

Probably it is wise just to repeat the list of topics that are mentioned under Keynote Speeches…..with just a few examples of how we adapt those topics when we have the time and space to get people up to move around.

Here are those topics:

• Managing Change, Transition and Transformation
• The Seven Principles of Effective Change Management
  
  
• Creating a Work Culture Which Recognizes and Honors All People: Bringing the Self to Work
• Creating a Work Culture Which is Radically Receptive to Change: Becoming a Self-Organizing-System
• What We Can Learn from the Animals about Working Together: Empire Penguins, Homing Pigeons, Tower Building Termites, and Pets Who Know When their Owners are Coming Home
  
  
• Life's Great Transitions: Adolescence, Midlife and the Elder Passage
• Men and Women at Midlife: Intimacy and Identity
• A Rite of Passage for Men at Midlife
• The Four Soul Tasks of Men at Midlife
• Initiation to Adulthood: What this Ancient Rite of Passage Looks Like in its Contemporary Form
  
  
• Self and Identity: The Mystery of Leadership
• Understanding Projection: The Psychological Transaction between a Follower and a Leader
  
  
• Time Management
• Working with Difficult People
• Understanding and Managing Stress

And here are some of the group exercises we add when we turn a speech into a workshop:

• Managing Change, Transition and Transformation (when we have two hours).

  In addition to introducing the participants to the concepts and giving them some assignments to discuss with a partner at their tables or in their seats, we get them up to create "a picture of the group." By answering just three questions on a one to ten scale and then standing in a continuum that is formed by the way people responded to these questions, we can begin to personalize the information in a way that it very enlightening.

  By the way, the three questions are…

1. In your life generally… do you prefer stability or novelty? If you prefer stability, be closer to the lower end of the scale, a 1 or a 2or a 3. If you prefer novelty, be closer to the higher end. If you are right in the middle, choose a 5 or a 6.
2. In your life at this time…. do you have little change or lots of change?While they are standing in position, we talk about the relationship between the two questions. People are learning a lot about themselves and the group!!!!
3. Do you function most effectively with clarity or ambiguity? If your preference is clarity, take a low number. If it is ambiguity, take a high number.

While they are standing there we talk about communication problems. Once again, this is very helpful to groups. And it is especially helpful to leaders, who too often find themselves preferring ambiguity. Now they know why they are so often misunderstood.

• Creating a Work Culture Which is Radically Receptive to Change: Becoming a Self-Organizing-System (when we have two hours)
• This is a fun workshop. We explain the concepts, talk a little about the need for change, discuss communication, co-operation and competition (see COMPETITION under the Wisdom of Words), and then get them out of their seats to experience all of these things through exercises. Frankly, we have many exercises to use in this workshop. Perhaps, rather than listing them all (and losing much of their richness in the translation), it might be time for you to either give us a call, send us an email, or drop us a note

• Men and Women at Midlife: Intimacy and Identity
• A Rite of Passage for Men at Midlife
• The Four Soul Tasks of Men at Midlife

  All of these lectures draw upon Crossing the Soul's River, Bill's book about men at midlife. They work fine as lectures, but are much more interesting if you can just add one simple exercise. It goes like this:

  Please take a moment and think of yourself in your high school. Think about what that culture told you about being a man or a woman and answer these questions:

  Who were the boys who everyone assumed would become "real men?" What did they look like? What did they do? How could you tell they were going to be "real men?"

  Who were the girls who everyone assume would become "real women?" What did they look like? What did they do? How could you tell they were going to be "real women?"

  Then we have everyone line up according to the year they were graduated from high school and discuss in small groups what they recall from those years. Without exception the notion of a real man was someone who was an athlete, a leader - someone like the captain of the football team. And the real woman was pretty, vivacious, friendly, caring - someone like the head cheerleader.

  Now we are ready to talk about the social tasks of adolescence - establishing an identity for boys and developing intimacy for girls. We soon discover that the tasks get reversed in the classic midlife crises - men are seeking intimacy while women are seeing an autonomous identity.

  It's one thing to talk about his in a speech. It's a much more powerful thing to experience it in this simple exercise.

• Time Management (when we have two hours or more)

  We have developed a very simple little questionnaire - just twenty questions that demonstrate how people PERCEIVE TIME in differing ways and how they ORGANIZE TIME in differing ways.

  When we have enough time for everyone to answer the questions and score their own questionnaires, we ask them to line up according to their responses on their perceptions of time. Then we ask those both extreme ends to DESCRIBE TIME. While they are discussing with one another we take those who answered in the mid-range and predict the ways that the two groups will respond to the same request - JUST DESCRIBE TIME.

  Then we have them line up to how they responded to the second issue or organizing time. We ask those on the two ends to TELL US HOW YOU MAKE A TRIP HAPPEN. Once again, while they are talking we gather the observer group and give them some predictions.

  When people see how dramatically different are our views and relationships to TIME, we can then move on to the range of challenges that come with Time Management.