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“Everything is not fine” – Grief in the Collective (Self-Study Program)
“We believe that change with its accompanying loss, grief work, and conflict is constant. Organizations that develop mastery in working with change can sustain optimal effectiveness. These leaders and organizations recognize that change cannot be managed, that energy spent trying to manage change is wasted energy, and that productive use of individual and organizational energy is achieved by working with change rather than against it.”
– one of five foundational beliefs of Genuine Contact.
How do you bring up a topic as heavy as grief in your collective circles (organizations, teams, groups, and communities)? Collectives, like individuals, also go through constant change – particularly in recent times. These changes could be positive or negative. It could be as small as a change in the cozy office setup or as big as a change in leadership or the end of a project, receiving a big grant, or a merger with another organization.
Covid has brought its own set of changes and challenges – working from home, loss of projects, laying off people, a shift in needs, changes in the external environment, reduced time horizons for planning and strategy, etc. These changes can impact the group as a whole, specific teams, specific locations, or specific groups of people across the organization.
In this workshop, we discuss what you, as part of a collective, could do to restore the vibrancy of your group over time. You will also learn how to create spaces within a group to explore what people are collectively grieving about at a point of time to allow for a sense of individual and collective awareness and offer an opportunity for a group to come together and create a greater will for forward movement.
You will leave this workshop with:
- Exploring the idea of “grief” in the context of groups caused by change and why it matters to have spaces to allow this to surface and be discussed
- Understanding leadership in a collective that is grieving – roles and responsibilities
- Experience using simple tools to support a collective awareness around grief in a life nurturing way
- Pitfalls to watch out for
- Leave with inspiration and ideas to explore this further in our own teams, communities, and organizations
How do we bring wholeness back to our collective endeavors? Working with grief in an organization can feel like an impossible task to take on. Somehow, working with, instead of against, grief allows a collective to move forward in surprising and beneficial ways.
Creating a Culture of Leadership in Communities (Self-Study Program)
What is needed to create a culture of leadership in a community, an association, or a network where people work voluntarily for a common interest? A culture of leadership is a culture where the leadership for taking initiatives and achieving results is shared among many, such as in neighborhood organizations, climate actions, sports clubs, or the church.
Voluntary organizations often engage a lot of people when they begin as a movement or as an answer to a need in the community. When the start-up phase is done, the organization is established and a steering committee is elected, it seems as if other members don´t think they are needed any longer. This leaves a small group of people to carry out the necessary tasks to keep the organization alive and so the members can still enjoy the benefits.
In this workshop, we discuss what you, as part of a steering committee or board, could do to keep the vibrant life in a new organization over time. You will also learn how you can support a dormant organization to be the bustling meeting place it was in the beginning. The organization you support could be a political party, a sports association, an economic association, a choir, a parents’ group, or any other organization, that depends only on engaged people doing the work for the benefit of all members.
You will leave this self-study workshop with:
- Knowledge about a culture of leadership and how it can support engagement in voluntary organizations
- Key elements to work with
- Some first steps to re-create engagement and passion
- Pitfalls to watch out for
Leading an organization based only on voluntary work requires a somewhat different perspective than working with employed people. The main difference is that you can only count on their passion and spare time to get the work down, and this makes self-organization and shared responsibility keys to success.
From the Bored Room to the Board Room (Self-Study Program)
‘Change is the only constant’, is a familiar phrase. ‘Change Management’ is another common management term. After having literally grown up with these phrases, our entire worldview turned upside down when we learned from Birgitt Williams, ‘change cannot be managed, we can only learn to navigate through it’.
During this workshop, we will offer you ways to navigate through change by using the simple, yet profound framework from the Genuine Contact Program.
Through the journey of NIIT Foundation’s organization transformation phase as a case study, we will share the power of the Genuine Contact Tools, Whole Person Process Facilitation, and the Genuine Contact Principles. This Genuine Contact way of working enabled our 15+ years old not-for-profit organization first to successfully transform itself starting with a change in mission. And over the last 4 years, with the help of this awareness ‘change cannot be managed’, we have continued to build our capacities as a Genuine Contact Organization (GCO).
What helped us, an organization of around 400 team members, in creating a learning culture? How are we continuing to sustain this life-nourishing and genuine way of working within an organization?
Through this workshop, we intend to share the skills and capacities we developed using the Genuine Contact way of working to navigate through an ever-changing environment. It is our hope that all organizations (irrespective of size), professionals, and individuals can benefit through this transformation process.