Insensitivity training
Some of you have been required to take a course or seminar in what is called “Sensitivity Training.” This training is designed to make you more sensitive to the feelings and emotions of other people with the goal of improving relationships. The whole idea emerges from the assumption that many relational difficulties stem from our lack of sensitivity to others. This approach assumes the opposite– that most of our relationship problems come from being over sensitive. Participants will learn the art of “self-regulation,” becoming less sensitive to those people and situations that normally “press their buttons.”
Anxiety Inoculation
At its most basic, anxiety or “automatic reactivity” is found in all species of protoplasmic life. It is the single most important phenomenon in understanding how organisms and organizations function. While it is necessary for life, when acute or chronic, it becomes the primary promoter of all symptoms from conflict to cancer from miscommunication to birth defects. Participants in this course will become acquainted with the antidote for anxiety.
Please don’t try to understand me
Understanding yourself and others can be a tricky business. No one can look into the mind and heart of another in order to understand them better. But you can observe their behavior and discover a short cut to what you need to know in order to establish productive relationships with family and co-workers.
The three legs of effective communication
While rules and techniques are important to the communication process; they are only as good as one’s awareness of how the emotional system influences that communication. This course will help participants understand Communication as an Emotional Phenomenon. Participants will learn the three critical variables effecting communication (Distance, Direction, and Automatic Reactivity.) and ways to modify each.
The myth of the primary site
Why what you see is not always what you get and the problem you get is never the problem you can handle. It is a myth to assume that the site of a problem in any organization is found at its location. What is primary is not a site but the coming together of necessary and sufficient processes at a particular moment. Participants will be introduced to a new way of viewing their respective organizations systemically so that they can begin to address the underlying processes that give rise to the problems in the first place.
“Annie get your gun” How women lose their allure and eventually their men
It wasn’t Annie’s shooting and bare back riding that attracted men to her. It was something else. Something that all women have and it’s more important than knowledge, education, looks, money, or anything else that might come to mind. Relationships constitute a ‘dance” between the biologically rooted emotional forces of togetherness and individuality. Participants will begin to learn the steps of this dance so that all of their relationships will flow in an easier and more fulfilling way. Men are also encouraged to attend this workshop.
How do teachers teach when everywhere they turn they’re being sabotaged
Tired of being a surrogate parent, friend, social worker, therapist, conflict mediator, motivator, disciplinarian, healer, administrator, and oh, yes, lest we forget-teacher? So how do you keep your sanity? Not by trying to keep your sanity. You can never be an expert in all these areas of expectation nor do you need to. Wouldn’t it be nice to invest more of your energy into what you got into teaching for in the first place? Gain a new perspective as well as obtain skills to better maneuver through this impossible territory to get others (including parents) to work with you instead of against you.
Why can’t we all just get along
Yes, we can. This workshop will focus on promoting harmony and reducing conflict in the various organizations in which they participate. But “getting along” doesn’t come simply by getting people to communicate more, by being more understanding or more sensitive, or appreciating diversity. Harmony does not come by promoting harmony. Participants will learn the shortcuts for promoting better relationships in their organizations & families.
How to keep your cool when all about are losing theirs
Any of us can become “infected” by the “craziness” and hysteria of those around us. Participants will learn how they can stay engaged and connected to others without themselves becoming “infected.”
Subverting resistance to change 1: Dealing with stubborn, inflexible people at home and office
In any organization, including the family, it is most often the least motivated and most recalcitrant members who consume the greatest amount of the leader’s energy and time. It doesn’t matter how attentive one is in trying to improve their situation, these individuals will require more and more “fixes”. This course will help leaders identify these individuals and introduce them to a more efficient and effective way to manage them.
Subverting resistance to change 2
Creating lasting change in organizations can require a great deal of energy and perseverance. Often, the attempt is akin to poking jello. Once the pressure is relieved the organization reverts to its original shape. The more pressure that is exerted the more resistance to change is produced. Participants will discover a tested and less time consuming approach to subverting resistance to change.
Playfulness and Productivity
The attributes that are necessary for playfulness are the same ones necessary for creativity and productivity. Participants will learn how to be more playful with serious matters and how this will increase their success at achieving their goals.
Becoming a step down transformer: Modifying anxiety in organization and self
To the extent any individual can begin to view their own self apart from the system (work, family, etc) in which they function, they will lower the anxiety of the whole system while, at the same time, improving the functioning of all members of that system. Participants will learn how to become “step-down transformers” in their organizations.
Burn yourself out and come back in a blaze of glory
Burn out comes less from overwork than from the way we become stuck emotionally. It has less to do with stress than with the individual’s reaction to stress. Stress is not so much the result of difficulties, or pressure applied, as it is the result of how we respond, or react to these situations. Participants will learn to expand their repertoire of responses to stressful situations so that they can reduce the likelihood of burnout.
The most important variable to your healing
People have within them the capacity for self-healing, both physical and emotional. Physicians do not heal you. Counselors do not heal you. Physicians do not stitch your cells back together. At their best they provide the optimum conditions for you to heal yourself. Participants will learn what is needed to optimize their own healing capacity both emotionally and physically.
Thriving from Divorce
You’ve heard about all the devastating effects of divorce on couples and their children. While not underestimating the pain and struggles brought on by this toxic situation, this workshop focuses on turning this challenge into an opportunity for fulfillment, happiness, and positive growth. Participants will be introduced to “self-differentiation” as a “broad-spectrum antibiotic” to the emotional toxins that attack the functioning of adults and children who must live through divorce and shown how they can grow in response to this challenge. Participants will be shown ways to expand the possible responses to divorce in order to increase the probability that this experience will improve the overall functioning and happiness of all parties involved.
The art of manipulation
We all do it. Most of us do it more often than we are aware or would admit. Participants will learn how best to manipulate and when they would most likely achieve their goals by doing so.
Proximity and protoplasm: Violence at work and home
Long before violence erupts its seeds have been planted in the emotional system of the organization.
A major threat to successful marriages: Seriousness
Usually, when marriages become troubled it is because they have “gone serious,” which further erodes the relationship. Participants will come to understand that “people separate because they can’t separate.”They will learn how “serious” attitudes undermine successful relationships and how to maintain a playful attitude while remaining responsible.
The geometry of relationships
The relationship between two people is never just between two people. Most of the struggles and tensions we have with others are never just with those we we have relationships with. They often include all of our family systems and others we have “triangled” into the relationships. Participants will learn how to discern self from all these “invisible” triangles that lurk in the shadows of their relationships and as a result will find a new satisfaction in those relationships.
Handling hot topics with a calming effect
Participants will learn three rules that will assist them in approaching any controversial topic in such a way that it will have the least potential to create conflict and the best chance of being heard.
Why management always gets the union it deserves
The proof is that for decades nothing much has changed in the relationship between management and union. The problem is “persistence of form” and how the union functions exactly as the organization requires. If you dare and can survive this training, you will see things you’ve never seen before that will improve your relationship with unions.
The Mother-Daughter connection
The relationship difficulties between daughters and their mothers are so well known that they have become the grist for sitcoms, comedians, and self-help books. But for those who would like a better relationship it is no laughing matter. The closer mothers and daughters are to one another the greater the difficulties, but this also means the greater the potential. Participants will learn how to improve and in some cases, where necessary, heal these relationships and move from adversaries to best friends. It is not necessary for both daughters and mothers to attend. It only requires one motivated person to change the relationship.
Why relying on your knowledge and expertise will always get you into trouble
One study pointed out that if a physician read one research article every week from medical journals (no small task), at the end of a year he or she would be 800 years behind. In a world where information proliferates every nano-second what is one to do? Participants will be introduced to the important information filter that can make the difference in their ability to function in their respective organizations.
Calling all angels: Diversity in the workplace
The focus on diversity often undermines our ability to appreciate our differences as human beings. Gender, Race, Age, Sexual Orientation, Ethnicity, and other commonly noted differences are not the one’s that count: that disrupt our relationships and undermine teamwork. Participants will learn the one difference in people that makes all the difference.
The art of inflicting pain: Promoting the health of your organization
“Peace Mongers” invest much energy trying to spare others any discomfort. They tend to avoid conflict at all costs. This attitude often denies others the opportunity to grow, heal, and mature. Our reluctance to hurt others feelings prevent us from doing all that is possible for their benefit. Participants will lean how to inflict “healing pain” in such a way that others will thank you for it.
Discovering and altering the Emotional System of your organization
While most consultants offer administrative, managerial, or technological innovation these do not modify the organizational emotional processes in any lasting way. Whether the organization is a colony of ants, a family, or a multi-national corporation, the organizational emotional system has more to due with the successful functioning of that organization and its individual members than any other single variable. Participants will learn to “see” the “emotional system” of their organization and how they can bring lasting change to that system with an associated improvement in their members’ functioning.
Customer service in an age of whiners and crybabies
How you can deescalate situations with customers without “giving away the bank.” When the “squeaky wheel” often gets what it wants, organizations are often prone to give up too much to please the customer. Participants will learn how to retain customers without sacrificing their own financial “bottom line” to do so.
Accessing your higher brain to improve productivity and creativity
Most of us have had the experience, following an important conversation, of wishing we had thought to have said some things we didn’t. The reason we didn’t was because we were working out of our “Reptilian” brain. Which area of the brain do you most often function out of: Participants will learn about the Emotional Brain and how to access their higher brain to improve their own functioning, including their creativity and productivity, while at the same time, improving the functioning of those around them.
The Battle of Gettysburg and the leadership edge
This turning point in the Civil War highlights many of the key elements of great leadership. Participants will look at Generals Lee, Longstreet, Armatage, Pickett, Hancock, Buford, and Colonels Chamberlain, and Vincent among others.
Leadership through self-differentiation
Leadership is not something you do TO people or something you do WITH people but rather it is something you do TO YOURSELF. Effective leadership has less to do with the leader’s knowledge of his/her organization than it does with the leader’s knowledge of and capacity for “Self-Differentiation.” This workshop will introduce participants to the biologically rooted concept and process of self-differentiation; its immediate and long term effects on self and on their organizations, as well as tools to assist in this task.
Conflict Mediation
Conflict mediation only works with two parties that are motivated to resolve their situation. No amount of mediation will ever solve conflict between two parties that are not motivated to do so. This workshop will explore the ways people can be motivated toward a desire to mediate.
Helping your spouse find balance between work and family
Participants will be introduced to creative ways to help their spouses discover a healthy balance between work and family.
All in the family business: Successfully walking the tightrope
Participants will be introduced to ways they can participate in a family business with out creating or perpetuating problems in their primary relationships.
A male perspective on how women can best handle “invasive” men in the workplace
People feel a level of discomfort when they sense that their personal boundaries are being breached, but often don’t know how to respond without injuring the working relationship. Participants will learn how to handle “Invasive” customers, and colleagues while maintaining a more productive and lasting relationship
Women leading in a male world while maintaining their unique perspective
This workshop will address specific issues for women in positions of leadership. Participants will gain insight into handling their specific experiences as women leaders from the unique perspective of organizational systems.
