At Shape Shift Strategies Inc, we believe that investing time and financial resources in training for staff and Board members can make a difference in your business or organization’s productivity, creativity, internal and external communications, customer satisfaction, community relationships, and more. We offer a range of programs that can be tailored to your specific needs and outcomes.

Worldview Intelligence Programs

Each of us has a worldview. In fact, we each have more than one. Our worldviews operate 80% unconsciously and impact how we see and interact with the world, events, situations and other people. Worldviews influence communication, decision-making and workplace, community and family cultures. Tension and conflict or apathy and resignation are spectrums of response when worldviews collide. An individual, organization or community that is worldview aware offers greater leadership potential, more inclusive, welcoming workplaces and creativity that arises from the interaction of multiple worldviews, leading more often to innovative ideas or solutions and greater workforce engagement.

To address this learning need, Shape Shift Strategies and the Meadowlark Institute have co-developed the Worldview Intelligence Program that includes ½ day, full day and multi-day explorations of personal, organizational and social/cultural worldviews. Worldview Intelligence comprises a set of patterns, practices and frameworks for working with worldviews individually and collectively. It offers ways to surface assumptions, beliefs and value systems of individuals and organizations in reflective and curious ways rather than adversarial or defensive ways, providing the potential for more comprehensive approaches and solutions to emerge on a range of issues that might be mildly oppositional to completely divisive to seemingly unsolvable.

Art of Participatory Leadership (AoPL) & Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter (AoH)

In every organization, group and community, people are calling for leadership. They want leaders who can work in new and collaborative ways, show the way through complex situations and take wise action. This calls for a new look at how we define leadership, and how we invite participation so that everyone can commit and contribute. The key lies in looking both at what you choose to focus on and how you engage others in conversations that matter.

The AoPL and AoH trainings are typically three-day hands-on workshops in practices and methods that invite participants to explore how engaging the resources and collective intelligence of a diverse group of people or stakeholders, through effective dialogue, can lead to wise solutions for the future. In essence participants learn how to go from strategic conversations to wise action and systemic change.

Shape Shift Strategies Inc. and partners can provide your organization or group with ½ day, one day and 3-day workshops.

Art of Hosting Awareness Day

An Art of Hosting Awareness Day is a half-day workshop to learn about the essence of participatory leadership and gain a taste of what a 3-day AoPL/AoH workshop is. This half-day workshop will provide participants with an introduction to a few participatory approaches that can be used to develop a more inclusive approach to project design or planning and general management issues. An Art of Hosting Awareness workshop is for anyone who wants to experience a different perspective of leadership which shifts our patterns of organizing and interacting, grounds meaningful actions, sets free each person’s creativity and intelligence in order to achieve real involvement, better cooperation and sustainable results together.

Specific Hosting or Facilitation Methods Workshops

Shape Shift Strategies Inc. can provide ½ day to full day workshops on specific methods for engaging people in conversations that matter. These participatory leadership tools are designed to enable us to work together with intelligence and wisdom in large or small groups to create an opportunity for all voices present to be heard and listened to and where people are treated with respect regardless of their views. These workshops include:

• Design Process/Responsive Planning Framework: Drawing on the chaordic stepping stones planning process, this workshop outlines an approach for small groups to work through every aspect of a project ­– whether it is a staff meeting, strategic planning or change process, a community engagement event or any other planning need.
• Circle Practice: Based on PeerSpirit Circle Practice, this workshop provides the fundamentals of circle including three principles of circle practice, three points of leadership, creating the center, the role of the guardian, the four laws of respect, and setting the outer rim.
• World Café: This workshop is a deeper dive into the 7 principles of World Café, including particular attention to crafting questions. If you have been hosting World Cafés or plan to host one and want to explore more fully the nature and power of the methodology this workshop is for you.
• Open Space Technology: This workshop will provide an overview of how to plan and host a meeting using Open Space Technology. We will go through the elements of Open Space, including opportunities to practice with the opening script that we use at the start of an Open Space.
• Finding Solutions: Harnessing Human Dynamics/Theory U: There are natural human dynamic rhythms of planning, creativity and innovation. If we understand how to harness them, our planning and engagement processes will be more effective. This workshop provides a snapshot experience with suggestions on how to use Theory U in your organizational or community planning or engagement initiatives.
• Listening Skills: This workshop provides the fundamentals of Compassionate Listening practices including the Five Practices of Compassionate Listening, drama triangle and truth box and exercises in centering, triggers and reflective listening.