[OSList] Training that may be of interest to you

[Birgitt Williams via OSList]

Dear friends and colleagues,
This email is about two on line workshops coming up November 14-16 for
Whole Person Process Facilitation (WPPF) and November 17-18 for Cross
Cultural Conflict Resolution (CCCR)  (9-5 EST). Workbooks and recordings
available to facilitate learning retention. You might be wondering what in
the world these two modules of the Genuine Contact program have to do with
OST? Possibly you don't know that the whole Genuine Contact program was
created with OST as its cornerstone and its inspiration.

I wish to share a little story as the basics for WPPF and CCCR go back to
1995, years before the Genuine Contact program was born. Rachel, my eldest,
at the time was a teenager. All four of my children had a unique childhood
in many ways. It was very common for them to come home from school and
enter into the living room to discover a circle of people who encouraged my
children to come and join in the circle and participate in the workshop
that was going on. And so Rachel, and different ones of her siblings
(Laura, David, and Aaron) would join in the circle and participate fully,
always impressing the adults by their engagement and contributions. They
were very active participants in the development of what would become Whole
Person Process Facilitation and Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution.

And what was I experimenting with at the time with all of these gatherings
at our home, made up of leaders, managers, facilitators and consultants? I
was in love with Open Space Technology from my introduction to it in 1992.
As a CEO of a multi-service health and social service agency, we started
using OST as soon as I learned it. I was probably the first person to use
OST multiple times in succession in the same organization. We had some
wonderful things happen as a result, and also some big challenges that we
were not ready for. And one of those challenges was that we needed to have
a method for meetings for when OST was not the right method to use....that
had the same basic value base, was open, and yet allowed for an agenda that
could be more guided. In my search for such a method, I could not find one.
And so together with the many who were willing to be in the experiment with
me who had participated in various OST meetings with me, Whole Person
Process Facilitation was created. it is a fantastic method to use in
planning for OST meetings and in carrying out a post-OST convergence/action
planning process, and in carrying out a debrief meeting with the sponsors
of the OST. It is fantastic in that it is congruent with OST in its values
and basic principles.....so the sponsors have a coherent experience in all
phases of a well done OST meeting.

 We also realized we needed a special process to handle situations of
conflict when the conflict didn't get solved in the OST or WPPF meetings.
>From this need, Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution was created.

If you are like me, you know that OST is a fantastic method for cross
cultural conflict resolution. WPPF is another great way to accomplish
conflict resolution. Using either method, which I recommend to clients, we
focus on a business goal and not on the conflict resolution, recognizing
that conflict resolution occurs as a by-product of the meeting in which
important business gets accomplished. Many years ago I experienced that
people in OST meetings sometimes came forward with 'we must resolve our
conflict' as a prioritized action out of the OST meeting. At that point,
they had usually self- identified a small number of people who were deeply
enmeshed in conflict, getting in the way of good forward movement in the
organization. These people would say 'we are willing to get beyond our
conflict but we don't know how!'. Many of these conflicts were cross
cultural and were decades or more old. The big breakthrough in the OST
meeting was that it was finally named, and there was finally a willingness
to say 'enough'. In early days, the solution was to carry out another OST,
this time focusing on conflict resolution. Sometimes this worked, sometimes
it didn't. I realized I also needed a method, some skills and knowledge,
specifically dedicated to cross cultural conflict resolution for these
specific situations after first using OST or WPPF to resolve the conflict.

And so our module of Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution was created.I have
only needed to use this method less than twelve times in twenty years. When
it was needed, I was very grateful to know how to be of service in this way.

There is lots more to the story of the development of these methods. For
now, I will simply add that in those experiments to get the methods right,
friends of my children also started showing up and the door and then
agreeing to participate...they were actually knocking at the door in the
hope of being invited in.

It gives me great joy to facilitate these two modules in November with
Rachel who has herself worked with WPPF and CCCR for twenty years. We look
forward to sharing stories and examples, and of facilitating a meaningful
learning journey. The training itself is carried out within a WPPF
container in an on line environment, with participants experiencing this
method of facilitating a training, in real time, online.

Thank you for considering our offer....and for passing word of this
training to others that you believe would be interested.

Facilitation team: Birgitt Williams and Rachel Bolton
More information: www.dalarinternational.com and go to 'upcoming
workshops'. If you wish to learn a little more about our training in
general and what to expect, go to
http://www.dalarinternational.com/services/training/ and you will see our
focus on that beautiful German word 'Ausbildung' for which we don't
actually have an English translation.

Blessings to you all,
Birgitt
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20161012/3c6155f8/attachment.htm>