Learning Labs
Team
Coaching
Learn how to hold space and assist new and established teams in their forming and developing.
2 day workshop
How do you co-create and hold a space where a team of people can collectively explore, question, cocreate, refine, adapt and agree ‘how we want to be and operate together’?
This two-day workshop is for experienced coaches, mentors and facilitators wishing to expand their practice to incorporate coaching teams. The learning lab includes:
- Your Role and Function
- Why and When to coach a team
- The differences between facilitating, moderating and coaching
- Your Language, Intention, Premise and Position
- Relinquish limiting beliefs
- Structures and Methods
- Attaining and maintaining your own resourceful state: “What do I do when…?”
- Turning issues, irritations and resistances into opportunities
Throughout, you will be able to practice in small groups to the level of challenge you desire, working together to refine your methodologies and develop your own remit with inspiration and guidance from others.
Team Coaching will consolidate the knowledge you already have, simplify the concepts new to you and broaden your scope, creating the opportunity for you to refine your vocabulary and grow into your own unique style. Our aim is to culminate the lab with confidence, clarity and assuredness in your own competence.
Team
Mediating
How to approach and structure sessions when a disagreement has moved to a place of unrest or conflict.
1 day workshop
Have you been asked to work with a team through and out of tensions, disgruntlement, historically unresolved experiences, and/or live conflicts? This learning layer explores the specific skills, structures and preparation crucial in creating the conditions for this important work to succeed.
Together we’ll look at laying the foundations for the group to achieve it’s aims, preparing yourself, framing sessions and the vocabulary that it’s useful to both use and refrain from using.
In this intensive one day session we’ll explore structural considerations in creating a conducive climate and agreements of conduct to begin- setting the “towards” and mutually agreeable outcomes the team would like to reach by the end of the process.
We’ll discuss how and when to hold the space tightly, and when you can relinquish or soften your hold when delivering sessions- establishing an environment in which everyone both listens and is heard with empathy, and how to regain the holding if you notice it slip.
We’ll cover the importance of position, targeting difficult elements such as remaining detached from the content whilst maintaining full presence and empathetic engagement; how to avoid being drawn in to judge, evaluate, advise, solve or take sides and importantly- what to do when you notice you are leaning towards a certain person, people, position or arguments.
Team Mediating requires focus, perseverance and a steady hand. It has the capacity to facilitate some of the most vital conversations and changes to help people or organisations move out of impasse’s.
Acquiring the skills to facilitate moving people out negative situations or mindsets is some of the most gratifying work I’ve done. Through this layer, you’ll see that it is possible to resolve and move on from – however grave the sitatuition.
Prerequisite: Team Coaching or Facilitating with Ease (2 days)
Facilitating
with Ease
This two-day workshop caters for those with some experience in facilitation who wish to hold groups and the individuals within, comfortably and with confidence.
2 day workshop
This two-day workshop caters for those with some experience in facilitation who wish to hold groups and the individuals within, comfortably and with confidence. Whether you seek to facilitate team meetings or moderate large groups, this in depth course focuses on what happens when facilitation works well, and what you can do to avoid pitfalls and deal resourcefully with challenging situations and moments. We will explore what you can do to:
- Set achievable outcomes
- Lead groups through agendas methodically
- Create and maintain a constructive working atmosphere
- Achieve agreements that people will act upon
You will be introduced to a range of approaches relevant to the efficient leading and structuring of sessions, effective use of listening, language and questioning skills, adapting to circumstances, and how to achieve consensus. We will explore potential issues such as:
- Making sure all voices are heard
- Dealing with disagreements or challenging behaviour and
- Briefs with hidden agendas
You will set the level of practice at which you want to work, and there will be space for you to bring scenarios you wish to see being tackled. Peer learning will be an important element of the training, as will working in small to medium size groups, and supporting each other. You will come away with new and improved skills and tools, and an in-depth understanding of the key approaches. A training & resource manual will support your post-course practice and facilitation work.
A follow-up course can be arranged in 12-18 months time.
Prerequisite: Prior experience of the GROW or FLOW model. Active Listening and Clean Coaching is beneficial but not a prerequisite.
AIR
Lib Lab
The AIR Liberatory Learning Laboratory draws together several Upwording learning layers into a cohesive learning programme that aims to re-contextualise coaching. By the end of the learning lab, participants receive peer accreditation and will be able to informally coach others.
7 x 3.5 hour sessions (24.5 hours in total) plus home practice (9 hours). Peer accredited.
This foundational learning lab consists of seven incremental layers of 3.5 hours upon which further learning can be built. Integrating components from our wider offer and topics specific to AIR Lib Lab creates a cohesive journey upskilling people to assist others.
More often than not, coaching has sadly become an excuse for giving advise or offering quick fixes through generic formulas, disregarding the diversity of experiences, opinions and interests within any given group or individual.
Assisting people’s development might already be part of your role, or a desired skill in your parenting, partnering, and/or peering. You may want to learn to Assist your colleagues, peers, friends, family when they are stressed or in distress, in their Imagining when they wish to dig deep, work something out, develop a dream, or Realise a plan.
Assist, Imagine, Realise A.I.R. may be the beginning of your journey, or the springboard for further development of your existing practice. AIR builds your capacity to support without steering, educating, pushing or pulling.
Assisting people’s rigorous reflecting, without contaminating their thinking or colouring their ideas with your own opinions, benefits both the explorer and the person holding space. The AIR Liberatory Learning Lab provides the foundational fibres of coaching practice, preparing participants to confidentally hold space for others, and with a diverse range of skills and competencies at their fingertips, assist them in their own explorations and considered impactful decision making.
The Layers include:
- Introduction, Overview, Climate Setting, Confidentiality, Purpose, Role/Function
- EARS, Holding Space
- Flow of Considerations, Observations
- Imagination Kitchen/1
- Imagination Kitchen/2
- Contracting, Clock, Practice
Crucial Critical Conversations
How to have and to hold them. Conflict resolution creating space to hold anger and moving to mutual benefits, places, and outcomes.
5 hour workshop (over one or two sessions)*
The workshop aims to broaden perspectives, deepen understanding, discover common grounds, providing structure and frameworks to move towards mutual places, learnings, agreements, and possible steps. We will begin by exploring the approach and essential elements required to have challenging conversations on a crucial topic, like war, vaccinations, gender identity, structural racism, privilege, or any other topics with widely different views, before looking specifically at the challenges faced by your group. By creating space for a range of views and banishing blaming, shaming and finger pointing, the goal is to elicit multiple perspectives and find ways to empathise, co-exist and gradually and respectfully move forward together with shared understanding
*An additional 2.5 hrs session focusses on inhabiting the facilitators role. Charles and Rivca facilitate a session on the group’s chosen live topics. Those in facilitator roles will be able to observe, and optionally practice by facilitating a section themselves.