Groupwork and Training
Building Relationships, Circles and Flow
Building authentic relationships, dynamic structural design, and natural flow are the foundational keys to creating sustainable self-organized communities.
I work with groups of all types, sizes and development stages, ranging from large networks and established self-governing communities to small grassroots or caused-based groups and shared purpose learning circles. Successfully navigating the shift into self-organizing/management can be especially challenging. I specialize in helping cohesive up-and-running groups as well as committed teams that are interested in building their shared vision, interests, and purposeful practices into functioning self-organized communities. Understanding that every client has a unique journey, we will collaborate to customize the services that meet your group’s particular needs and organizational goals.
Building Relationships
Nurturing Authentic Connections and Purposeful Group Environments
I focus on creating inspired and fertile group environments that organically draw people together, nurture meaningful connection, and facilitate an open exchange of core values and personal experiences. From there, shared interest and vision “clusters” naturally form, allowing participants to explore deeper commitments and how they would like to share their emerging purpose with others.
Working with change agents and impact leaders, I help communities and organizations:
Co-create and implement relationship building strategies
Identify founding principles and shared goals
Develop a meeting or session design
Facilitate, host and convene spaces that meet a group’s needs
Building Circles
Creating Dynamic and Supportive Structural Design
Throughout history, the circle has served as the ideal framework for empowering a group’s unique journey toward self-governance and management. From ancient tribal rituals used in healing, storytelling, dance, and music to today’s online communities, circles have provided a natural structure for confirming group identity and fostering connection, collaboration and shared purpose.
Through an integrated approach combining consultation, coaching, educational training, and ongoing operational support, I help clients to:
Develop a diverse and inclusive structure that supports their community, organization and network culture
Efficiently build internal circles
Grow through experiential learning and modeling
Define the purpose, policies, group charters, and stakeholder aims that guide circle work
Journey towards individual, circle and shared purpose alignment to create the foundation for scalability and localization
Building Flow
Maximizing Eco-System Resources through Community Bridging
Natural flow occurs when different circles within a self-organized community, organization, or group are connected through meaningful relationships, shared purpose, and a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities. Functioning within flow enables groups or eco-systems to move forward together and adjust to the needs of the moment. However, this can create a challenge under certain circumstances as the circles within one community are not able to address a larger shared purpose, i.e., global warming.
In creating flow among eco-systems, I guide communities, organizations, and networks to:
Evaluate and maximize their eco-system resources within a single community network (an intra-community eco-system) or among multiple communities (an inter-community network eco-system)
Strategize and facilitate the complex process of eco-system “bridging” when a certain level of functional maturity is reached by the self-organized groups and their members
Leverage their eco-systems in conjunction with other eco-systems to enable larger scale, more impactful and effectively coordinated changes to take place
“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
— Charles Darwin