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    Communication Skills Workshops

    In Person & Virtual

Resiliency and Change Management

Techniques to maneuver through change

Resiliency and Change Management

This highly interactive and fun Resiliency and Change Management workshop will provide you the tools and techniques to help you become more resilient and effective when you are in the middle of change

Contact Laurie now at (248) 761-7510 for Resilience and Change Management Training.

This course is ideal for anyone who uses email to communicate internally and externally.

Objectives

  • Document three strategies to use to successfully maneuver through changing times
  • Explain why "resilience" is important to their personal and professional lives
  • List the seven Factors of Resilience (according to L. Hoopes and M. Kelly)
  • Describe three activities they can do to improve their own resilience
  • Identify three ways to lead a more "resilient life"

We will customize this program or coaching session to address your wants and needs.

Potential Topics of the Workshop

Overview of Change. In this opening section we will examine the emotional course of change and examine the change house. We will then look at tools to help us be more resilient in changing times. "According to Dr. Linda Hoopes and Mark Kelly authors of 'Managing Change with Personal Resilience' they've identified 7 Aspects of Resilient Individuals … basically as they look at people who are resilient when it comes to adapting and thriving in change, they saw seven traits among these individuals. "These seven guidelines help us understand how to best adjust our own attitudes, actions, and behaviors to be the most resilient as we can be. Hoopes and Kelly's 7 Aspects will frame our workshop here today."

Positive View of the World. In this section, we will look at optimism and internal dialogues. We will begin working on a "What went well Journal or Diary of Success" and a resource wheel.

Positive Self-Concept. Those who have a positive self-view tend to see themselves as a valuable, capable person feel equipped to deal with whatever comes their way and not feel victimized by circumstance See actions as influencing others We will do an activity where we examine a section of your life and how you handled adversity.

Focused Sense of Purpose. At this point in the program, we examine how clarity of purpose helps deal with change that can be very disruptive. We will give tools to help build the ability to improve short and long-term focus.

Flexible Thinking. Those who have flexible thinking: Enjoy new or complex ideas Tolerate ambiguity well Open to different perspectives Generate creative solutions for adapting to change

Social Flexibility. Let's shift to Hoopes and Kelly's 5th Aspect of Resilience: Social flexibility … or being able to get outside ourselves and draw on the resources of others. They know their own strengths and weaknesses – like what we explored earlier – but know where to go when they have a 'gap' in resources."

Dealing with Ambiguity. Hoopes and Kelly note that truly resilient people know how to handle ambiguity in their life effectively. They can transform the confusion of ambiguous situations by applying structured approaches.

Proactive Experimentation. Hoopes and Kelly note that "… effective strategies adapting to change are only useful if they are applied when the time is ripe. As circumstances change, windows of opportunity open and close swiftly. The person who waits for complete certainty before taking action loses the chance to take advantage of favorable conditions.

Contact Laurie now at (248) 761-7510 for
Resilience and Change Management.

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SECTION 1:

An Introduction to the Program and to Change Management

  1. Setting the Stage This brief section is for participants to introduce themselves and set the groundwork for the workshop
  2. What is "Change Management?" Change is inevitable, but for many it's not easy to move through. We'll begin our workshop with a discussion about what exactly is change management. What do smart organizations do to successfully work through change and changing times?

    We will then look at how change impacts us as humans. We'll briefly discuss how modern change management practices started based on the work of Schmidt-Tanger and people's grief and how that applies to workplace change.

  3. The 4 Rooms of Change (a.k.a. "The Change House") In this section we will take a deep dive into Claes Janssen's 4 Rooms of Change (also known as "The Change House"). This helps participants understand the best phases of change that most people go through: contentment, denial, confusion, and renewal. Participants will explore each room and do a "teach-back activity" about that room, which they will have in their detailed Participant Guide.

SECTION 2:

An Introduction to the 7 Aspects of Resilience

Participants will be introduced to the seven ways to apply the work by Linda Hoopes and Mark Kelly from their book "Managing Change with Personal Resilience."

The 7 Aspects of Resilience are:

  • Positive view of the world
  • Positive self-concept
  • Focused sense of purpose
  • Flexible thinking
  • Social flexibility
  • Handling ambiguity
  • Proactive experimentation

OUTCOME: Participants will understand the path our program will take and the specific seven areas of focus to be explored in the workshop to "amp up" their own personal resilience in times of change.

Ready to start this workshop?

SECTION 3:

Aspect #1 – Positive View of the World
and
Aspect #2 – Positive Self-Concept

In this section, participants focus on the first two aspects of resiliency, both having to do with "positivity." Participants will experience three activities to help develop these two aspects of resilience.

  1. Positive Self-Concept Here we define what Hoopes and Kelly mean by this term and how it impacts resiliency. We move into Activity #1: The Lifeline where participants look back at a five- year period of their lives where they had "highs and lows" within their personal and/or professional journey. The goal is to determine how they moved from negative to positive and begin to apply those past activities they used to move from "low" to "high" in their current change situation.
  2. Positive View of the World We switch our focus to how Hoopes and Kelly define this aspect of resiliency, and how our world is more skewed to looking at the "glass being half-empty."
    We move into Activity #2: The What-Went-Well Journal where participants will create a diary of success based upon the past few days on "what went well." Psychologists note that–as we document the "good" in our daily lives–we start to look for the good unconsciously; helping us to shift our perspective to the positive versus dwelling on the negative.
  3. Reinforcing Aspects #1 and #2 of Resiliency Our final activity in this area supports both aspects of resiliency. In Activity #3: The Resource Wheel participants create "The Resource Wheel:" identifying the skills/abilities/competencies that participants currently have so they can both rely on those skills in times of change and begin to understand what skills they need to supplement with their own development OR seek in others to be more resilient.

OUTCOME: Participants will leave this section with three clear ways to discover and practice their own resilience in these two aspects of resiliency. In addition, participants will also have time to reflect on their own "battery level" to these two aspects of resiliency, with the goal to begin to focus their energy on those aspects of resiliency that are more "depleted" than others after the workshop has ended.

SECTION 4:

Aspect #3 – A Focused Sense of Purpose

In this section participants will look at what impacts their focus as it relates to being resilient in times of change: both short-term focus and long-term focus.

  1. Short-Term Focus Here we refer to the book "Brain Rules" by neuromolecular biologist Dr. John Medina to understand how the human brain thinks about "focus" and best practices to working with a short-term sense of focus.
  2. Long-Term Focus Spending most of our time on the "long-term focus," Hoopes and Kelly note that those individuals who are more resilient in times of change understand their long-term focus and do work that supports those long-term goals. Here we do an activity that helps to explore participant's Personal Value System. In Activity #4 we identify the Top 5 Personal Values, then analyze the "work we do" and see how those activities support — or detract — our personal values. Finally, we think about our personal values and their alignment with the workplace values, and have an open discussion on what that means to our personal resilience.

OUTCOME: Participants will have a strong understanding of how both short- and long-term focus can impact their resiliency in times of change, and will have identified their Top 5 Personal Values.

Ready to start this workshop?

SECTION 5:

Aspect #4 – Flexible Thinking
and
Aspect #5 – Social Flexibility

This part of the program examines the two aspects of resiliency according to Hoopes and Kelly that focus on being flexible: flexible thinking and social flexibility.

  1. Flexible Thinking We define what exactly we mean by "flexible thinking" and then leverage an activity that helps participants see they already have the ability to think in a flexible manner. In Activity #5 participants are divided into small groups and given an image of a typical office supply. Their task is to "sell" that product to the rest of the group where the object is used for a completely different purpose than its typical use.
  2. Social Flexibility We again define what Hoopes and Kelly mean with regard to "social flexibili- ty." Participants then do another activity to illustrate this concept called "The 4 Ps Method." In the Activity #6, participants work with a partner to use this Harvard Business Review tool of analysis to a work or personal issue; leveraging the module before seeking perspective from their partner on resolving the issue.

OUTCOME: Participants will end this section with solid activities to further deepen their own creative thinking and a tool to help explore leveraging others' skills and perspectives in times of change.

SECTION 6:

Aspect of Resiliency #6 – Handling Ambiguity

One of the biggest challenges that most people face when it comes to dealing with change is the ambiguity of it all: the unknown hits our brains in that "unsafe" place making us uncomfortable and needing to take some sort of action. Sadly these actions are often "spinning our wheels" and wast- ing our time and energy.

This section seeks to leverage a tool to help participants sort out the details of change situations and laser-focus where to focus that energy. In Activity #7 — "The Circle of Concern," participants dissect an ambiguous situation and classify actions into those they can control, those they can't

control but can influence, and those where they have zero control or influence. The tool then helps participants understand what they can and cannot do to manage the ambiguous change situation to maximize their energy and focus and not waste it on things that will yield no results.

OUTCOME: Participants will learn a strategy to help focus on those things they can control and/or influence and focus their energy on those things during ambiguous change situations.

Ready to start this workshop?

SECTION 7:

Aspect of Resiliency #7 – Proactive Experimentation

In this final part of Hoopes and Kelly's work we explore the concept of experimentation and how to safely develop your ability to experiment to practice. In this activity, participants are placed into small groups and–given a challenge to solve — use concepts of "proactive experimentation" to solve the challenge and explore this aspect of resiliency.

OUTCOME: Participants work in small groups to not just explore how they can take "reasonable risks" in times of change but to do these types of actions now so–when change comes at them — they are ready to deal with the change.

SECTION 8:

Applying these Concepts to Lead a Resilient Life

In this final section we "tie things together" to explore strategies participants can take to weave the 7 Aspects of Resiliency into their lives and set themselves up for when we look at relaxation techniques and improving our physical health. This final activity is a quick "brainstorming" session on what participants can or already do to be more resilient in their lifestyle (health eating habits, exercising, technology disconnect, etc).

OUTCOME: Participants will gain new insights into living with resiliency and create an Action Plan on what they will Stop/Start/Continue doing based upon our conversation today.

Ready to start this workshop?