Services

We collaborate with social change organizations to design meetings that get the best thinking of a group and enhance people’s skills to collaborate to address complex challenges. Our current services are described below. We also have a new initiative called Kinship: A Hub for Amplifying the Power of Community, which includes a podcast and gatherings for community builders and social change leaders to bring their work to the next level. On that site, you can find these Upcoming Events and Coaching services

Participatory Meeting Design

WCJune

We help you design gatherings that are highly-interactive, inspiring, and enable deeper levels of interconnection, synergy, and learning than traditional meeting formats. We specialize in creating inclusive spaces for voices not traditionally at the table and navigating differences and conflict in ways that create transformative solutions.  You can book a coaching session on meeting design here or contact us for a conversation about how we can support you.

Training Workshops to Build Collaborative Leadership Capacity

NDC Training Workshops

We offer workshops to enhance teams’ and organizations’ capacity to work together on complex challenges as they strengthen their trust, resilience, and effectiveness.

You’ll learn the mindsets, skills, and practices to enable diverse people to learn and collaborate, find your way in complexity and navigate power dynamics, and do great things together you couldn’t do alone. Here are four workshops we offer:

  • Working in Collaborative Ways – Learn how to create the conditions that enable people and groups to do their best thinking and experience the benefits of effective collaboration. Explore how to practice “collective sensemaking,” which allows us to see more of the system and it’s dynamics.
  • Meetings that Do More – Gain practical tools for how to create meetings that deliver multiple benefits, while ensuring all voices are heard and the best combined thinking of the group emerges. You’ll learn and experience several participatory processes that you can use right away.
  • Working as an Ecosystem – Learn how to break down silos, work across departments or  organizations, and take a systems approach. We share practical tools to help people “see the system,” understand the history, and growing the trust and coherence of the group to work on shared goals.
  • Collaborative Learning: Thinking about our Thinking for Better Outcomes – Working in collaboration allows us to learn together; however, we need the personal skills to have conversations with people coming from different perspectives in ways that navigate tensions and differences productively. You’ll learn practical tools for becoming aware of our thinking, and engaging others about their thinking, and practice skills in reflective conversations, including inquiry and advocacy.

Each workshop is 2-3 hours and they can be offered as a series or in combination for a full day workshop.

LEADERSHIP COACHING

We serve as thinking partner/coaches to help leaders stay true to their values and put them into practice as they navigate complex ever-changing situations. Moving from intention to action with diversity, equity, and inclusion and working in participatory ways is complex and it can be quite helpful to have someone outside the organization to check in with. We help you work in ways that are participatory and build processes that are transparent, accountable and equitable, and find wise ways to handle challenges that arise. We bring understanding of how power and privilege accrue in systems, strategies for successfully engaging across difference, and effective interpersonal communication methods. Where appropriate, we bring in colleagues with lived experience and other expertise.