InspirationWorks, LLC

Making Team Engagement Work for Us. This one-day program was designed for the leaders of the Business Banking Services Group in the twenty-one state footprint of Wells Fargo, one of Jim Collins' "good to great" companies.  With focus on the role of emotions in our everyday work environment and the practical tools we can use to manage them, the workshop also gave participants the opportunity to practice ICE^TM, the InspirationWorks practical toolset for developing emotional engagement in the workplace through inclusion, control and esteem.

Emotional Intelligence: Skills for Effective and Satisfying Interactions. A participative, advanced communication skills workshop customized to help employees at any level in the organization, whether leading others or a contributing member of a department or team, learn and practice practical emotional intelligence tools to maximize engagement. Encourages the growth of each person’s ability to utilize innate resources more consciously and effectively. The desired outcome is a more integrated team, an improved sense of self, and greater ability to more fully experience the richness of everyday life.

Engagement at Intel: ICE^TM, a Practical Leadership Tool for Developing Engagement. A workshop conducted for Intel’s annual Leadership Day for the 120 Oregon-based managers in Intel's Enterprise Microprocessor Group (the "heartbeat of Intel").  Specifically designed to demonstrate the importance of engagement to productivity, creativity and profitability, this workshop also focused on the latest data from functional MRI studies revealing how differently the human brain responds when we are emotionally engaged in our work.

Genderlect: Gender Differences in Communication Styles.  A workshop for engineering leadership at Intel to observe a bit more, learn a bit more, reflect a bit more, and perhaps apply a different perspective to “how I talk at work.”  Since Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand Me and John Gray’s Men are from Mars Women are from Venus, comedians, self-help authors and speakers, TV situation comedies, and movies have all contributed and profited by labeling and illustrating differences in communication styles between men and women. Do these differences really exist? If so, what does this mean particularly to us at work…as a man…as a woman? More importantly, what do I do next with this information? This workshop is designed to help engineering leaders clarify their own effective communication style through a mixture of research, illustrations, anecdotal information, and scenarios.

Healthcare, Research, Academics, Central Services: OHSU Reflective Leadership Program. This six-month leadership development program is intended to transform the nature of leadership at OHSU and support improvements in leader effectiveness. Open to leaders in all four OHSU missions, the program is built on the principle that, as leaders, we learn mainly from experiences in our everyday work life.  Critical incidents arise, we respond, we learn.  Much of this learning is subliminal. We hardly notice the learning taking place. Our brain is a marvelous learning machine that encourages us quietly to repeat our successes and avoid repeating our mistakes. This wonderful process is not necessarily efficient.  But, without a thoughtful protocol to learn from our important experiences, we often find ourselves almost accidentally repeating successes—and errors—before our learning experiences from them—our neural pathways—become grooved. Today’s best and most effective leaders are reflective—sometimes intentionally, but often simply instinctively.  They may not even be aware of, or able to describe, how reflective tools, emotional intelligence and whole-brain thinking, help them in their daily leadership choices.  It becomes for them an unconscious competence. The OHSU Reflective Leadership Program helps OHSU leaders from all missions develop this competence consciously and apply whole brain thinking and emotional intelligence to form the most effective leadership style for themselves—and to help others in their own professional development.

Nursing Leadership Institute:  Self in Nursing: Awareness, Management, Development.  This half-day session for leaders in the school of nursing focused on managing the self and recognizing the difference between managing and leading. Exercises, educational information, and discussions provided concrete tools to handle stressful situations, patients, and colleagues with more effectiveness and grace.

School of Medicine: Engagement and "Good to Great" Leadership at OHSU. OHSU is one of the nation's leading health and research universities. This workshop, conducted for all department chairpersons and program directors in the School of Medicine, focused on the critical role that engagement and emotional intelligence play in the organization's ability to deliver quality care efficiently and effectively.   The workshop included presentations, small group interaction and case study.

Department of Neurology: Using the Whole Mind to Deliver Compassionate Care for the Epilepsy Patient Community. OHSU is meeting the challenge of delivering quality patient care in the face of increasing information technology and legislative requirements. Under a grant from Pfizer we created a program for physicians and staff in the Neurology Department to focus on how compassionate care can be delivered to respond to special patient needs using emotional intelligence skills and tools. The program included a one-day workshop and two, two-hour followup sessions.

Casey Eye Institute: Leadership Communication Skills and Engagement. This half-day workshop for all twenty-one residents and fellows at the Institute is designed to build a more integrated team of physicians. With a focus on leadership communication core competencies and the importance of engagement in the workplace, this new offering for Resident Orientation Week will help the organization meet its commitment to the highest performance standards while at the same time avoiding burnout and related retention concerns that are sometimes associated with resident programs in medical organizations.

Leading Through Collaboration and Teamwork. This multi-session off-site and course was designed to learn and apply the current science behind effective team communication as well as practice the skills which science indicates must be present for open and engaged communication to occur. It encouraged the commitment as a team to routinely practice those skills in day-to-day work to achieve more cohesive and collaborative results. The objective: have an immediate impact on the leadership team's ability and willingness to collaborate. With the science behind successful team collaboration as background, most of the time was spent working together to build the muscle memory around what collaboration and successful teamwork looks like and feels like. The Programl:

• Provided information regarding the current science of collaboration, teamwork, innovation, communication and connection in the workplace
• Described specific communication skills for improving authentic communication and collaboration
• Provided discussion and practice with these communication skills
• Established a safe, collaborative, and inviting working environment

One Team: Leadership Communication Skills. A two-day program focused on developing and practicing practical engagement and emotional intelligence skills to assist leaders in building a more cohesive team. This international consumer products organization had merged three companies into one international group and was eager to have the new organization more quickly molded into a cohesive operating unit. All thirty top management team members from eight countries were called to a weeklong meeting, the first two days of which were devoted to the One Team: Leadership Communication Skills Workshop, the remaining three to critical strategic planning efforts for the coming fiscal year. The CEO reported that "at the end of the two days of the workshop we were 100 times more a team than we were when we arrived...I wish we had all attended this workshop a year ago when we first merged."  A creative email-based followup program was created to reinforce the learning from the workshop and additional workshops are being offered or are planned for in-place work teams at both the Company and Corporate level.

Resilience: Managing Stress in Changing Times.  A series of half-day workshops for all employees at the company's Portland, Oregon, location, the program covered the impact of unmanaged emotional noise on emotional and physical health; introduced the INSPIRATIONWORKS I.C.E.^TM tool for gauging personal stress levels from the perspective of the individuals perceived levels of inclusion, control and esteem; introduced and practiced a specific, practical tool for improving resilience in response to stress caused by difficult or changing times; and introduced and provided practice for a set of critical communications skills helpful in managing levels of stress in daily communications.

Healthy Communications 201: Concrete Skills for Healthy Interactions...Even When It's Tough. EndFragment A series of half-day workshops for all employees at the company's Portland, Oregon, location, the program provided skills and practice in both confrontational and appreciative interactions. The information, the tools, and the practice enabled each participant to develop their individual "Healthy Interaction Personal Action Plan" to accomplish difficult conversations directly and deliver meaningful appreciative feedback.

Leadership in Challenging Times: Practical Tools for the Emotionally Intelligent Leader. The Clackamas County Leadership Academy is a year-long program designed to develop and cultivate leadership skills in participating employees.  It is designed for employees building their initial foundation of leadership as well as accomplished leaders looking to build on their personal and professional growth. Leadership in these changing and challenging times requires a different perspective—new eyes. No longer is the “hero” model identified with effective leaders. We are discovering instead that today’s most successful leaders develop and use certain skills, particularly humility, to create and sustain motivated, successful organizations. This intensive two-day Leadership Academy workshop was designed to help leaders explore together the role of these practical skills in developing today’s effective leaders and to practice using some tools for effectively developing and leading motivated teams and organizations in these difficult times.

Building Our Culture of Appreciation.  A series of half-day workshops designed for the County's Commissioners, other elected officials and top management to help build a foundation for achieving the County's new mission to "strengthen internal working relationships to maximize performance by fostering a culture of trust, open communication, mutual respect and innovation."  The sessions presented concrete tools and methods to answer the following questions:  What is meaningful appreciation? What constitutes appreciation? How do I recognize opportunities to appreciate work contributions? What drives our need to be appreciated? What impact does a culture of appreciation have on an organization? What's my role? What can I do this afternoon to contribute to the County's growing culture of appreciation? The workshops stressed the impact on work team engagement and bottom line performance of making appreciation a part of everyday experience in the workplace instead of a periodic event tied to performance reviews or employee awards programs.

Fostering Trust and Open Communications in Difficult Conversations. This ninety-minute, learn-at-lunch session focused on the importance of practicing and using the skill of having difficult conversations with people who are important in our lives. With emphasis on knowing what to say and how to say it, the session introduced---and allowed participants to practice--- the elements of safe, non-threatening difficult conversations and stressed the importance of specificity, immediacy and emotional connection in their success.

Innovation for Leaders: Innovative Thinking with Intent. The Port’s reorganization provided an opportunity to be more innovative in how leaders face the Port’s challenges including how to become more lean and cost effective, how to generate more revenue, and how to behave as a single Port authority rather than separate Marine and Aviation divisions. In essence, how do leaders responsibly manage risks while improving entrepreneurial instincts? Leads, supervisors and managers at the Port explored some of these new challenges and opportunities in a productive, safe, trusting and innovative way. This multi-month course was devoted to learning new concepts and practicing concrete innovation skills. Follow-up sessions provided an innovation-enhancing high-trust conversation, designed to share leaders' field experiences from the previous month and further cement learning. The intent: to provide each participant with the opportunity to perceive and practice new innovative thinking skills on three levels: with self, with a trusted associate and with a group.

Nonverbal Communication: Body Language You Can’t See. This lunchtime workshop was prepared and presented to participants in the Port’s PDX Customer Connection Program. Designed to challenge managers of all services offered at PDX—airlines, car rental, food and beverage, TSA, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, etc.—to question what has earned the Port’s international airport a first place rating in the hearts of travelers from all over the world. And to reflect on what each participant can do to help assure that the high ranking continues. Because it’s not just about the doing it right, it’s the knowing why and how so we can repeat it and pass it on. Recognizing that we are powerless over the state of mind the traveler comes to us with, this program explored the roles of emotions, human needs, mirror neurons, and the words we choose in our brief communications with travelers and guests—and the impact these have on traveler satisfaction with PDX.

Resilience: Managing Stress in Times of Change. One component of the Port's Business Skills Training and Development Program, this half-day program helps employees recognize the impact of everyday stress in the workplace and at home and provides practice in using effective tools to convert that stress into productive energy.  At a time when external economic, political and social forces amplify emotional noise surrounding changes in the Port's own business model and organization, helping team members manage and rebound from the impact of the noise is critical to achieving the Port's mission. This open-enrollment program highlighted the impact of emotional health on physical health, focused on identifying and using practical and proven personal tools to recognize and manage everyday stress, explored aspects of human nature that cause us to behave in ways which may unnecessarily amplify legitimate but otherwise manageable stressors, and offered practice in using a model for reliably rebounding from troubling life situations.

Authentic Dialog in the Workplace.  A pilot, half-day workshop offered on an open-enrollment basis to Port employees, the program is designed to be a participative, advanced communication skills workshop to help participants learn and practice practical emotional intelligence tools to maximize engagement and improve interpersonal relationship skills. These skills are particularly important now, as the Port prepares to merge operations from various locations into a single, new headquarters building. Based on the response from Port employees who participated in the pilot workshops, the program is now being expanded to a full-day program to be offered both on an open-enrollment basis and to in-place work teams.