InspirationWorks, LLC

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.