Transformative, Not Just Motivational

One thing is certain: we all need a bit of self-care. Mindfulness is one of the most accessible tools at our disposal to deal with stress and support well-being. Participants learn how mindfulness practices help support you professionally and personally, including relevant data and anecdotes on the importance of mindfulness practice for professional life. Receive instruction on meditation posture, basic breathing techniques to help support meditation, basic mindfulness practices, and how to integrate meditation into daily life.

What is resilience? How do you build it at work? Participants will explore what can create resilience at work, how mindfulness practices can help, and engage in “situational mindfulness” practices to learn tools on how to address both workplace complexities to both decrease the energy drain and increase the energy gain. Learning how to better process and address workplace experiences allow participants to understand how to build greater resilience in their work.

We rarely have an open dialogue around managing workplace intensity. Participants will examine the underlying limiting beliefs and assumptions that prevent us from effectively understanding and addressing stress. Through interactive exercises and mindfulness practices, we will explore ways to better understand these challenges and provide takeaways toward shifting how we approach our work. Challenge the notion that some of the stress we experience is an inherent part of the workplace.

Finding it hard to hold a dialogue about race at work? Many of us are, because we were never taught how to. Learn how to listen effectively and mindfully; to be present with someone who is expressing concern and receive what we hear with understanding (rather than judgment). This helps us step into observing without evaluating. Ultimately, these tools help participants understand how to “sit with discomfort” that arises when listening rather than reacting. What’s that like? Let’s find out.

Cope with managing the impact of the cumulative burden of bias for professionals from underrepresented groups.

• Manage these microaggressions skilfully so we can mitigate the harm of internalizing this stress and bias.
• Focus on ways to support wisely "responding" rather than "reacting" to circumstances as they come up.

At some point in their careers, people feel like they don’t belong. How can we foster a sense of psychological safety for ourselves and our colleagues? During this session, participants will engage in open conversation to address these challenges, explore the underlying limiting beliefs that hinder growth and impact psychological safety, and experiment with several tools and strategies on how to build a more inclusive workplace.

Emotional intelligence helps us understand how to communicate more effectively and improve interactions with co-workers, staff, management, direct reports, and clients. Begin to understand the value of emotional intelligence, how to leverage it to get a better understanding of yourself and others. This includes understanding your approach to critical communications and recognizing how to improve interactions with others.

The pandemic and its challenges have tapped into our sentiment of not "belonging." In the transition to hybrid work, how can we foster a sense of psychological safety within ourselves and our colleagues? Participants will engage in open conversation to address these challenges, explore what impacts psychological safety, and experiment with several tools and strategies on how to ensure a healthy hybrid work culture.

Addressing burnout in our professional lives includes the need for centering compassion in our leadership. Compassionate leadership can lead to less stress, happier employees, healthier workplaces, and improved relationships. Most importantly, compassion can be consciously cultivated — it’s in your control— and mindfulness practices help. Participants learn tools to become a more compassionate leader and ultimately move towards a more successful and resilient team.

How often do we avoid difficult DEI conversations at work? Which ones are the most challenging and why? What tools/frameworks can we use to support ourselves in approaching them? Participants review the range of conversations we find complex and the impact of avoiding. We'll explore power imbalance, and get a sense of what’s possible. Participants ultimately practice various tools and frameworks to help strategize how to navigate these conversations.

Effective feedback, especially across race and gender based differences, is essential to a successful workplace. Participants understand the importance of meaningful feedback and explore ways to give effective feedback in order to have the difficult conversations, and encourage growth.  Integrating consistent and impactful feedback can change the company culture, ultimately making it more productive. Participants will also have an opportunity to practice giving feedback, adapting their feedback to different situations, and implementing better ways to actively listen.

When asked what's most important in your professional relationships, most mention trust in their top 3. And yet, how do we engender trust? Who are the people that trust you, who do you trust, why is that the case, and how did you get there? Explore how to move people towards more trust. Taking a close look at our own relationships can be a first step to help us engender further "trust" down the road with others.

When work and life get challenging, we look for social connection, control, and predictability. How often are one or more of these qualities absent at work? Their absence can impact the ways in which we connect with our colleagues and resolve challenges, and can ultimately be depleting and reduce our resiliency. Community-based mindfulness practices can help. How we connect with our colleagues, how we collectively engage with others, and the mindset and approach we take with one another certainly matter and can make all the difference. In this experiential and interactive workshop and dialogue, participants will engage in practices to take on mindset shifts by generating a greater sense of goodwill, understanding, and connection with our community at work. We will both understand and experience how community-based mindfulness practices can support us when work becomes challenging. These practices can help build our inner strength by curating an increased sense of connection with others.

When left unchecked, our biases permeate all aspects of the workplace. Ultimately, we are all biased to some degree, and our choice of words and behaviors has an impact on others. Gain a better understanding of our biases, how they harm others, and how to steer this process toward more equitable choices. Emerge better placed to think critically about your treatment of others and move past the social conditioning that can make this challenging.

We're all familiar with situations where someone says or does something that offends some aspect of someone else's identity. Most often, these microaggressions are aimed at traditionally marginalized identity groups. At their core, they represent disrespect and inequality, are harmful to team members and workplace culture, and should be taken seriously. Participants will spend time building awareness, learning tools to respond (as an observer, aggressor, or recipient), and work towards a more inclusive and equitable workplace cultures.

We must create spaces for professionals from underrepresented groups to understand how to better manage the cumulative burden of bias. How do we address these aggressions skillfully so we can mitigate the harm of internalizing the stress? Participants will understand the internal harm taking place, learn and practice mindfulness tools to mitigate the harm, and focus on ways to support wisely "responding" rather than "reacting" to circumstances as they come up.

Finding it hard to hold a dialogue about race at work? Many of us are, because we were never taught how to. Learn how to listen effectively and mindfully; to be present with someone who is expressing concern and receive what we hear with understanding (rather than judgment). This helps us step into observing without evaluating. Ultimately, these tools help participants understand how to “sit with discomfort” that arises when listening rather than reacting. What’s that like? Let’s find out.

How often do we avoid difficult DEI conversations at work? Which ones are the most challenging and why? What tools/frameworks can we use to support ourselves in approaching them? Participants review the range of conversations we find complex and the impact of avoiding. We'll explore power imbalance, and get a sense of what’s possible. Participants ultimately practice various tools and frameworks to help strategize how to navigate these conversations.

Current events are challenging, and can be hard to process, especially in a distributed workplace. This results in fatigue, energy drain, and also impacts our work. There's a need to take care of ourselves and be mindful of others on our team. Participants take time to connect, listen, and understand the various ways we experience these challenges. We also get curious about tools we can use to manage these experiences more skillfully to protect our mental health and wellbeing.

DEI is a high priority and our leadership needs to reflect this changing need - in values, goals, and behaviors. As leaders in our offices, we need to show personal commitment and take responsibility for making truly inclusive workplaces happen. So what does inclusive leadership look like - not in theory, but in practice? Participants will understand the basic principles of Inclusive Leadership, and will explore ways of putting it into practice.

We have personal spaces to dialogue about race, gender, or other identity issues, but don't yet feel that comfort at work. Psychological safety in personal spaces allow us to take risks and creates assurance that we can rehabilitate relationships if we cross a line. How can we foster this type of "right relationship" at work? Participants learn to evolve workplace relationships towards raising more of these uncomfortable issues - a needed step towards a more inclusive work environment.

Effective feedback, especially across race and gender based differences, is essential to a successful workplace. Participants understand the importance of meaningful feedback and explore ways to give effective feedback in order to have the difficult conversations, and encourage growth.  Integrating consistent and impactful feedback can change the company culture, ultimately making it more productive. Participants will also have an opportunity to practice giving feedback, adapting their feedback to different situations, and implementing better ways to actively listen.

It's time to examine how business development culture has impacted those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. These patterns directly impact compensation, wealth distribution, and equity. Participants discusses specific roadblocks existing at the nexus of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and business development (BD) that impede the progress of women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented groups and understand avenues to consider moving towards a more equitable culture.

Every relationship has power dynamics, often existing across race or gender-based differences. Is the power you exert dominating or empowering others? Hierarchical environments driven by dominant power dynamics are commonly not inclusive. Especially in dynamics where people feel unheard or uncomfortable sharing their experiences. In this workshop, participants will be guided to understand power dynamics, encouraged to explore how to diffuse them, and ultimately create workplace environments that can evolve past the unhelpful complexities that power dynamics create.