Overview:

This webinar series is designed to increase your capacity to have a positive managerial impact in your organization and increase your capacity to facilitate learning and innovation. This series is not meant to teach you about Appreciative Inquiry and management; rather it is more like a practicum intended to build your understanding and expertise in the management practices that generate full engagement, collaboration, collective intelligence and accountability.

The webinar series format supports the implementation of new knowledge and new skills through daily practice – inviting you to accomplish your work in different ways. You will find that these practices save you time and effort while building strong relationships amongst your team. This series will include 4 weekly 60-minute webinars that will entail reflective practice and practical application in between webinars.  All sessions will be experiential and engage you in provocative discussions around new ideas. You will be challenged to see from different perspectives, challenge your assumptions, and implement new procedures that increase efficiency, effectiveness, and collaboration.

This series will increase your capacity to influence staff engagement, accountability, and creativity as your team collaborates to achieve your department or division’s strategic outcomes and support the overall mission of your organization.

Designed For:

Individuals in all levels of an organization who wish to take a leadership role in creating and facilitating organizational culture and relationships are invited to join this webinar.

Learning Outcomes:

• Broaden and build capacity and collective intelligence so that collaboration may occur
• Engage in reflective practice as a way of learning, expanding ways of knowing and understanding, and surfacing assumptions, thinking strategies, and systems patterns
• Invite and practice full engagement 
• Practice a range of approaches for thinking together in order to learn, innovate, and plan
• Create a culture of welcome and engage successfully in difficult conversations
• Begin to design or redesign infrastructure to support collaboration, innovation, accountability, and sustainable growth

Webinar Outline:

1. Increase your capacity as a leader
   • Develop your capacity for inquiry as a means to surface relevant knowledge, assumptions, limiting beliefs and differing perspectives.  This results in increased core interpersonal skills and strong team relationships.
   • Understand the power of emotions and the implications for managing by Inquiry and Appreciation
   • Understand the power of story and the power of frames: embracing diversity of values and perception
   • Align your team’s work and strengths with strategic outcomes and mission of your organization
2. Manage Change and Innovation:
   • Understand AI: how to practice it and how to use the model for strategic planning
   • Expand your capacity for reflective practice and inquiry to facilitate action learning and collaborative learning
3. Have an organizational impact by...
   • Implementing workplace practices that enhance engagement, collaboration, and accountability
   • Using conflict to generate innovation and new knowledge
4. Managing performance using outcomes-based planning and coaching based upon employee strengths

Practice: In between each webinar, you will have the opportunity to practice new ways of working based upon the lesson. After each session there will be specific opportunities/assignments for you to practice. These might be challenging but not difficult. You should find them highly rewarding!

Presenter:

Cheri Torres, Ph.D., has more than 30 years experience helping people and organizations expand their capacity for collaboration and excellence. She has worked in the public and private sectors in the US and around the world training trainers and facilitators, facilitating small and large groups, and providing professional development and organizational design consultation.

Cheri’s professional focus is grounded in the field of personal/ collaborative learning. Cheri helps people and organizations shift their workplace practices and design their systems for evolving sustainability. She believes that in today’s world, excellence is a function of learning and innovation and that these are natural outcomes for an appreciative inquiry-based, outcomes-focused organization. She partners with schools and organizations to expand their capacity for multiple ways of knowing, engagement and accountability, thinking together, and acting collaboratively. As a result people change they way they work together and how the organization is designed: a collaborative learning community evolves marked by open and positive relationships and the alignment of social and technical systems.

To read Cheri Torres' complete Expert on Call profile, please click here.