Leading Engagement:

Involving People in the Decisions that Affect Them 

Join us to explore strategies and methods for designing and hosting meaningful engagement - whether it be in communities, with public officials, in organizations or around a specific issue.   Learn from others how to lead and sustain authentic engagement approaches that result in change for the good.

What?   

Leading Engagement is an intensive 3-day retreat where you will experience and practice a set of simple - yet powerful - processes for building community and facilitating meaningful conversations among diverse stakeholders - including the people who are most affected by the plans and decisions you are making. 

Leading Engagement is also a personal leadership retreat where you can reconnect with your own leadership passion and do the inner work needed to navigate in times of radical change.  Rooted in the practices of Art of Hosting (http://www.artofhosting.org), this learning event teaches a participative approach for leading, convening and engaging groups.

Who?    

Individuals and teams who are eager to build stronger partnerships with each other and within their communities, constituencies, organizations and systems.  People dedicated to creating change by working in partnership with residents, neighborhoods, local leaders, experts and public officials.

Change agents, Young leaders, social entrepreneurs, community leadders, policy makers, planners, educators who seek innovative approaches to public engagement and systems improvement.

Why?  

The tools and know how for meaningful and productive engagement are now available in the fields of dialogue, social media and design.  The combination of these dsiciplines and tools enables us to genuinely integrate those who are most affected in the disign and delivery of services, systems, strategies, products, plans, infrastructure and more.

Deepen our individual and collective capacity to engage teams, organizations, and community stakeholders in conversations that lead to collective ownership of meaningful and innovative results.

Key Questions:   

• What are the foundations of good engagement?
• What becomes possible when we give people real influence over the decisions that affect them?
• How do we move beyond adversarial change into collective thinking and collaborative action?
• How do I shift my own leadership to design and host authentic engagement?

Come if You Want to: 

•  Practice using and hosting a set of simple, yet powerful conversational processes for  thinking together, such as Circle, Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe, Open Space, and  Pro-action Café. 
•  Explore how to build relationships of trust and reconsider the meaning and uses of  power 
•  Enhance your design and facilitation skills 
•  Move beyond ‘planning a meeting’ to developing multi-step engagement processes,  including diverse methods to effectively capture and use community input. 
•  Hear and share success stories and put learning to work on real-life concerns.