Mediating workplace relationships, supporting individuals, teams and functions through conflict and perceived threats. For example, through restructuring, mergers, change of focus.

Learning from challenging feedback, changing behaviour, learning leadership, managing change and transitions, working on meaning and purpose, challenging belief systems.

Facilitating change in structure or task, working across cultures to enable people to connect with and trust each other.

The purpose was to facilitate a change in role identity to that of collaborative and strategic partner. I enabled participants to identify their mental models, and challenged their assumptions and limiting beliefs. I worked with groups of between six and twelve participants who were given personal and direct feedback over the course of the week-long workshop. Each director produced a personal action plan at the end of the workshop, which was shared in plenary. As a result of this facilitation I am now involved in further conversations to plan the next stage of this OD process.

As part of this programme, I designed and facilitated a workshop for the senior leadership team to explore their current reality, identify their hopes and fears and their beliefs about their power to act. There were historical sensitivities to take into account and many of the team were uncomfortable sharing feelings and motives, retreating to task issues at the beginning of the day. As our workshop was in one of the Oxford colleges, I invited them to take a walk around the college and grounds and notice what took their attention and consider how this could work as a metaphor for the business and/or their work. This worked as a catalyst to thinking in a more holistic and personal way about their team, the company, and the wider world.    I subsequently used an appreciative inquiry process to identify what they needed to retain from their current reality and to create an exciting proposition for the future. The day ended with each participant receiving appreciative, personal feedback from the rest of the team. This OD project is still in progress.

As I worked with the temporary Board of this organisation, it became clear that there was personal animosity between two individuals in the team. As an experienced mediator I was able to help them identify the underlying interests and issues, and find enough common ground to enable the team to function and complete this complex task. I worked on this project over a period of 18 months; a new structure is now in place and working well.

These workshops involved working with logistics managers for a global distribution business, people who work with concrete facts rather than abstract concepts.    By the end of the one- day workshop, these managers have an easy familiarity and practical knowledge of basic philosophical and psychological concepts such as perception & reality, facts & inferences, projection & transference. I designed exercises that would illustrate these concepts in a personal and light-hearted way. Evaluations for this training are consistently excellent.

I designed and co-facilitated a series of three-day workshops to enable an organisation to tackle habitual behaviours of blame and mistrust and to create a climate where open and assertive communication was valued, and people understood and respected individual differences. I used MBTI to help participants develop awareness of their own preferences and to accept that alternative views are not bad but different. This involved identifying mental models, challenging assumptions and limiting beliefs. Participants were given personal and direct feedback over the course of the workshops. As is usual in my experience, I could help the participants identify parallel processes between incidents in our work together and common patterns in the business as a whole. The first workshop was with the senior leadership; we worked through some historical conflict to resolution and our work resulted in a more cohesive and inclusive team. As follow-up work, I replicated the workshops through the management and staff structures. The Operations Director reported afterwards that there was an energy and purpose in the organisation that was new and described my facilitation as “a safe pair of hands”.