Organizational Health and Balance Workshop Series

The workshop is held in Val-David, Quebec, Canada from May 5-7, 2009

You can choose either our French or English workshops.
Pour cette annonce en français, cliquez ici.

This Organizational Health and Balance series of experiential workshops prepares participants to look holistically at the current state of balance of their organization and to initiate strategies to create a healthy work environment, strategies that are critical to success and viability. Participants will learn and apply simple and practical tools, frameworks and approaches that integrate ancient wisdom and leading edge practices. These tools have been used with great success around the world in developed and developing countries in all kinds of organizations, associations and communities.

Leaders today know that being a healthy organization is not optional. A healthy and dynamic working environment is the precondition for generating skills and knowledge, collaborative working relationships, change readiness, resilience, and innovation. Much has been written about WHAT needs to be done, but there is very little guidance as to HOW to get there. These workshops help to fill that gap.

We invite participants from corporate, non-profit, education, the arts, health care or other public sector organizations. If you are a leader, manager, consultant or anyone who needs to work with others to achieve results, this program offers new and practical paths to create the future of your organization.

The Organizational Health and Balance workshops help to develop leaders and leadership. They are foundational to our leader development programs based on Genuine Contact™.

What Will I Learn At This Workshop?

Our teaching model is rooted in experience. The platform design for the model is Whole Person Process Facilitation. The reality of learning from experience is embedded in ancestral worldviews from which our model evolves.

May 5, 2009 Part 1: Path to Organizational Health and Balance provides a broad overview of the importance of organizational health and the steps required to achieve it.

May 6&7 Part 2: Achieving and Regenerating Organizational Health and Balance deepens the exploration of organizational health and its achievement and provides practical experience using the tools to develop an assessment and regeneration plan for your organization

You will leave these workshops equipped with:
• Key questions to ask to start your organization on a path to health and balance
• An understanding of the Medicine Wheel Tool© and other simple tools as holistic diagnostic frameworks for understanding your organization’s current state of health.
• A completed ‘diagnosis’ of the health of your organization, from your perspective (or from the perspective of your Management Team/Board if you attend together)
• A process for developing strategy and energizing collective action to move the strategy forward
• A customized practical, holistic framework for achieving and maintaining long-term organizational health that equips you to propel to higher levels of development and continually learn how to connect people, strategy and the bottom line.
• Knowledge of how to increase the capacity of your organization to work effectively in rapidly changing times to:
o Positively impact your bottom line,
o Improve the effectiveness of training programs,
o Enhance the effectiveness of customer service and quality assurance
o Promote health and well being of your employees, and
o Reduce the human and financial costs of stress.
• An understanding of the importance of relationships, that are based on genuine contact, to achieve results beyond your expectations
• An approach to Whole Systems Thinking – a holistic perspective and working with organizations as living systems

Each workshop includes a workbook to support ongoing learning. All participants have access to support and mentorship following the training through an international network of Genuine Contact™ professionals. For more information

Our Workshop Location
Nestled in the Laurentian Mountains 80 km north of Montreal is the beautiful town of Val David
and Prema Shanti, a tranquil inn on the shores of Lac Doré. Prema Shanti is home to our
workshops and provides an ideal retreat setting for a complete residential learning experience.
The inn offers beautifully appointed rooms, fine dining, spa services, and easy access to hiking
trails, swimming and canoeing. Dormitory housing is also available for those who are more
budget conscious. Special rates are available for all workshop participants including
accommodations, meals and use of the facilities. Please contact Prema Shanti for further details.

Our Facilitation Team

Michelle Cooper of Integral Visions Consulting Inc (Ancaster, ON), Donna Clark of Emergent Futures Consulting Inc (Halifax, NS) and Marquis Bureau of MBureau International Inc (Notre Dame de la Salette, QC) make up our facilitation team. They are authorized Genuine Contact™ Trainers and Co-Owners who have been working with the Program for a number of years. This partnership offers participants the opportunity to learn from Genuine Contact Professionals working across Canada and internationally in a variety of sectors. It also allows us to offer the Genuine Contact workshops both in English and French, providing participants with a unique and customized learning experience.

A limited number of scholarship positions are available. For more information, contact us.

Organizational Health and Balance Workshop Series

Register today for this exciting workshop opportunity. Early Bird Registration: 600$ before April 7, 2009.

May 5-7, 2009
You can choose either our French or English workshops.
Pour cette annonce en français, cliquez ici.

This Organizational Health and Balance series of experiential workshops prepares participants to look holistically at the current state of balance of their organization and to initiate strategies to create a healthy work environment, strategies that are critical to success and viability. Participants will learn and apply simple and practical tools, frameworks and approaches that integrate ancient wisdom and leading edge practices. These tools have been used with great success around the world in developed and developing countries in all kinds of organizations, associations and communities.

Leaders today know that being a healthy organization is not optional. A healthy and dynamic working environment is the precondition for generating skills and knowledge, collaborative working relationships, change readiness, resilience, and innovation. Much has been written about WHAT needs to be done, but there is very little guidance as to HOW to get there. These workshops help to fill that gap.

We invite participants from corporate, non-profit, education, the arts, health care or other public sector organizations. If you are a leader, manager, consultant or anyone who needs to work with others to achieve results, this program offers new and practical paths to create the future of your organization.

The Organizational Health and Balance workshops help to develop leaders and leadership. They are foundational to our leader development programs based on Genuine Contact™.

What Will I Learn At This Workshop?

Our teaching model is rooted in experience. The platform design for the model is Whole Person Process Facilitation. The reality of learning from experience is embedded in ancestral worldviews from which our model evolves.

May 5, 2009 Part 1: Path to Organizational Health and Balance provides a broad overview of the importance of organizational health and the steps required to achieve it.

May 6&7 Part 2: Achieving and Regenerating Organizational Health and Balance deepens the exploration of organizational health and its achievement and provides practical experience using the tools to develop an assessment and regeneration plan for your organization

You will leave these workshops equipped with:
• Key questions to ask to start your organization on a path to health and balance
• An understanding of the Medicine Wheel Tool© and other simple tools as holistic diagnostic frameworks for understanding your organization’s current state of health.
• A completed ‘diagnosis’ of the health of your organization, from your perspective (or from the perspective of your Management Team/Board if you attend together)
• A process for developing strategy and energizing collective action to move the strategy forward
• A customized practical, holistic framework for achieving and maintaining long-term organizational health that equips you to propel to higher levels of development and continually learn how to connect people, strategy and the bottom line.
• Knowledge of how to increase the capacity of your organization to work effectively in rapidly changing times to:
o Positively impact your bottom line,
o Improve the effectiveness of training programs,
o Enhance the effectiveness of customer service and quality assurance
o Promote health and well being of your employees, and
o Reduce the human and financial costs of stress.
• An understanding of the importance of relationships, that are based on genuine contact, to achieve results beyond your expectations
• An approach to Whole Systems Thinking – a holistic perspective and working with organizations as living systems

Each workshop includes a workbook to support ongoing learning. All participants have access to support and mentorship following the training through an international network of Genuine Contact™ professionals. For more information

Our Workshop Location
Nestled in the Laurentian Mountains 80 km north of Montreal is the beautiful town of Val David
and Prema Shanti, a tranquil inn on the shores of Lac Doré. Prema Shanti is home to our
workshops and provides an ideal retreat setting for a complete residential learning experience.
The inn offers beautifully appointed rooms, fine dining, spa services, and easy access to hiking
trails, swimming and canoeing. Dormitory housing is also available for those who are more
budget conscious. Special rates are available for all workshop participants including
accommodations, meals and use of the facilities. Please contact Prema Shanti for further details.

Our Facilitation Team

Michelle Cooper of Integral Visions Consulting Inc (Ancaster, ON), Donna Clark of Emergent Futures Consulting Inc (Halifax, NS) and Marquis Bureau of MBureau International Inc (Notre Dame de la Salette, QC) make up our facilitation team. They are authorized Genuine Contact™ Trainers and Co-Owners who have been working with the Program for a number of years. This partnership offers participants the opportunity to learn from Genuine Contact Professionals working across Canada and internationally in a variety of sectors. It also allows us to offer the Genuine Contact workshops both in English and French, providing participants with a unique and customized learning experience.

A limited number of scholarship positions are available. For more information, contact us.

Organizational Health and Balance Workshop Series

CALENDAR of EVENTS



ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH and BALANCE COURSE DESCRIPTION



REGISTRATION FORM

Organizational Health and Balance Workshop Series

May 5-7, 2009
You can choose either our French or English workshops.
Pour cette annonce en français, cliquez ici.

Investment: $756 – register by April 8 and save $249 off the total registration price!

This Organizational Health and Balance series of experiential workshops prepares participants to look holistically at the current state of balance of their organization and to initiate strategies to create a healthy work environment, strategies that are critical to success and viability. Participants will learn and apply simple and practical tools, frameworks and approaches that integrate ancient wisdom and leading edge practices. These tools have been used with great success around the world in developed and developing countries in all kinds of organizations, associations and communities.

Leaders today know that being a healthy organization is not optional. A healthy and dynamic working environment is the precondition for generating skills and knowledge, collaborative working relationships, change readiness, resilience, and innovation. Much has been written about WHAT needs to be done, but there is very little guidance as to HOW to get there. These workshops help to fill that gap.

We invite participants from corporate, non-profit, education, the arts, health care or other public sector organizations. If you are a leader, manager, consultant or anyone who needs to work with others to achieve results, this program offers new and practical paths to create the future of your organization.

The Organizational Health and Balance workshops help to develop leaders and leadership. They are foundational to our leader development programs based on Genuine Contact™.

What Will I Learn At This Workshop?

Our teaching model is rooted in experience. The platform design for the model is Whole Person Process Facilitation. The reality of learning from experience is embedded in ancestral worldviews from which our model evolves.

May 5, 2009 Part 1: Path to Organizational Health and Balance provides a broad overview of the importance of organizational health and the steps required to achieve it.

May 6&7 Part 2: Achieving and Regenerating Organizational Health and Balance deepens the exploration of organizational health and its achievement and provides practical experience using the tools to develop an assessment and regeneration plan for your organization

You will leave these workshops equipped with:
• Key questions to ask to start your organization on a path to health and balance
• An understanding of the Medicine Wheel Tool© and other simple tools as holistic diagnostic frameworks for understanding your organization’s current state of health.
• A completed ‘diagnosis’ of the health of your organization, from your perspective (or from the perspective of your Management Team/Board if you attend together)
• A process for developing strategy and energizing collective action to move the strategy forward
• A customized practical, holistic framework for achieving and maintaining long-term organizational health that equips you to propel to higher levels of development and continually learn how to connect people, strategy and the bottom line.
• Knowledge of how to increase the capacity of your organization to work effectively in rapidly changing times to:
o Positively impact your bottom line,
o Improve the effectiveness of training programs,
o Enhance the effectiveness of customer service and quality assurance
o Promote health and well being of your employees, and
o Reduce the human and financial costs of stress.
• An understanding of the importance of relationships, that are based on genuine contact, to achieve results beyond your expectations
• An approach to Whole Systems Thinking – a holistic perspective and working with organizations as living systems

Each workshop includes a workbook to support ongoing learning. All participants have access to support and mentorship following the training through an international network of Genuine Contact™ professionals. For more information

Our Workshop Location
Nestled in the Laurentian Mountains 80 km north of Montreal is the beautiful town of Val David
and Prema Shanti, a tranquil inn on the shores of Lac Doré. Prema Shanti is home to our
workshops and provides an ideal retreat setting for a complete residential learning experience.
The inn offers beautifully appointed rooms, fine dining, spa services, and easy access to hiking
trails, swimming and canoeing. Dormitory housing is also available for those who are more
budget conscious. Special rates are available for all workshop participants including
accommodations, meals and use of the facilities. Please contact Prema Shanti for further details.

Our Facilitation Team

Michelle Cooper of Integral Visions Consulting Inc (Ancaster, ON), Donna Clark of Emergent Futures Consulting Inc (Halifax, NS) and Marquis Bureau of MBureau International Inc (Notre Dame de la Salette, QC) make up our facilitation team. They are authorized Genuine Contact™ Trainers and Co-Owners who have been working with the Program for a number of years. This partnership offers participants the opportunity to learn from Genuine Contact Professionals working across Canada and internationally in a variety of sectors. It also allows us to offer the Genuine Contact workshops both in English and French, providing participants with a unique and customized learning experience.

Register today for this exciting workshop opportunity.

A limited number of scholarship positions are available. For more information, contact us.

Building Healthy Workplaces with the Genuine Contact Program - Part II

WHO (1999) identified the determinants of worker’s health in the workplace that mirror the determinants of health in the community: the environment and working conditions, the organization and culture, work groups, and work styles and practices. Working with the Genuine Contact Program in organizations can positively impact each determinant.

1. Environment and working conditions:
Lack of involvement in decision-making is one factor that contributes to a negative psychosocial environment. The Genuine Contact Program uses highly participative meeting methodologies that tap into the collective wisdom and potential of individuals and the organization as a whole. The processes engage the passion and creativity of people and encourage responsibility and action, resulting in innovative and creative solutions to issues related to work environment and working conditions. The Program works with change at the scale of the whole, promoting join-in at the beginning rather than buy-in after the fact. As a consequence, there is usually faster uptake and acceptance of new ways of being and doing.

2. Organization and Culture:
Improving workplace health depends almost entirely on leadership priorities and decisions. The first step is to determine the will of leaders and the organization to achieve health and balance. The Genuine Contact Program helps organizations to explore the benefits of and the will to achieve health and balance. It provides them with the tools and frameworks to “diagnose” the current state of health and to develop strategies to achieve and sustain organizational health. These tools raise consciousness of and work with the deep essence of the organization including purpose, values, assumptions, leadership, vision, community, management and relationships. The emphasis is on a deep fix rather than a quick fix. Using the tools, the organization can build a comprehensive organizational strategy for achieving and sustaining organizational health and the processes for achieving results.

3. Workgroups:
Relationships and interactions with co-workers are the major source of stress in workplaces. Healthy organizations are founded on right relationships with self, others, the collective and the divine. The Genuine Contact Program enables people to achieve “genuine contact” at all levels through reflection and meaningful dialogue. The program builds community and fosters team work, effective communication and collaboration while working together on key business issues. It helps to minimize conflicts that create a negative psychosocial environment and provides tools to resolve conflicts that do arise.

4. Work Style and Practices:
The Genuine Contact Program engages the whole person: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. Working with the program assists individuals and the collective to work with their “deeper source” (Sharmer, 2005) - purpose, assumptions, values and beliefs that guides actions, individuals and work groups, which facilitates transformational change. Mentoring, coaching and workshops are provided to support individuals and the organization to achieve health and balance.

Achieving organizational health is a continuous process. The program does not superimpose a model or structure, but rather provides the underpinnings and frameworks for co-creating healthy workplace strategies that are customized to the organization. It provides a healthy and balanced foundation or “operating system” for the organization to work from.

The ingredients and benefits of a healthy organization are clear. There is now evidence that is compelling organizations to invest the time and resources to address workplace health. The Genuine Contact Program provides a HOW to get there - a holistic approach that aligns the process for achieving health with healthy workplace characteristics.

Next workshop

Source

Building Healthy Workplaces with the Genuine Contact Program

Our next workshop

Healthy workplaces are a hot topic nationally in Canada and the “next big idea” in organizational development. In 2000, Canada’s Healthy Workplace Week was launched to remind Canadian businesses about the increasing urgency to address workplace health and the positive effects that healthy workplaces can have. Workplace health has even received attention from the World Health Organization (WHO) because of the impact on the health of communities.

Why is there so much attention? The human and economic costs of unhealthy workplaces are great. The ripple effect has been felt throughout society on families, businesses, and the health care system. WHO has declared job stress a worldwide epidemic. Unhealthy workplaces can create excessive stress, especially in organizational climates that devalue or ignore basic human needs (Wilson, 2003). Sustained long-term stress changes brain chemistry and affects the body’s ability to fight infection and disease. Resulting illness, disability and death affect family relationships and economic well-being. Analysts estimate the total cost of unhealthy workplaces to Canadian employers is in the billions annually. About 20 percent of payroll of a typical company goes towards stress-related problems like absenteeism, disability leaves and counselling, medication and accidents, (Riga, 2006). According to Health Canada, the direct costs (paying absent workers) and indirect costs (training replacements) of work-life stress to Canadian business is $4.5- $10 billion annually (Riga). The burden of illnesses also stresses publicly funded health care systems and private insurers. Unhealthy workplaces have been linked to low productivity (Lowe, 2003), which can affect sustainable economic development in communities and countries (WHO, 1999).

Despite the extensive research that demonstrates the benefits of healthy workplaces for individuals, for the organization and the bottom line, few organizations have developed a comprehensive strategy to address workplace health. I recently attended a nursing leadership conference where researchers presented their study that found the factors that influence quality of worklife in health care had not changed in the last 10 years, yet few organizations have been successful in integrating these ingredients (Dhoot, 2005). So why is that? Although there is much information about WHAT needs to be done, there is much to learn about HOW to get there. There is reluctance to invest the time, financial and human resources required to achieve healthy workplaces because of the time it takes (several years) to see a return on investment, even though it can range from $1.64 to more than $8.00 per dollar spent.

While healthy workplace strategies have evolved considerably since the 1970’s emphasis on occupational hygiene and safety, current healthy workplace strategies are directed at individuals through lifestyle and wellness programs and health and safety training programs. While important, they are only part of the equation. It is now recognized that there is a third element that must be attended to: the underlying organizational factors and culture that support health of individuals and the organizations (Lowe, 2004). This goes beyond environments that are free of hazards, or training people in safe work practices. What Lowe refers to is working with the deeper essence of the organization, and involves key ingredients like “leadership that values employees as key assets, supportive supervision at all levels, employee participation, job control, communication, opportunities to learn, and a culture that gives priority to work-life balance and individual wellness” (p.3). The concept of healthy workplaces has evolved to that of healthy organizations.

Working with the Genuine Contact Program taps into and attunes organizations to that deeper essence and works with the multiple dimensions that contribute to organizational health. The program builds internal capacity to achieve and sustain health and balance by offering processes, tools, structures and supports that can help organizations to develop an operating system that allows ongoing evolution of a healthy organization.

More tomorrow.

Source: Michelle Cooper RN, MScN
Michelle Cooper of Integral Visions Consulting Inc. is an international consultant dedicated to help individuals and organizations to achieve effectiveness and health through facilitation, consultation, coaching, and mentoring. Michelle has been working with the Genuine Contactä Program since its inception and is an authorized trainer.

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