Level 1: "Leading Yourself" was designed for people within businesses and nonprofits or consultants working within businesses and nonprofits who would like to learn the skills of needs-based communication and needs-based organizational structures. As the first level of a 2-level leadership program, it focuses on the core skills of an integration of the processes of Nonviolent Communication™ (NVC) and Dynamic Governance™ (DG). While NVC is often applied to personal healing or intimate relationships, this program is unique in its application of NVC to working relationships within workplace environments. The second year of the program applies these core skills to “Leading Teams.”
Program Includes
- Five (5) three-day experiential workshops, spread over 12 months
- You may enter the program in any month
- You may retake any workshops (on a space-available basis) in the following 12 months after your program ends
- Monthly group mentoring sessions via teleconference in the months between workshops
- Weekly skills practice with your colleagues in the program
- Learning materials: workshop handouts plus three books (Speak Peace in a World of Conflict, Words That Work in Business, We The People)
Program Fee
$4,500 per person (not including travel, accommodations, breakfast or dinner for workshops). If you would like to try a workshop before entering into the program, the tuition for any single 3-day workshop is $US 750. If you decide to continue in the program within 30 days after attending the workshop, then the workshop tuition paid may be credited toward the full tuition payment. The 1-day workshop on "Needs-Based Communication (NVC) Foundations (#NVC0)" is an optional workshop which meets the pre-requisites of the program and for which tuition is $250.
For those seeking financial assistance, please see our Financial Assistance Opportunities page.
Pre-Requisite
The three-day workshop "CWWPT Foundations and Overview" or equivalent experience is required before entering the program. This workshop is offered in a variety of formats (eg. public 3-day workshop, private 3-day workshop, series of 1-day public workshops, teleseminar, etc.). Contact us for current offerings.
Where is the PLDP Program currently offered?
At present, the PLDP Program is being offered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA. Details on workshop dates, venue, and facilitators are available here.
Content of Workshops
Dynamic Governance Foundations (#DSG1)
In this three-day workshop we create an experiential environment to learn the foundations of Dynamic Goverance (DG) as a governance and decision-making structure for the workplace or other organization. We have fully integrated DG with needs-consciousness so that it becomes a robust structure to hold human needs.
- Core principles
- Circle meetings
- Circle roles
- Circle structure
- Functional Hierarchy vs. Power within Circles
- Workflow: Lead - Do - Measure
- Personal Development Plan
Moving from Unconscious Reaction to
Conscious Response (#NVC1)
This three-day NVC workshop focuses on your relationship with yourself, recognizing those moments where you are stimulated into an unconscious reaction (i.e. fight, submit, flee) and learning a clear process that enables you to differentiate from constrictive reactive thinking and move toward a conscious awareness of what matters to you--the expansive place of clarity, creativity and choice. We will also explore explicitly the need of self-care and how a needs consciousness expands our understanding and choices around self-care.
- Recognize when in reactive energy
- Connect to personal needs, feelings
- Explore common reactive triggers
- Self-Care: “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time”
Powerful Working Relationships (#NVC2)
This three-day NVC workshop focuses on interpersonal relationships featuring role plays and other experiential structures to explore how we can choose to connect to other people rather than judge them. In the workplace setting, we want our relationships to have an ease of communication and transparency that contributes toward the fulfillment of the purpose of the team. Giving honest feedback to one another is particularly important--and challenging--yet NVC provides a potent means to express and receive this feedback fully.
- Expressing appreciation (vs. compliments)
- Expressing disagreement (vs. blame or criticism or "no")
- Transforming your anger into connection without losing intensity
- Empathic listening
- Hearing appreciation (vs. compliments)
- Hearing disagreement (vs. blame or criticism or "no")
- Connecting with intense responses in others
Engaging the Power through NVC(#NVC3)
This unique three-day NVC workshop focuses on connecting to our own self-empowerment--even in the face of those who want power over us or in the face of those who are not taking responsibility for themselves. We'll explore how our own thinking can disempower us or disempower those around us. Through awareness of how each of us get enmeshed in common group reactive patterns, we'll learn needs-based skills and strategies so that we are able to stay grounded, connected with the people around us and focused on what matters most.
- Clarity of Self-Responsibility
- Language and thinking that denies responsibility for ourselves
- Awareness of ways we give away our responsibility to other people
- Awareness of ways we take responsibility for other people
- Speaking truth to power
- Inviting people into their power
- Emerging from "the Drama Triangle"
Domains, Ownership and Mutual Accountability (#DSG2)
In this three-day workshop we explore "domains" within DG: how they define our roles, how they empower us to make our own choices within those roles, and how measurement gives us feedback on how we are fulfilling those roles. We also experience how "mutual accountability" within the circle is different than the traditional "reporting" structure. The circle's delegation of its domain to its members is the fundamental process of buidling dynamic, living workgroups.
- Behave like an owner: holding the whole
- Building a workgroup (team)
- Foundational business skills
- Fulfillment of Domain, Aim and Purpose
- Making clear agreements
- Accountability to yourself, each other, the circle
- Measurement => Feedback, Learning, Accountability
Needs-Based Communication (NVC) Introduction (#NVC0)
This optional one-day NVC Introduction workshop provides an experiential framework from which to learn the basic concepts of needs-based or nonviolent communication (NVC). We explore the common and real situations where we are triggered into an unconscious reaction (i.e. fight, submit or flee) and witness a new way to perceive these situations as an opportunity for connection to self or others. Before attending this workshop, participants are encouraged to read "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" or "Speak Peace in a World of Conflict," both of which are by Marshall Rosenberg, or "Words that Work in Business," by Ike Lasater.
- Experiencing NVC: the "Four Ears" exercise
- Connecting to what matters
- Expressing authentically
- Listening empathically
Dynamic Governance (DG) Introduction (#DSG0)
This optional one-day DG Introduction workshop provides an experiential framework from which to learn the basic concepts of Dynamic Governance (DG) which is also known as the Sociocratic Circle Method. What is unique about our presentation of DG is that we perceive it through a needs-consciousness and fully integrate it with NVC. We'll explore how DG shifts the power structure within an organization while it maintains the functional hierarchy; how DG meetings deal effectively with proposals and issues; how DG creates a structure that enables the members of a team to largely lead themselves.
- Four core principles of DG
- The dynamic circle: lead > do > measure
- DG organizational structure
- DG meeting process
- Consent decision-making
