Better Meetings Ideas
Listening 101 for Businesses and Organizations
Posted by: Kai Degner in Better Meetings Ideas, Featured, Managing Conflict on March 9th, 2009
Listening is fundamental to our businesses and organizations, whether as a manager, sales person, or customer service representative. Perhaps you or your organization could benefit from an experience that will leave you with new tools to listen even more effectively. There is an exciting four-week online course available for people, businesses, and organizations: Listening 101.
Members of the Bluestone Group at the Community Mediation Center are pleased to have developed this course to be practical and to immediately have an impact at work and in life. The course is conveniently scheduled, requires no travel, and is designed to let each participant identify ways to become an more consistent and intentional listener.
Discounted group rates are available, so sales teams, managers, boards of directors, or other leadership groups can participate to increase the entire organization’s capacity to effectively listen. Visit www.Listening101.com to learn more!
Better Meeting Idea: World Cafe
Posted by: Kai Degner in Better Meetings Ideas on February 11th, 2009
The World Cafe is another process The Bluestone Group can bring to your business, conference, or networking event. This process is a wonderful way to have a large group have rich, small group conversation about issues that matter. It is an effective way to create relationships in a big group, explore ideas as a large group, and keep participation and energy at a high level.
The Café process is almost infinitely malleable and will work with any group of 12 or more. We have successfully conducted Cafés with 1200 people, so size is not a problem. To date most of the Cafés we have designed, hosted and convened have been to enable large groups of people to think together about some aspect of their common future. It is a powerful community development tool. The World Café process has been used successfully at large conferences, at town meetings, among educators, for designing and implementing organizational strategy, and in numerous other settings. - NCDD
Better Meeting Idea: Open Space Technology
Posted by: Kai Degner in Better Meetings Ideas on February 11th, 2009
Ever have a complex challenge that needs to be solved by many people working together in a short time? The Bluestone Group is skilled in a number of innovative meeting models, such as Open Space Technology, which apply to this setting. This is the type of technique that The Bluestone Group is seeking to bring to Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Staunton, Augusta County, and other communities in Virgina and the mid-atlantic.
At the very least, Open Space is a fast, cheap, and simple way to better, more productive meetings. At a deeper level, it enables people to experience a very different quality of organization in which self managed work groups are the norm, leadership a constantly shared phenomenon, diversity becomes a resource to be used instead of a problem to be overcome, and personal empowerment a shared experience. - NCDD
YouTube Video: Open Space and Transition Towns
