Collaborative Solutions

Founded in 1991, Collaborative Solutions has worked with hundreds of organizations including corporations, local and federal government, small businesses, and non-profits. We provide consulting, facilitation, mediation, training, and coaching to help groups work together to achieve ambitious goals. Our services are customized to meet your needs. Call or email today to learn how your group can benefit. 720-581-2490 or bsmith CollaborativeSolutions. us Our Premise Collaborative Solutions was founded on the premise that challenges facing today's workplaces and communities are too complex for old style, hierarchical leadership practices and require the thinking, creativity, and energy of people from many different perspectives. We believe that collaborative approaches offer the most effective path to progress whether the task is leading, learning, innovating, and problem solving, planning or producing. The great challenge for organizations and communities today is that most of us are not skilled in collaborative approaches. In fact, most of us were trained to compete, to win, to go it alone. Our automatic tendencies and organizational structures work against the unprecedented challenges of our modern world. However, collaboration between people, organizations and communities is growing. Our own experience with successful groups regularly confirms our faith in the wisdom and power of collaboration. Most importantly, a growing body of research in a variety of disciplines provides real evidence that collaborative approaches produce better outcomes whether it is resolving group conflict, understanding organizational challenges, negotiating shared solutions, improving interpersonal relationships, or gaining collective insight. Training Collaborative capacity is not transmitted in a single loop learning process. Rather, it is developed through experience and reflection, new knowledge and insight, conscious practice and credible feedback. Leadership Development We help organizations develop collaborative leadership and team-building skills. Today, the most successful leaders are not those that compete for individual advantage, but those that build involvement, bridge differences, and facilitate collaborative solutions. Program participants range from accomplished, high-level leaders to new professionals whether it is an intact work team, a new board of directors, or a cross-sector leadership group. Programs are designed as retreats, workshop series, off sites or on sites. The depth and range of ideas and activities depends on client goals and requirements, but modules include: * Today's Leadership Challenge * Emotional Intelligence * Transforming Interaction * Engaging Constructive Conflict * The Power of Shared Vision * Current Reality * Systems Thinking * Assumptions and Mental Models * Collaborative Problem Solving * Motivation Team Building We design and facilitate teambuilding programs for private, public, non-profit, and cross-sector groups. Team building is useful for: * Starting a new team, organization, collaboration * Building a more effective team * Assessing team skills and styles * Recognizing and celebrating accomplishments * Understanding and improving interaction * Developing collaboration skills and capacity * Using conflict productively * Learning to learn together * Improving working relationships Programs are highly interactive and designed around principles of adult learning, experiential learning, and multiple learning channels. We recognize that different approaches are needed for different groups. Outdoor challenges may be invigorating for some, aggravating for others. Options include: * Learning labs on real issue problem solving * Outdoor group problem solving challenges * Indoor group challenges * Action challenges * Facilitative Leadership * Emotional Intelligence * Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator * Constructive Conflict Skills * Shared Visioning * Current Reality Indicators * Assumptions and Mental Models * Collaborative Problem Solving * Strategic Planning * Asset mapping Conflict Resolution: Building Constructive Conflict Competence We provide training programs to help individuals and groups become more adept in making conflict constructive. We do not claim to have easy answers. Humans have yet to unlock the mysteries of conflict. While simple agreement is the easiest way to protect relationships, it is clearly not the best way to solve problems. The ability to clearly express differences without triggering defensive ness is a master competency. And since answers to complex problems are not solved in one-shot communication exchanges, we cannot rely on linear formulas. We have to become more adept at reading and adjusting to dynamics influencing behavior. Our programs can be designed as a lunch series, half-or full -day workshops, or multiple day retreats. * Emotional Intelligence * Interpersonal Dynamics * Learning and Change Theories * Conflict Styles * Dialogue * Disagreement Skills * Active Conflict Management * Reasoning and Elaboration * Assumptions and Mental Models * Collaborative Problem Solving * Consensus Building * Transformative Mediation Emotional Intelligence Key findings in recent brain research focus on the strength and speed of emotions in influencing interactions between people. Humans have emotional signal systems that are always on, and always transmitting information that influences others. The real dilemma is that we send, decipher and act upon those signals at lightening fast speed, below the level of consciousness. For our ancestors, fast, automatic reactions were essential in propelling life-saving responses to danger. Today, the brain s automatic triggering of powerful physiological responses in the face of perceived threats is not very helpful. The primitive part of our brain in charge of automatic reactions does not know the difference between a grizzly bear and an aggressive coworker. The result is the universal experience of suddenly being confused, offended, or even threatened by an initially insignificant interaction Finding ways to influence our hard-wired, automatic response system is the focus of serious scientific research. The most promising approaches reveal the futility of deciding to feel differently, and instead encourage better understanding of what is actually happening within ourselves, within others, and between us. Emotional intelligence is primarily about increasing awareness and developing fluency in emotional responses. Collaborative Solutions provides training, facilitation, and coaching in emotional intelligence and interpersonal competence. Content may include: * New Definitions of Intelligence * Brain Research * Different Approaches to Emotional / Interpersonal Competence * Evolution and Emotional Triggers * Recoding the Stimulus * Self Awareness * Other Awareness * Reading Emotions * Meaning and Dialogue * Interaction Dynamics * Seeing What s Happening * Changing What s Happening * Communication Signals * Communication Options * Speaking to be Heard * Listening to Learn Facilitation and Collaboration Skills Facilitation skills are required in an increasing array of workplace, organizational, community, and interpersonal environments. When group efforts involve problem solving or marshalling of diverse interests, skillful facilitation can make a big difference in moving forward or falling apart. We prepare participants in specific methods, strategies, processes, activities, and styles of facilitation. Our focus is on developing competence in several approaches and building flexibility in meeting different group needs. Modules can include: * Types of Group Efforts * Facilitator Roles * Decision Making Options * Collaborative Process Overview * Dual Concerns: Tasks and Relationships * Stakeholder Analysis * Stages of Decision-Making/ Problem Solving * Process Design * Interpersonal / Group Dynamics * Constructive Conflict Competencies * Group Process Tools and Activities * Effective Meeting Components * Agenda Creation and Recreation * Operating Agreements * Gauging Manner and Level of Interventions * Building Collaborative Norms * Stages of Group Development Not sure where to start? Call today to learn how we can help. 720-581-2490

Head Office Denver CO USA