Hello from OKA!  

OKA customers frequently ask us how they can stay in touch to learn about new training support products and workshop ideas. We are launching this newsletter in response - please let us know what topics you want to see in future issues!  I've included what I hope is an interesting leadership note at the end of this issue.  I hope you like it.
New Training Tool: MBTI Slide Shows

MBTI IntroRequested by many of our workshop participants, these detailed and visually rich PowerPoint presentations provide trainers and consultants with over 30 years of OKA's experience at making type engaging and actionable. This dynamic and colorful presentation gives trainers new to type the structure and content they need to get started, while providing type veterans a beautiful new polished format.  This presentation comes on a CD with a Type Presentation, a separate Temperament Presentation and a third option with both presentations combined.  Introductory Price: $90.  Learn More!
 
Consulting Exercise: Problem Solving
Z-Model Decision Making
 
Help your clients apply type to real-time problem-solving!  After completing a MBTI Introduction, break your group into small groups by function pair (ST, SF, NT, NF). Ask each group to write a statement that represents an important need or problem that the team (or project or organization) faces.  Once each group has developed its statement, do a report-out, testing to see how the group's problem statement reflects their preferences. Then, have either the full group or sub-groups apply the Z-Model to work on one or more of the problems identified. 
  • S: What are the facts?  What does experience tell us about this problem? 
  • N: Are there any patterns in the facts that point to root causes?  What are the possibilities? 
  • T:  What are the criteria for a good solution? What are the fair and just alternatives? 
  • F: How will the alternatives or a solution impact the people involved? 
With some focus and a little time, your group will see how quickly type principles can be applied to today's problems - real-time applications that make your training memorable!
 
New Workshop at OKA with Otto Kroeger, Hile Rutledge and Katherine Hirsh: "Using Type Lenses" One Time Only!
 
OKA is pleased to announce a new collaboration with the Association for Psychological Type (APT). Launching on June 19-20, 2008, "Using Type Lenses in Leading Type" is an exciting new workshop that illustrates how a number of two-letter type combinations, or type lenses, can be used to make psychological type knowledge accessible and actionable.

Temperament, Function Pair, Attitude Pair and the Quadrants have all proved rich and powerful lenses for illuminating the influence of psychological type on behavior. Through group exercises, lecturettes, small group discussions and case studies, this experiential workshop-delivered by Otto Kroeger, Hile Rutledge and Katherine Hirsh-explores each of these lenses and the individual or organizational issues that each is best equipped to address. Read more and register!

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A Leadership Note from Hile
 
Jenny Tucker, OKA's Consulting Director, just came back from a Star Trek convention, and she was telling me about a talk by Brent Spiner, the actor who played Data-an android incapable of feeling any emotion on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  At the convention, someone asked Spiner whether portraying the emotionless Data was limiting as an actor, and he replied that it was actually quite challenging to show just enough emotion for those around him to be able to project onto him the emotional state they were in, thereby being able to connect to him. This story struck us as a key insight into the challenges we all have as leaders and trainers of and consultants to leaders.

While being authentic as a leader is important, a critical element to leading and influencing is being able to connect with the motives and emotional states of others-individuals, teams, organizations and movements.  This ability to connect is every bit as much about allowing others to project their own emotional states onto you, the leader, as it is transmitting your own emotions out into the world.  This means that being able to lead, to train leaders and to understand and coach leaders requires first and foremost self-awareness and self-management. I can not be a competent and knowing receiver of this kind of attention and projection unless I have the self-knowledge and control that come most often from maturity, reflection, and self-study over time.

One of the things that OKA prides itself on is being the kind of place that - for over 30 years now - provides that kind of self-awareness training. Through tools as varied as the MBTI assessment, the Strength Deployment Inventory, Reversal Theory and the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator, we have been training leaders and teams for years to reframe their experiences with each other and to bring to their roles and work life the most powerful tool they can have - an aware and empowered sense of self.

We have a number of new tools out designed both to help you with your own knowledge and understanding AND to bring these insights more effectively to the teams, leaders, clients and worlds with which you work.  Check out the new PowerPoint presentations and consider attending one of our upcoming classes.  We are eager to play a role in your on-going professional development.

We look forward to staying in touch with these updates. 

All the best,

Hile Rutledge

OKA

Upcoming Classes at OKA in Fairfax, VA

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