December 2012
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| Greetings! |
It's that time of year!
Tinsel and lights and wreaths are everywhere. And many businesses are working extra-long hours in order to prepare and handle the holiday season.
We're putting the final touches to 2012 ourselves, but we can't relax quite yet - at least not before we bring you up-to-date on recent happenings around our office and share a few more stories.
Hopefully you have a few moments to catch up on what's been happening in the Insights community, so grab a cup of coffee (or eggnog if you're so inclined) and read on....
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2012 Regional Conference Re-cap
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Attendees focused on Mike Jones
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The Annual Insights Vancouver Conference was held December 3rd at the Four Seasons Hotel. This full day of learning, sharing, and networking continues to grow year after year. Over 100 people were in the room to hear the keynote address by Mike Jones, Customer Solutions Manager from Insights Global. Building on the theme of Personal breakthroughs lead to Business breakthroughs Mike had the crowd fully engaged and participating in great group conversations. The topic focused on leadership. He had everyone considering the four manifestations of leadership, their individual leadership strengths, and how these strengths fit with the goals and culture of their organization.
Once again, the cracker barrel sessions were one of the highlights of the day. Twelve presenters delivered 15 minute mini-sessions focused on exercises that could be used in workshops, coaching, or day-to-day workplace situations. Each participant had the opportunity to sit in on 3 different cracker barrel sessions and take away exercises that had practical application for their workplace.
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A cracker-barrel session in progress.
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The Discovery Full Circle (DFC) profile was re-introduced to the group by Kathy Thom of Insights Toronto. Kathy showed the power and benefit of using this profile as a coaching tool. Her presentation was well received; in fact over a third of the practitioners attending have already asked for their own DFC to pilot in their organizations.
A sneak peek at the Deeper Discovery program was delivered after a great lunch and networking break. This deeper dive into self-awareness has been in development for a number of years...and the passion Mike Jones has for the program was clear. His enthusiasm was catching, as two people changed their flights so they could stay and join the other 18 participants in the Deeper Discovery workshop held the day after the conference.
The three afternoon breakout sessions this year included Building Healthy Workplaces, Influencing Effectiveness, and Making Change Work. In response to past feedback, these sessions were given extra time to provide the participants with a deeper understanding and more practical applications of the themes. The Influencing session used a workshop journal that was new this year and the response was excellent. The need to increase the effectiveness of influencing within an organization was clearly articulated by all participants.
A final wrap, including a poetry performance by Sue McIntyre and special guests, concluded the formal program and lead into the wine and networking reception. Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the success of the conference was the number of people that continued table conversations well after the formal close. Over a third of the crowd remained engrossed in deep conversations about how Insights could help them and their organizations in 2013 and beyond even as the call of wine and appetizers wafted in through the doors.
Planning for next year is already underway. Mark your calendars now for December 2nd, 2013 and plan to join a great community of practice at the Insights Vancouver annual conference.
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Making Change Work - Insights for Building Engagement
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Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday February 5 - 7, 2013
Measuring 'micro-level' engagement translates to 'macro-level' engagement and success. Discover the tools organizations are using to implement successful changes while achieving higher levels of employee confidence, competence and engagement.
Learn how others have collaborated with Insights Vancouver to measure levels of engagement throughout their change processes, introduce the Insights engagement model to their employees, and prepare timely leadership actions.
Cost: $1995.00($1495.00 for Accredited Practitioners or Second registrant from the same organization)
Location: Insights Vancouver Training Centre
If you're looking for a practical, hands-on approach to the best practices for building engagement in a changing environment, don't miss this opportunity. Participants will receive a comprehensive 200 page learning guide, check lists for use at every stage of the engagement process, practical "top drawer" job aids to guide you through each step, and a change-engagement survey valued at $900.00 for use with your first change project* (one per organization)
To register for the Making Change Work - Insights for Building Engagement session, CLICK HERE.
For a more detailed Fact Sheet on our program, click here
If you have questions or would like more information, contact our office
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Paving a Path to Teamwork
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 This fall, a team of 50 people from four geographic regions got together to talk strategy and team work. Their responsibility is to overseeing major repairs, renovation, capital improvement and energy retrofit projects to building complexes across the province. In addition, they develop construction and energy efficiency strategies and standards. This is a team with widely varied roles, skill sets and home geography - whose members want to build that pathway of success together.
To support their goal of team development, Anne Bishop, Senior Consultant, worked with them to take their foundational understanding of the Insights into an intense team context. Discovering Team Effectiveness paved the way for the team to build awareness of how to access the diversity of the team and how to apply Insights' highly researched best practices to build team capability. As always in teamwork there is a central component of building self awareness of 'how do I show up" as a team member and how do my individual strengths support collective success.
Using the lens of the Insights colour energies the team discovered how their team tends to show up and what the impact of that has on success. Going deeper into their uniqueness, the team used their profiles to explore how each member varied in their intensity of each colour energies and how that impacts team dynamics and collaboration. Team communication was next, examining how to recognize type and adapt for better connections within the team and with key stakeholders.
 The team put their new knowledge into actual practice as each table moved into the "hands on" project of crafting sets of unique concrete "mosaic stepping stones " that they designed to reflect the diversity of their table team. Participants looked at how they worked together in the project and discussed how this links to how the team functions in the real world. The experience offered an opportunity to assess their team skills against the highly researched Insights Team Effectiveness model . The resulting dialogue clarified 'concrete' actions for team to focus on in their quest for continuous improvement.
The stepping stones that resulted from this activity will be placed in the gardens of the complexes they build to serve as a symbol of this team's team effectiveness journey and how the individual - collective dynamic can be aligned for high performance.
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Video Coaching for Leadership and Team Development Training
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Insights practitioners understand that we see the world differently than others see it. Perception is a foundational element of an introductory Insights Discovery workshop. The concept of perception is well worth delving into more deeply, since it affects how we show up, and our often unintended results in our relationships.
Recently, two clients who have been exploring Discovery over the last several years, have been deepening their understanding of perception and how our intentions don't always match our behaviour - by using video coaching in leadership and team development training. Insights Vancouver Senior cCnsultant Shauna Grinke has used video coaching for much of her 20 years as a learning facilitator and coach. In one instance, a leader had completed a INTL 360 (Insights Navigator for Transformational Leadership) evaluator. The feedback was clear - this leaders behaviours did not match her intentions. This disconnect caused a disengaged workforce, a culture of blame, and poor productivity. This leader couldn't 'see' what others saw, until she was able to see herself on video, and have a coach help her see how her overuse of one energy was getting in her way of being an effective leader. Having the reflection of seeing oneself 'as a camera captures it', enables an objective analysis of behaviours and perception. Shauna has also employed video coaching for skills development using the D4 model - a powerful model for giving feedback in a way that positively influences performance. Of course, a model is only as good as the skills used to implement it. At a recent workshop with 15 senior operations leaders with a global financial institution, Shauna facilitated a session where participants practiced D4 in real workplace scenarios. These sessions were recorded, and then debriefed with the group. The multi-layered learning of the group giving feedback to those on video, and then the feedback providers being videoed giving feedback, was rich and transformative. To learn more or to discuss video coaching for your organization, contact our office.
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If you have comments, or suggestions for articles in upcoming newsletters, please
contact our office.
Sincerely,
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Ken Blosser
Insights Vancouver
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