Teams & Culture
EXEMPLARY LEADERS KNOW THAT DEVELOPING AN ORGANIZATION TO INFLUENCE THE FUTURE REQUIRES CULTIVATING THEMSELVES.
When leaders and their teams align around the organization’s purpose, energy ignites, cooperation increases, and commitment to a greater contributions in the world expands.
How? The Core Commitment Cycle™
Exemplary leaders know that developing an organization to influence the future requires cultivating themselves. They build trust. They engage in conversations and practice in real time. They collaborate, coordinating together to turn compelling visions into reality.
They know that bringing everyone to the table to work toward shared goals requires a common culture of empowered and engaged people. Developing a “common language” builds towards greater and greater levels of trust.
Dynamic, cooperative and innovative team functioning sets a powerful example as it flows throughout the organization.
The Core Commitment Cycle sets the stage for effective teamwork that nurtures and inspires trust in the entire cultural system, turning compelling visions into reality.
The Core Commitment Cycle™, a pragmatic process that integrates Awareness, Attention, and Conversation, is an innovative offer for teams. It aligns conversations with value-based commitments to wield the power of words: to shift moods and coordinate effective execution for extraordinary results.
Our clients engage us to work with their teams in a variety of ways – brief engagements to longer-term projects. Because we work with teams while they are in action, work involves re-energizing the leadership team via active learning practices, aligning values with action, and embodying pragmatic skills for action.
Powerful leaders embody a centered presence. This centered presence mobilizes and motivates people to action.
~~Richard Strozzi-Heckler
Embodied Learning involves the ability to take new actions that weren’t available to us previously.
How do we learn?
By tuning our attention to the living sensations of the body, we expand our awareness of the world. It begins with cultivating 360° full-bodied awareness: Thinking, Feeling, and Sensing into ourselves and then attuning to others in the world around us.
Learning and skill acquisition progresses through stages of practice, each with its own unique challenge. Acknowledging a need for new skills and sensibilities, that place of ‘I don’t know . . . ,” serves as the starting place. Being a Beginner in a deliberate learning process is followed by Competency, Proficiency, Expertise, and Mastery.
Along with Attention, 360° full-bodied awareness creates space for new learning to occur. Deliberate practice of newly emerging skills integrates our understanding and learning into everyday life. We move to what can be called ‘a new normal’ in daily life.
Expected Team & Organizational Outcomes
- Learn by giving and receiving assessments with dignity and respect
- Step into greater accountability and support others in their success
- Cultivate trust and care in relationships
- Skillfully coordinate with others using conflict to inspire trust and creativity while decreasing drama
Before
- Unclear direction. Re-work. Exhaustion.
- Us -Them Culture. High Drama. Turf wars & both overt/covert competition for resources.
- Micromanaging vs. Leading. Lack of leadership development.
- Difficult conversations predominate, creating reactivity, poor attitudes & moods, work-arounds, gridlock.
- Customer & employee relationships reflect ‘what can you do for me?’ attitude, over-focus on price & salary.
- Culture of cordiality, while avoiding difficult situations or people. Low/No bar for excellence.
- Creativity actively discouraged while ‘following the manual’ highly valued at cost.
After
- Focus on Results
- Open culture. Spotlights the organization & team purpose aligning toward purposeful action.
- Learning organization. Collaborative & cooperative in mobilizing alliances & partners for right action.
- Boosting Workplace Productivity & Reducing Cycle Time.
- Intentional cultivation of leaders at all levels, ‘the bench.’ Developmental coaching of both managers & leaders.
- Surfacing & transforming conflict for skillful resolution of concerns & challenges. Increasing accountability all around.
- Relationships with all stakeholders valued & prioritized. Customers & employees treated with dignity & care.
- Developing conversational skills, including candor, to effectively address performance with dignity.
- Innovate for success within a learning culture, open to new ideas/processes.
Team & Culture Clients
In the years that I’ve known Chris she has proven to be an exceptional coach and advisor. As a business owner it’s easy to get caught up in the details of the business and lose your perspective as to what’s really important in the long term. When I talk to Chris about what’s going on in my company and the issues I’m facing, I always seem to find the crucial breakthrough I need.
The Core Commitment Cycle training afforded us a healthy team building platform to develop a shared language and the trust that’s so essential in our business. Sessions were focused on the practice of the key elements in the Core Commitment Cycle, namely Mindful Attention, 360° Awareness Practices, and the Conscious Language of Speech Acts and Promise Based Management
I’ve found that I’m a better husband, father, and leader because of mindfulness practices and increased awareness of my conditioned tendencies. In short, I’m much more mindful of employing the CCC in all phases of my life.
Chris is one of those people you rarely come across in life. She is the finest life coach I’ve ever worked with: smart with great insight into people and organizations. Chris’ abilities go way beyond just being a coach: she’s an astute business woman who understands how her knowledge and talents can be utilized. I’d recommend her without hesitation.
Working with Chris, I began to appreciate that my capacity to lead and transform my organization could only increase through others. At first “mindfulness” sounded to me like squishy overused synonym for group hugs and undisciplined leadership
I’m very thankful that I was open-minded enough to listen, read and learn about the science behind Chris’s Core Presence Coaching™ process, based in mindfulness practices. By acknowledging and appreciating the need to connect with others, and practicing mindful awareness, I was able to engage more deliberately with co-workers and lead in the organization.
