Consulting and Conferences
 

What we do:

PeerSpirit consulting focuses on the power of communication to release the full potential of working groups. When people have a shared vision, an articulated purpose, and agreed upon rules of engagement, great energy and excitement comes alive between them that result in amazing outcomes.

PeerSpirit consultants are experts in understanding the infrastructure of communication. We work with individuals, leaders and groups to design sustainable dialogues and collaborative processes that allow people to take leadership, share responsibility, and align their work with organizational strategies and vision.

Who we are:

Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, PeerSpirit company principals, serve as the core consulting team. We work together in order to model dialogue and collaboration to our clients. Our different backgrounds and training allow us to bring two complete skill sets to our consulting practice. To complement and respond to specific client needs, PeerSpirit also calls upon a consortium of teaching colleagues with specific areas of expertise. We and our colleagues are trained in organizational development, change management, human resources, strategic business development, health care, educational and religious management.

How we work:

A Vice-President of Nursing Services says: "I want my staff to step forward with leadership, to get fired up about doing their jobs. I want them to believe their ideas are crucial to the success of our organization. How do I actually transfer that belief to them instead of just saying it in emails and everybody staying busy with the way things are?"

PeerSpirit response:  We designed and facilitated a two-day retreat for nurse leaders that raised three questions: 1) What is the leadership role the organization is counting on us to fulfill? 2) What operating agreements need to be active between us to fulfill that leadership role? 3) Where and how do we commit to begin practicing necessary changes?

An association director says, "I have a board that is economically and racially diverse where nobody seems to get along. They act completely at odds with one another and hamstring the staff. Though we blame this dissention on a few people, I think it's a board-wide problem. How do we get clear enough to see our way back to purpose?"

PeerSpirit response:   We designed and facilitated a one day Board retreat that began with a morning session of stories of personal background and experience in which people spoke their heartfelt connection to the association. Understanding exactly how each board member was connected to purpose led to a shift in how they perceived each other. The afternoon session put an agenda and group process in place that required collaboration and creative alliances. They are working the plan they established that day, and they take time each meeting to remind each other of the source of their dedication.

A university dean says: "We combined two departments and now everybody is playing lone ranger—protecting their own turf, or putting their friends forward for positions or funding. How do I get them to consider who's best for the job or what's best for the university?"

PeerSpirit response:   We worked with a combined faculty committee to reframe the situation from one of loss to one of gain. Over the course of several months, in a series of facilitated dialogues, the committee began to see that the merging of the departments was a chance to develop a new departmental culture with the potential to become a leading edge model in the university community.  They included graduate students in their process who documented and qualified their successful change.

What gets in the way:

Each of these situations results from our common human proclivity to accumulate patterns of miscommunication and beliefs that eventually trap even the most well-intentioned groups in assumptions about what can and cannot be said or done. Unsuccessful attempts to address sensitive issues or resolve conflicts can narrow the territory of communication and further constrict working relationships. Most often, this is no one's fault. People may be confused about what has happened to the quality of interpersonal dynamics and struggling to establish clear communication.

PeerSpirit's understanding of inter/intra personal and group communication infrastructures helps people design safe social containers and processes where these accumulations can be cleared. This is essential work in the life of every group, but it is difficult, often impossible, to do this clearing alone. Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea bring years of experience and stories of success to groups seeking to realign themselves to purpose and task.

We work with a group to define the conditions that need to be in place for people to speak and listen in ways that can be heard. We explore the territory of constriction and help a group resume confident communication and participation.

Renewed communication leads to successful problem solving.

Communication is the spark that ignites teamwork.

All consulting is booked through the PeerSpirit office. Please contact us for an initial phone call and evaluation of your needs and interests.

Conferences


Ask us to do these highly successful seminars for your organization:

A WEALTH OF STORIES: FINANCIAL PLANNING AND CLIENT LEGACY TALES
A half-day or full-day workshop with Christina Baldwin

There's "story" attached to money. This story can be an essential resource or a mysterious blockage in the process of financial planning.

Understanding the client's story of money unifies the planner's skill with the client's readiness.

Master Storycatcher, author, facilitator, Christina Baldwin, provides financial planners with tools to elicit story as an integral part of the planner/client relationship. Christina can provide half-day to full-day workshops that enhance the art of stories in your financial practice. Bring Christina to your next chapter meeting or client appreciation event.

You and your clients share a wealth of stories...

Three benefits of story in your planning process:

• Story lets you find the context in which your client is planning.
• Story allows you to better tailor your services.
• Story provides a trajectory and framework for allocating assets, managing risk, and setting goals.
  

Your next meeting, chapter, or conference needs a session in Storycatching. Contact us at cbaldwin@peerspirit.com or phone our office at 360-331-3580.

Christina was a "Super Session" presenter at the 2007 FPA National Conference in Seattle.
Click here for a PDF flyer for this event >>



CREATING CONDITIONS FOR CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER
A One-Day Workshop with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea

"I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again. Simple, honest, human conversation. Not mediation, negotiation, problem-solving, debate or public meetings. Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak. We each feel heard, and we each listen well."
Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another

There are conversations that cannot occur until the right social container for listening and interacting is set in place. In many organisations, the absence of such a social container limits the scope of conversation in ways that become habitual and accepted. People stop noticing what cannot be said. However, the presence of unaddressed issues and missed interconnectivity continues to accumulate at the edge of awareness. Silence starts getting in the way. Tension builds, but as it is a tension of silence, it is hard to understand what is going on and why miscommunication persists.

People tend to be so busy managing the conversations that are occurring, and the work requirements at hand, that it is difficult to stop and ask: What is the conversation we’re not having--and how do we create successful conditions to have it? This one-day workshop provides the opportunity to reflect on what needs to be said in your organization, and then provides leadership and facilitation skills to host these conversations.

Workshop content includes:

• Silence, breaking  silence, and understanding timing
• Identifying readiness in yourself to have these conversations
• Identifying readiness in your colleagues and organization
• Identifying topics you can imagine exploring—and how to bring them forward   
• PeerSpirit Circle  Process as a methodology for hosting real talk and real listening.   

Workshop outcomes:

• To have one topic you are ready to host
• To have a strategic plan for readiness
• To have confidence in the ability of PeerSpirit Circle Process to create the necessary social container

This workshop filled to capacity in May 2007, and we are eager to offer it again to other organizations.



LEADING CHANGE THROUGH THE POWER & PRACTICE OF STORY
With Christina Baldwin, based on her latest book, Storycatcher

We are at the end of the old road and the well-known story. One of the requirements of leadership now is to articulate the path forward: to name the unnamed territory and elicit stories that will guide us on. In a professional arena crowded with tools and theories, the return to story shines in its clarity and simplicity. The one who knows his own story stands like a tree in the wind. The one who tells the collective story holds the heart of the organization in his/her hand.

We may not know what stories we most need: but we will know them when we hear them coming out of each other’s mouths. Story is the oldest form of communication. People have been practicing this skill for tens of thousands of years in every language ever spoken and every society ever developed. Story is the transmitter of wisdom, the carrier for ninety percent of everything we know. Story will set the vision in place for where we are going: we proceed from the story into the action. Want to change yourself? Your organization? The world? Create those stories...

In this module we will experience the power of story to significantly influence the quality of our personal lives and our engagement with the important organizations—both professional and community based--to which we belong. We will:

• Map the self-story: who we bring to life
• Map the organizational story: where we make our contribution
• Integrate the self-story and organizational story, designing a congruent energetic field
• Map the new story, creating verbal spaces that call us to new realities

The story-shifters in organizations lead through questioning, listening, paying attention, and then speaking/writing narratives of metaphor and allegory that inspire, inform, and activate.

"We need a new story to inform our work and our lives. Christina Baldwin is a brilliant and loving guide into the realm of story--that interior place of experience and interpretation that surfaces in our actions.  For many years, I have learned from Christina skills and sensibilities that I treasure and use daily." –Margaret Wheatley, author, Leadership & the New Science, Turning to One Another, Finding Our Way

"Beyond being a preeminent innovator of Circle practice, Christina Baldwin's presence, wisdom and skilled experience as a facilitator are the best I have experienced in my 40 years of practicing that art." –Roger Harrison, Ph.D.

Christina has held this as a full-capacity workshop at Shambhala's Institute for Authentic Leadership for the past two years.

Contact us for more information.


PeerSpirit Collaborations

In 2000-2001, PeerSpirit joined with The Berkana Institute to co-develop a global initiative with business visionary and author, Margaret Wheatley. From the Four Directions: People Everywhere Leading the Way uses an adaptation of PeerSpirit circle as its core methodology, supporting local conversations of community leaders that lead to global networking. Please check the From the Four Directions web site at http://www.fromthefourdirections.org for more complete information and involvement. The guidelines for circle on our homepage were developed for this movement and have been downloaded by several thousand people in at least fifty countries.

In 2004, PeerSpirit began co-facilitating events called The Art of Hosting. This work is designed to deepen competency and confidence in three group processes—circle, World Café, and Open Space. The experience is hosted by a team of facilitators trained in at least one, if not all three of these processes. The experience is aimed at people who want to serve as conversational hosts in their work, community, and personal lives. Please check the Art of Hosting website (www.artofhosting.org) for more information.

Upcoming Collaboration Events:

The Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations

The Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations is a training for all those who aspire to learn how to work with groups in more interactive, engaging and effective ways; nurturing collective intelligence, shared learning and effective action.

We invite leaders, trainers, teachers, consultants, politicians, entrepreneurs and social innovators – anyone who wants to practice leadership that invites collective creativity and intelligence and achieves better cooperation and results.

Participants in the Art of Hosting will:

• Explore hosting conversations as a core leadership practice and skill set for leading change.
  
• Develop competence in several interactive processes that produce learning, creativity and shared commitment to action. We will explore Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Circle, World Cafe, and other participatory methodologies.
  
• Learn to design and lead meetings and conversations that result in clearer thinking, intelligent solutions, and group coherence.  We will experiment with Chaordic Design, the Convergence and Divergence model as well as others.
  
• Explore how to apply these tools to a project in progress, and determine how to develop your skills and practices well beyond this workshop.
  
• Experience the Art of Hosting as a fundamental organizing pattern that invites profound shifts in how we might live and work together.
  

When you join the Art of Hosting you are joining a growing global community of practitioners, supporting each other to explore and accomplish what we most care about.  The Art of Hosting & Convening Conversations has been offered to hundreds of people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America.


The Art of Hosting - WEST COAST
Whidbey Island, Washington
January 24-27, 2008

The Art of Hosting Team for the Whidbey Island event will consist of: Christina Baldwin, Ann Linnea, Teresa Posakony and Tenneson Woolf. Please note that this event is now full. Sign onto the PeerSpirit mailing list to receive announcements of upcoming Art of Hosting events in the year ahead.

Location:
The Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, Washington (north of Seattle)

Dates:
From 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 24 through 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 27, 2008

Cost:
Tuition $1025 ($775 for those from non-profit organizations), plus $330 for all meals and accommodations (3 nights).

For More Information:
Contact Teresa Posakony (Teresa@Berkana.org) or Christina Baldwin.

Registration:
Registration limited to a maximum of 32 participants. Forms can be found at http://www.berkana.org/aoh (click "Art of Hosting/Seattle") or by contacting Lizzie Riesenberg at lizzie@berkana.org. Deadline for registration and payment is December 21, 2007.