INTEGRATIVE    

LEARNING

 Institute

 


Evolving Capacities to Respond to Complexity

\

 

Home

Community Coaching

Programs and Services

About Us

Reading Room

Programs and Services Offered

I.L.I.’s programs and services support the difficult work of social change.  They are designed to develop skills and abilities to enable individuals and organizations to develop capacities to respond to complex societal or organizational challenges.  Issues such as homelessness, global violence, organizational re-structuring or environmental pollution are too complex to be addressed by simply breaking them down into separate components.  These issues are only surface symptoms of something deeper, much like the tip of an iceberg.  They cannot be resolved without designing a method for approaching the accumulation of interconnected elements lying underneath the surface.  An individual or society with Complexity Intelligence has the social, emotional and reasoning capacities plus the commitment to integrate these in order to work at this deeper level and support effective social change.

Programs and services offered by I.L.I. are based on  an integrated approach to learning that combines theory and practice and supports the emergence of Complexity Intelligence at the individual, organizational and societal level.  Programs and services include:

 

Workshops, Presentations and Distance Learning

For an updated schedule of our workshops, please email us at: info@integrativelearninginstitute.com

 

1. Helping Communities Make Good Decisions: A 3 day Training Program
This workshop is for facilitators and  consultants who wish to assist communities to address their complex issues by using   a progressive series of  steps to analyze and map the root causes of public issues, engage multi perspective responses, focus priorities, and generate solutions. It provides a new approach to developing deliberative decision making forums that include consideration of options, perspectives, implications and trade offs so that people arrive at decisions they can knowledgeably support and act upon. For more information...

 

2. Theory of Change: Our assumptions of how social change happens
When we  see a problematic issue we can have different ways of experiencing why it has become a problem and how it could be changed: sometimes called our own theory of change. This is our frame or viewpoint on the situation which makes sense to us based on our own values, motivations, and life experiences. Normally, within any individual, community or organization there are several different viewpoints and often this difference is the basis of much procrastination, argument, and polarization about how to proceed with social change efforts. This workshop will provide experience in how to look at an issue through the lens of several different viewpoints so as to see and include the diversity of assumptions and actions important for comprehensive responses.

 

3. What Makes Public Involvement So Hard

This introductory 2 hour presentation explores the challenges of effectively engaging citizens in making     decisions  regarding complex social, environmental and economic issues.  Why do well-intentioned efforts to bring citizens together to grapple with complex issues often fail?  We believe that public involvement processes can be frustrating because they are not designed to accommodate several key factors:  (1) the diversity of values and beliefs in the community; (2) the complexity of public issues; (3) the consequences of treating a complex issue “as if” it were a simple one; (4) our difficulty in talking together in public forums: and (5) the possibility that the rapid pace of change in our society may well have taken us “in over our heads” in terms of our collective capacities to respond.  The learning objective for this workshop is to explore the assumptions underlying typical public involvement processes and gain an appreciation for the need to design processes that recognize the factors identified above. See The Scale of Public Interactions (SPI) which highlights the skills and processes required for public decision-making regarding complex issues.

4.  Community Capacity Building for Community Engagement, Deliberative Decision-making and Leadership
This  workshop  focuses on developing skills to map the territory of an issue, see the interconnected history of  root causes and impacts, define  an issue question so as to develop multi-perspective approaches to public deliberation and action. Click here for more information and
printable pdf

5.  Designing Frames for Public Deliberative Decision Making Forums
This is a method for moving from reactionary responses regarding public issues to considered decision-making. Deliberation involves weighing out the implications and trade offs of choosing different framed options. It involves initially seeing the issue in a context of related issues, seeing the causes and impacts, attitudes and behaviours which have created and maintain it, finding a manageable question to focus on, and considering multiple action responses through several perspectives prior to a deliberative forum.

6.  How about Thinking “for a Change”?
This 3 hour workshop is designed to raise awareness of the impact of rapid change on organizations and how to shift our thinking to prepare for this.  With changes in technology and increased globalization, the pace of change is ever increasing.  This will require us to think differently and develop different capacities than we likely were traditionally prepared for, or educated to deal with.  Building the capacity to anticipate a changing landscape is an important skill.  This workshop will provide information and opportunities to consider a variety of scenarios for the future and then consider the implications on you individually and on your organization.

7.Action Inquiry
The practice of action inquiry deals with gaps in communication by offering a framework for simultaneous attention to one’s inner process, to communication with others, and to designing a climate for clear organizational decision-making.  Action inquiry promotes a continuous cycle of planning, action, deliberation and learning, leading to revisions and improvements of planning and action. Often, we can find ourselves talking only about the tip of the iceberg and not really surfacing the underlying assumptions and beliefs that are driving our expression and plans. The workshop will outline and practise the  four parts of speech: Framing, Advocating, Illustrating and Inquiring as described by William Torbert in Action Inquiry:  The Secret to Timely and Transforming Leadership. Click for more information and
printable pdf.

8.  The Power of Presence

Integrity in relationship and efficiency in action requires one to be able to think, feel, assess and relate in the moment.  The focus of this one-day workshop will be to strengthen the ability to be fully present, track our inner dynamics in order to see and understand the influence of the interconnected matrix of beliefs and feelings. This capacity is essential to free energy for creativity, problem solving and leadership.

 

Individual Mentoring and Coaching

 

I.L.I. offers personal coaching (in person, by e-mail or telephone) based on a clients needs.  Being an innovator  means one is pushing the envelop of one's personal capacities as well as those of the society or organization around them. This can be inspiring and energizing as well as challenging when re-defining priorities and the basis for life meaning. It can be also be isolating. Coaching or depth therapy can be helpful to deepen and integrate the insights while providing companioning and reflections along certain stages of this  path. A body focused therapeutic process called Integrative Body Psychotherapy is the basis for the depth therapy approach.

I.L.I. also offers mentoring to individuals or groups to support them in developing integrative approaches to challenging personal, community or organizational situations . Mentoring can include specially designed learning assignments, analyzing the system surrounding the concern, providing relevant reading material, or networking an individual into a peer community of practice.  Experiential sessions may be offered for getting present, developing an ability for inquiry and tracking one’s process, all of which are essential capacities for effective interpersonal and organizational interactions.

 

Consulting Services

 I.L.I. offers consulting services to non-profit organizations, governments and agencies aimed at increasing collective Complexity Intelligence.  Our interventions are designed to increase an organization’s ability to become a self-reflective learning organization and increase its capacity to respond to challenging issues.  I.L.I. is also available to design and facilitate public forums on specific current issues (e.g. a local development proposal, a global political concern etc.).  I.L.I. uses a process of action inquiry, and deliberative decision making to facilitate a deeper understanding  of difficult public issues leading to effective actions.

 

Research

 I.L.I. is committed to a continual process of research, development and action to expand individual and collective capacities to respond to complexity.  I.L.I. engages in action research in areas of public deliberation, adult learning, future trends and public policy development.  Action research is a process of systematic inquiry into societal issues, using critical reflection to examine current practices, implement new practices and then cycle the learning into program or policy improvements. 

 For more information on any of our programs, schedules, services or fees, please e-mail us at   info@integrativelearninginstitute.com

Home | Community Coach Program | Programs and Services | About Us | Reading Room