As coaches and trainers, our job is to help organizations develop healthy, synergistic teams that produce skyrocketing results.  To do this, we bring tools that show team members what their “team culture” really looks like (from all sides) and how they’re all experiencing it. From there, we assist in making that culture healthier, stronger and more creative so those workers are better able to get the results they want.

To accomplish all this, we utilize a tool called the Leadership Circle Culture Survey. This tool moves beyond individual scapegoating to the team’s culture and dynamic. Rather than have outside consultants evaluate the team, the team evaluates itself. Using this tool, the team defines itself as Creative or Reactive. It identifies what’s getting in the way and also points out the pathway to success. We help everyone see their role in the dysfunctional dynamic—and what they can do to move the team out of it.

This approach is so much more effective because there’s no one from the outside to tell them what’s “right and “wrong” and reinterpret how things work. Everything is self-reported, so team members assess what needs improvement but also get a chance to identify the ways they’re creative and strong together.

Then as a coach and team together, we can look more deeply into those strengths and how to leverage them in a way that “unhooks” the team from reactive tendencies and unwanted culture dynamics.

In essence, a positive work atmosphere leads directly to high productivity. And this tool is designed to quickly fast-forward a team into a culture they can enjoy and in which they can be creative and successful.

This cultural shift is put to work pursuing a vision for the future: What do you all want to create … and how do you work together and collaborate as a team to make that happen? We enjoy bringing great assessment tools to the table that facilitate that shift and help that vision for the future take clear shape.

So in Leading Spirit’s coaching and training sessions, you’re provided with a forum to look at the “how” of change, and not just the “what” of change: How do you implement change in a such a way that your organization has the best possible chance of coming out stronger, more agile and poised to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise?

Our wonderful leaders in the nonprofit world are being forced to do more with less, and they’re asking, “How?” Employees have been lost. Priorities have shifted. Long-term goals have been pushed aside in the face of immediate needs and crises. There’s a lot of anxiety in the air, and many people are understandably scared.

With better tools, more information and additional perspective, leaders can help “soothe” the system and help staff hear each other’s needs. We know from our work that there are valuable approaches and techniques leaders can take back and use with their staff and board and clients. They just often need a little support in times like these.

Coaching can also help leaders become more aware of the opportunities inherent in their challenges. Often during big and emotional changes, people dig their heels in deeper; they become even more entrenched in their current positions and mindset-just at the time it’s most important to be flexible and open. It’s easier to create necessary movement when you have a working framework and best practices from the best thinkers on the topic of organizational change.

What are the ground conditions you need to meet in order to help a system move through a change in a sustainable way? … What should you expect along the way? … What’s important for leadership to be modeling, so that the organization can be most stable?

Answers to questions like these provide a roadmap for leaders to use to build new strategies that reflect current circumstances. Through coaching and training sessions leaders get the “big picture view” of change because what’s often missing (among a million moving organizational parts) is a larger strategy for leading the change process: why they’re doing what they’re doing and how they’re unfolding change within their organization.

Right now, there are a lot of organizations scaling back in size or absorbing programs released by other organizations or contemplating mergers or shutting doors and looking for others to whom they can literally give their programs. They are laying off staff, and employees who are staying are being tasked with different or additional responsibilities.

All these events are tangible changes that can be examined and addressed. We are passionate about showing leaders how to utilize new ideas, tools and perspectives and apply them directly to your specific situation-capturing the strengths of your staff and organization in the process.