Course outlines Sante-Plus Research Associates

Resilience Fitness 1 day workshop

Most things in life happen outside of our control. However, we can learn to control the way we respond. In fact, it’s possible for us to control the function of our own nervous system and change the way we think, act and feel at any given time. With this skill we can build resilience and enhance our workplace well-being and performance.

Resilience is the capacity to mobilise personal resources to tolerate, cope with and overcome adverse events, and to grow and develop as a consequence of such events. 

Resilience is the ability to withstand or recover from difficult situations. It includes our capacity to make the best of things, cope with stress and rise to the occasion. 

This one-day workshop offers a practical training in skills, strategies and insights that help your resilience grow.

Resilience Fitness Training aims to develop critical thinking, knowledge, and skills to overcome challenges, mature, and bounce back from adversity in a variety of settings.  It is intended to assist people in coping with stressful events and circumstances in their daily lives and provide them with training that may help them thrive in the face of a variety of adversities. It provides various ways to improve their ability to respond to stressful events.

The training is based on research at the University of Pennsylvania on Strength Based Coaching for resilience training of adults and the work of Dr. Donald Meichenbaum on Resilience Fitness.

The research evidence suggests that resilience is a characteristic that can be learned. The association between positive psychological constructs and increased stress resistance implies that increasing such factors could potentially lead to an increase in resilience. Indeed, the results of numerous empirical evaluations of programs designed to increase resilience provide evidence for the efficacy of psycho-educational programs to increase resilience

Objectives for the Workshop

Participants will be taught the techniques and approaches to building personal resilience; they will be provided with exercises and routines that can be adopted on a daily basis; participants will learn how to build a reservoir of resilience against stressful events; they will also learn how to help build resilience in others.

The programme explains the impact that adverse events has on people, and how resilience is about forming an attitude towards an event that determines how the individual copes with it and become stronger as a result.

The Resilience Fitness workshop raises awareness of the impacts of stress on personal and professional leadership performance. We teach participants how to control their stress physiology to reduce stress quickly, improve sleep, increase stamina and build long-term stress resilience. 

Participants learn how to develop practical strategies for integrating these skills into their working day.  They will also learn about the most up to date organizational resilience initiatives and how they may be able to use these as leaders in their organizations.

Workshop Content

• Overview – Resilience, Stress and Performance 

• Recognising the signs and symptoms of stress and burn-out 
• Resilience Fitness – practical skills for building resilience
• Integrating resilience skills into the working day. 
• Organizational resilience concepts and tools.

The focus of the training is to provide the knowledge and skills to support, promote, and assess resilience coping skills.

Together, the six areas for resilience fitness help participants learn skills that make them stronger participants and better leaders by increasing mental toughness. 

The Six Fitness areas are: 

• Physical Fitness
• Interpersonal (Social) Fitness
• Emotional Fitness
• Thinking (Cognitive) Fitness
• Behavioural (Coping) Fitness
• Spiritual Fitness

Each Fitness area will be covered providing a series of activities and exercises that participants can use in their day-to-day work and personally lives.  The activities move beyond self-awareness to focus on stress and energy management. These strategies are designed to foster self-regulation through the management of emotion and energy levels. The ultimate goal is to allow for critical thinking and optimal performance. 

The session will be interactive with a mixture of brief presentations, individual exercises and reflection, group activities and discussions.  There is a participant workbook for the session and a follow-up book providing details on additional activities and exercises.

Meta-Leadership  1 day workshop

The Meta-Leadership framework and practice method has been developed by faculty at Harvard after extensive research on and observation of leaders in high-stress, high-stakes situations. It is designed to provide individuals with tools that are conceptually and practically rigorous so that they are better equipped to act and direct others in crises situations. 

It also prepares leaders to deal with horizontal issue management particularly with high profile complex files.

Achieving leadership in today’s public sector requires a heightened capacity for effective cross-government coordination of effort as well as cross-sector collaboration with private and non-profit organizations. 

“Meta-Leadership,” overarching leadership that intentionally connects the purposes and work of different organizations or organizational units. Thinking and operating beyond their immediate scope of authority, meta-leaders provide guidance, direction, and momentum across organizational lines that develop into a shared course of action and a commonality of purpose among people and agencies that are doing what may appear to be very different work.

Meta-leaders are able to imaginatively and effectively leverage system assets, information, and capacities, a particularly critical function for organizations with emergency preparedness responsibilities that are constrained by ingrained bureaucratic patterns of behavior.

When complexity arises, meta-leaders reach across organizations and sectors to build cross-cutting strategies to exchange information, share resources and coordinate systems and personnel. They use their influence and connections to guide a cooperative course of action.

Being a meta-leader requires a unique mindset and skill set, which often goes beyond the scope of an individual’s previous experiences. And it requires building strong alliances with a diverse array of leaders before an event occurs.

Meta-leaders think and perform differently. By taking a holistic view, they intentionally link and leverage the efforts of the whole community to galvanize a valuable connectivity that achieves unity of purpose and effort.

Meta-leadership reframes the process and practice of leaders with: 

1) A comprehensive organizing framework for understanding and integrating the many facets of leadership; 

2) A method for catalyzing collaborative activity; 

3) A focus on improving function and performance across organizational and sector boundaries. 

The dimensions of meta-leadership are:

1. THE PERSON: Meta-leaders develop high self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-regulation. They build the capacity to confront fear and lead themselves and others out of the “emotional basement” to higher levels of thinking and functioning.

2. THE SITUATION: With often incomplete information, the meta-leader maps the situation to determine what is happening, who are the stakeholders, what is likely to happen next, and what are the critical choice points and options for action.
3. CONNECTIVITY: The meta-leader charts a course forward, making decisions, operationalizing those decisions, and communicating effectively to recruit wide engagement and support. The meta-leader navigates the distinct dynamics and complexities of leading four facets of connectivity:

• Down the formal chain of command to subordinates creating a cohesive, proactive team
• Up to those to whom the leader is responsible building confidence with formal supervisors, political officials, community leaders, and oversight agencies
• Across to peers and other units within the organization encouraging coordination and collaboration
• Beyond to outside entities including the general public and the media creating whole of community unity of purpose and effort

The Meta-leadership curriculum includes a conceptual framework as well as practical tools and techniques for mastering each of these dimensions. It also includes pragmatic methods for complex problem solving, negotiation, and conflict resolution vital to leadership success.

1. The Person of the Meta-Leader
This first component requires self-awareness and self-regulation so that one is leading intentionally with balance, discipline, and direction. One looks at one’s individual strengths, weaknesses, and biases with an emphasis on emotional intelligence.

2. Situational Awareness
The leader must form a picture of the situation to include the nature of the problem, the culture, the context, and what is occurring – and articulate this to those involved.

3. Leading the Silo
The leader must enable his or her individual silo (him / herself, his / her team or work group) to achieve maximum effectiveness. One does this by empowering those within and giving them the tools to become more effective.

4. Leading Up
One must understand the expectations and priorities of one’s superiors and deliver against them appropriately. This may mean influencing that superior toward an appropriate solution or resolution of the situation.

5. Leading Connectivity
One must be able to step out of their silo and effectively engage other silos – either within one’s own organization or in others – in seeing the overall mission and working together to accomplish it.

6. Meta-Leadership in Practice
Meta-leadership is particularly valuable in situations where the leader must rely more on influence than authority and where one must lead beyond traditional organizational boundaries. The meta – leader best meets the leadership challenges of unexpected or fast-changing situations.

Leading in a Crisis 1 day workshop

These days, it is not hard to find things that keep us lying awake at night. Increasingly, we face the “un” categories of risk: unpredictable, unanticipated and unstoppable. Even as the impact of disruptions was growing, so too was their frequency, velocity and unpredictability.

We are living in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world that creates instability and continuous disruptions.

Who would have predicted pandemic, the economic turmoil, conflict in Europe, disruptions of the supply chain, not to mention the mega weather events around the world. 

In fact, the only thing we know for sure about the future is that it will be volatile and uncertain.  In the age of volatility, organizations must develop the capacity to manage the outcomes of disruption, irrespective of trigger.

The environment that we face today and into the future is increasingly fluid and shaped by a dynamic mix of continuing and emerging challenges and opportunities. The concept of VUCA has evolved and broadened to include non-traditional threats such as cybercrime, mega disasters and pandemics.

It is vital that leaders, across all levels of public and private organizations, are able to plan for, withstand and respond to a broad range of threats and hazards, including
pandemics, negligence, accidents, criminal activity, cyberattack, and natural disasters that have the potential to
disrupt their operations. 

Further, a disruption in one sector could have severe cascading
impacts on other sectors. The public infrastructure networks and systems are themselves
growing in complexity, and are operating in an increasingly complex environment. In this environment, the leaders of all levels of the public and private sectors need to be able to respond and adapt to foreseeable and unforeseen or unexpected risks and be able to continue to support other governments, businesses and the community.

Crisis leadership strategies create a capacity to manage consequences, irrespective of whether the triggers for disruption are climate- and weather-related, accidental or terrorist-related, technological or economic. In an unpredictable world, the ability to anticipate and adapt to shifts and shocks — both minimizing their impact and seizing the positive opportunities they may create — has become a strategic competency, essential to crisis management.

The Leadership in a Crisis Workshop is a research-based curriculum to train senior managers and executives on leadership skills necessary during an emergent critical event. The purpose of this program is to provide effective leadership tools for participants in the decision-making process during stressful situations. It will also provide skills in working with other leaders in achieving a common goal during times of crisis. 

Through case studies, and interactive exercises, participants will learn to identify personal strengths in relating to others when facing a threat. They also learn to manage relationships before, during and after a crisis.

The target audiences for this program are decision makers in critical incidents, which in essence can occur in any and all organizations.  This program is designed to provide tools to managers in three key areas: communication skills / collaboration, critical thinking, and decision-making.

The Leading in Crisis Workshop is a course specifically designed to build crisis intelligence amongst management teams. The course builds awareness, critical skills and leadership capabilities to effectively manage a crisis situation within the context of an organisation’s unique environment.

The Leading in Crisis Workshop is carefully tailored to offer a mix of practical and theoretical content, specifically designed for senior managers and executives.

Crisis management is the discipline of preparing the resources and organizational structures necessary to respond effectively in the face of a crisis and recover effectively in the aftermath. It is about building to capability to identify imminent threats to the organization and designing a plan for addressing those threats.

Leadership also plays a key role through the processes of sense-making (by ascribing meaning to strategy‐relevant events, threats and opportunities) and meaning making (disseminating a vision that others can comprehend, accept and act upon).

To make successful strategic decisions in high velocity environments, leaders need to resolve a series of paradoxes:

• to make strategic decisions carefully, but quickly; 
• have a powerful, decisive leadership and a simultaneously powerful top management team; 
• to seek risk while executing a safe, incremental implementation. 

Sudden-onset disasters place major demands on leaders, requiring them to respond rapidly, adapting to an unpredictable, fast-changing, and uncertain environment. Leaders can find themselves suddenly moved out of their normal operating environment by a broad range of unexpected contingencies.

Similarly, cognitive limitations and decision making under stressful conditions can impair the effectiveness of response activities in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Stress, surprise and the imperative for a quick response can lead to dysfunctional responses. Impaired cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses of organizational members, coupled with an eroded social structure, can make it hard to respond effectively to the disaster.

Arising from the identified characteristics, there are six Crisis Management Leadership Competencies to be acquired by the leaders. 

They are:

• Structuring – Capacity to establish the necessary organization structures, authorities and guidelines to manage a complex and sensitive crisis situation
• Crisis Decision Making – Capacity to exercise disciplined decision-making and risk-taking during complex and sensitive crisis situations
• Driving Results – The ability to assess the crisis situation, make effective operational decisions and take actions through the implementation, evaluation and timely adjustment of ongoing crisis management activities to meet objectives
• Marshalling and Optimizing Resources – Capacity to identify, obtain and deploy the human, financial, materiel, information, technological and technical/specialized resources required to deal with the complex crisis situation
• Building Coalitions – The capacity to form, maintain and utilize key relationships with partners and stakeholders across and outside of the CCG organization to effectively manage complex crisis situations
• Crisis Communications – Ability to speak to media, public, stakeholders, responders in such a way as to ensure effective decisions are made, appropriate actions are taken to achieve results and to maintain and restore the crisis management team’s credibility and integrity

It is also recognized that most crises involve numerous players from multiple jurisdictions and competing interests.   To assist in the complex coordination and collaboration needed to integrate specialized operational, technical, legal, scientific and political advice and expertise, they will be integrating a “Unified and Incident Command” Structure as part of the Crisis Management framework. This requires additional set of competencies on the part of both senior officials and those through out the management chain to be able to adequately function during crisis events.

This approach has to be integrated into the day-to-day functional routines of the organization otherwise their effectiveness in a crisis will not be dependent upon trying to recall a special leadership knowledge or skill sets which are unfamiliar and unpracticed.   It also has to be congruent with the broader leadership competencies, as they need to interact with leaders from other organizations in a coordinated and coherent fashion.

Combinations of workshops

Meta-Leadership and Resilience

This would be a half day introducing the concepts and practices of Meta-Leadership in the morning then the afternoon focusing on a brief exposure to Resilience Fitness skills.

Crisis Leadership and Meta-Leadership

The morning would be spent on the key elements of Crisis Leadership (tasks of crisis leadership and exercises) and the afternoon on the key concepts and practices of Meta-Leadership