At the start of a New Year, dedicate some attention to a fresh approach to your working relationships! In this 7-week workshop (Wednesdays, 3:30-5:30 EST, starting February 8, 2023), we will cultivate our capacity to connect with ourselves and others and practice nonviolent communication skills that can support our working together productively, authentically, and with care, in service of our work towards collective liberation. Register here!
ABOUT THIS EVENT
*Details on fees, sliding scale, and scholarship options can be found below.*
When we pour ourselves into work we care about, we want to know it matters. We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. How disheartening, exhausting, and frustrating it is to see our hard work fall short as conflict slows down the momentum of our work or, worse yet, leads us to step away from collaborative efforts.
The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and scarcity to name a few) have left us without the skills we need in order to collaborate effectively and to find generativity in conflict which, on some scale, is inevitable.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection and build our capacity to relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully and authentically to our work in the world. As we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another as we work together to build the world we long for.
During this 7-week, online workshop, we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. Each two-hour session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your work and life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with another participant for practice in between sessions. Because a shared experience with colleagues can make it easier to bring this language and these skills into your working relationships, we encourage you to sign up with one or more of the people you work with! This course will support you, and the colleagues and collaborators who join you, to:
Understand empathy: what is it and why does it matter in working relationships? How can I listen with empathy and compassion, with others and with myself?
Explore NVC as an embodied mindfulness practice
Grow your capacity to tune into body sensations as valuable feedback from your nervous system pointing you towards what matters to you
Develop an awareness of and vocabulary for resonant language – including “feelings” and “needs” – and your understanding of the brain science behind why this kind of language works
Prepare for difficult conversations, and have more tools for “clean up” afterwards
Foster connection while maintaining personal authenticity
Identify patterns of domination culture and develop a needs-based orientation that can enable you to undo domination
Develop an empathetic listening practice with a buddy between sessions as a foundational tool for resourcing yourself to show up better in conflict and collaboration
This workshop is not meant to be a forum for working through active conflicts with one another, but rather a place to be supported in cultivating the skills that will help us to engage more effectively with conflict in our working relationships.
FACILITATORS
This offering will be facilitated by Nicole Bauman with the support of GWI workers.
Nicole Bauman (they/them) is a midwest-based queer parent steeped in the sacred work of facilitation, transformative justice, somatics and Nonviolent Communication. They see building conflict resiliency as an essential part of living into the world to come and are passionate about creating space where personal and collective liberation feel possible. As the descendant of white Western European peasant farmers who carried their trauma with them to the Americas, Nicole is committed to centering racial justice and ancestral healing in their work. Nicole’s background in farming, yoga, doula work and natural building grounds their work in connection to the earth and the body. Nicole is an ICF-certified Professional and Community Healing-Centered Coach and a student of Somatics with the Strozzi Institute and in the lineage of generative somatics. Nicole finds rootedness in growing food, daily walks to the river, sewing ancestral quilts and through being a part of the Prairie Wolf Collective co-housing community in the Rust Belt city of Elkhart, Indiana (occupied Potawatomi territory). You can learn more about Nicole’s work at nicolebauman.com.
REGISTRATION
Deadline:
We plan to close registration by or before January 9th, and are reserving spots for people identifying as BIPOC through that date. Register early to save your spot!
Fee:
Your registration fee covers online workshop facilitation and materials.
Amount requested: $245
The registration fee reflects discounts made possible by the generous support of our donors. The full cost of the workshop is $315.
Sliding scale: $175 - $315
If your current access to financial resources is limited, please consider paying less than the registration fee. If your current access to financial resources is ample, please consider paying more toward the full cost of the workshop and helping underwrite costs for fellow participants.
Scholarships:
If the low end of the sliding scale is still out of reach, we have a limited number of scholarships available. Apply here or email micah@goodworkinstitute.org if you would like to speak to someone first.
Donations:
We welcome donations to help provide discounts and scholarships for Good Work Institute programs. Email helene@goodworkinstitute.org if you would like more information before considering a donation.