A while ago, my colleagues and I invited the people in our training to imagine they were someone they were not. For a while they had to “be” this person and experience the joys and challenges of this role. They had to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, and look from a different perspective. This […]
by Jane Vella with Valerie Uccellani On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Old by Parker Palmer, 2019 From Jane: I found this a delightful, informative, funny, inspiring and honest book. Parker is a contemporary of mine (I’m his older sister!) so I discovered that his themes, his laughter, his stories and mine […]
How fortunate I am to have such a forum as this GLP blog to share my new learning! In School of the 80s: Learning from Leisure, Experience and Vulnerability, I said I was learning apace as I turn 88! I realized that there were four factors at play in this learning: I have leisure, I […]
Onboarding is usually the first time someone is truly exposed to an organization. Hopefully, first on the training list are the values, mission and cultural expectations—these will set the foundation for employee conduct, collaboration and work expectations. Onboarding is also the first and best time to engage in dialogue and mutual learning. Curiosity about a […]
Some years ago, I led a workshop that was based on an outline I had developed and used in previous settings. At earlier events, the activities and script had been well-received, including a humorous anecdote about shoveling snow in my hometown of Chicago that always generated chuckles from the audience. On this particular occasion, I […]
There are countless helpful ways to engage learners during a workshop or meeting. I get great joy designing ways to ensure purposeful and productive uses of solo and group activity. Indeed, there is no better feeling than leaving an event and knowing we achieved a lot… and had fun doing it! However, sometimes I just […]
Chatterbox is what teachers dubbed me from a young age. During class and on progress reports, I’d often be called out for jabbering to my comrades out of turn. In fact, for whispering while the directions were being given for a standardized test in 6th grade, I served my only after school detention, a crippling […]
My world is full of visuals. I can’t imagine life without art, and I can’t imagine a training without images. Whether I am designing a meeting, learning session, knowledge sharing event, strategic planning day or retreat, I include photos, drawings, art and other visuals. When images are carefully and intentionally used, they can be helpful […]
In Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen states, “Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring […]
Participating in a Dialogue Education course has been a game-changer for me. For more than a decade I’ve done presentations, designed curriculum, taught workshops, etc, and I was pretty sure that I was good at what I did! I prided myself on being an engaging communicator and went out of my way to have appealing […]