Agree Training Workshop Design/Delivery Experience

Approach

Agree has been built upon principles that complement adult learning. Our workshops are designed to create environments where participants discover for themselves why collaborative approaches work more effectively than coercive or rights based approaches.

It has been our privilege to work with capable and energetic people from a large number of progressive organizations. We have found that once people are introduced to collaborative problem solving approaches and tools they embrace the opportunity they represent. Rather than "selling" people on ADR's benefits, we prefer to let them explore the processes and find out for themselves how they work. With few exceptions, these approaches sell themselves once in use.

We believe in Partnering approaches and have pioneered their use across Canada and beyond. Our organization itself partners with a number of educational institutions such as Queen's University's Industrial Relations Centre, and the University of Waterloo's Conrad Grebel College to deliver high value workshops. We are therefore experienced in what Partnering means in practice. We understand its benefits and limitations and can speak from first hand experience about both.

Our facilitators are excellent communicators, and rather than relying upon their "authority" as experts, challenge participants to test these ideas, ask the difficult question and learn from one another's experience. We ask them to commit to create among themselves a learning community where risk taking is welcomed and mistakes are encouraged. "Everyone gets to make mistakes, no one gets to be wrong", is our catch phrase. In short, everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner, including, of course, the facilitators.

Our learning philosophy is easy to express and challenging to practice:

• Expect the best
• Confront problems directly but open-mindedly
• Default to curiosity
• Ask "what is the right next step?"
• Model respect for those you work with - help them to reflect upon who they are becoming as well as where they are now
• Stay flexible and learn to stay "in the moment", looking for the teachable opportunities in any interaction.

Gary Furlong, Rick Russell and Heather Swartz (Bullock) are trained personal coaches who believe in the individual's potential to define and re-define their life and work. They bring this orientation powerfully to bear on the training experience that they provide.