GREGORC ASSOCIATES INC.

Workshops

The Mind and Its Styles: A Workshop

This workshop features and elaborates upon the aspects addressed in the Mind and Its Styles Keynote Speech previously described.

In addition, the Gregorc Style Delineator instrument is administered to all participants to assist them in assessing selected aspects of their personal Mind Styles and enabling them to "read" the style characteristics of other people. Exercises are also provided to promote the moral issues involved in the practical use of Mind Styles-based findings and recommendations.

Extended time workshops begin with the forementioned activities and then can branch into any of the four options described below. Custom programs can also be designed to meet specific needs and interests.

Moral Leadership: A 21st Century Imperative

Moral leadership is the key issue at all levels for the 21st Century. Educators have the unique opportunity to teach and to model such leadership. They can literally take the moral high ground.

This opportunity has a price, however. To walk-our-talk, to serve as a voice of conscience to leaders, to prepare a discerning citizenry and to avoid being hypocritical "do as I say, not as I do" moralists, we must get our collective act together first. We must face our own avoidance and denial of moral accountability with its attendant answerability and responsibility to the Higher Source, the God in which we Trust. We must cease our blanket claims of being blameless, not liable, and guiltless for wrongful and unjust occurrences in the schools. And we must accept appropriate penalties and censures for certain acts of omission and commission. Nothing less than an honest corporate self-examination will do.

This workshop is designed to guide leaders though the wondrous process of assuming moral leadership in schools. The paramount issues of ethos, ethics, morality, good and evil are addressed. Our profession's choice to take the illusory, amoral paths of material science, positivistic philosophies and physiological psychologies is discussed. This sets the framework for topics such as our use of non-human metaphors for learners (e.g., lumps-of-clay to be molded and vessels to be filled), our lack of a universal code of ethics, our eagerness to attribute learning problems to body parts, chemicals, genes and environment conditions and of our neurotic activity of trying to develop each learner's individual potential through practices that demand and reward conformity.

Activities are provided to help participants consider moral leadership issues at the national, state, local and school levels. The exercises prompt personal initiative to assume practical moral leadership in policy making, staffing, student relations, curriculum and instruction activities, inservice training and parental/community collaboration. They also point to ways in which our profession can be of eventual service to leaders in other areas. This analytical workshop is not for the faint-hearted.

Training for the Systems-Thinking School Leader

Systems-thinking requires a mind that registers, understands and responds to the complex unity of a whole organization. Such thinking is capable of focusing on the vision that gave rise to the organization, elaborating on its philosophy and principles, developing the components necessary to its effective operation and survival, providing the proper governance and of discriminating among the various goods and services it must use to fulfill itself. Such a mind is brutally honest about the results and effects of the organization.

Schools, as complex organizations, need system-thinkers who will think universally and can give extraordinary attention to appropriate details. The very survival of schools requires them. The absence of this type of leadership makes schools susceptible to becoming hydra-like entities trying to be all things to all people and easy prey to panacea peddlers. It also opens the doors to dysfunctional competitive behaviors, to vanity fair opportunities for politically-minded individuals, and to chaos and eventual dissolution.

The contents of this workshop place attendees in the complementary roles of participant/observer as they encounter the perspective that schools are systems that meet all the criteria of a living entity, a thing. As an entity, the schools can exist with and without them but is susceptible to their stewardship, their contributions and their malfeasance when they choose to "fill a position" within it and seek to "be of service" through it.

A 7-level anatomical systemic structure is explored along with the dynamics of its interrelated subsystem. Various types of leadership, administrative and managerial functions are identified including ways of monitoring organizational health and symptoms of dis-ease. In all cases, technical terms are reduced to a minimum.

Extended-time workshops include the design of united circle-and-cross systems, and selection of appropriate and beneficial goods and services. Attention is also given to the handling of antagonistic attitudes, behaviors, products and services that obscure, block, pervert and corrupt the system.

Building a Powerful and Productive Team and Board

Powerful teams function in accord with the two meanings of the word TEAM. They understand that their purpose is to "bring forth the child" (vision) and that their relationships and talents are to be "yoked, harnessed, and chained" to that end. Impotent teams violate one or both of those functional definitions. Their members bring forth their own children (personal visions or issues) and/or work as independent agents, as competitors, or as loose confederations of anarchists.

This workshop focuses on powerful teaming which is fostered through information and activities that enable participants to understand the meanings of "bringing forth the child" and being "yoked" for that purpose. Topics for the "bringing forth" portion of the workshop include: the conception of the child (vision), the birthing process, the Natural Laws that affect the child's development, the fundamentals of mid-wivery, and the recognition of personal and team member responsibility for progress. Support and protection of the child are discussed along with the idea of "resonating with the child" versus "buying into" its presence.

The "yoked and harnessed" part of the session is addressed through studying the talents that each person bring to the group. The productive states-of-mind of each individual are assessed and analyzed via the Gregorc Style Delineator instrument. Strengths and limitations of the group-mind (yoked-mind) are identified with emphasis on expectations, harmonious aspects and potential areas of conflict. Early detection techniques and intervention strategies for dysfunctional team behavior are included in longer duration sessions.

Training Workshops

Mind Styles Training Workshops are offered periodically by Dr. Gregorc through Gregorc Associates, Inc. Contact the office for information.

Information and Contractual Arrangements

Please contact our office for further workshop information or customized sessions geared toward your specific group, team or leadership goals.

The Phoenix symbol, Mind Styles and Gregorc Style Delineator are trademarks of Anthony F. Gregorc, Ph.D.
© 1999-2010 Anthony F. Gregorc, Ph.D.