Building collaborative behaviors for bottom line results.
Group Process Consulting offers short, intense, emotionally anchored experiences in the form of speeches, workshops and group interventions that develop skills in:
- truth-telling and truth-listening
- using conflict as a resource for creative thinking
- decreasing turf wars and ego battles
- sharing resources effectively
- eliciting unifying stories that transcend differences
- leaving victim stories behind
- building trust, compassion, and personal responsibility
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Who is Group Process Consulting?
Annette Simmons started GPC in 1996. Her first book “Territorial Games” created demand for speeches and interventions with workgroups. When Annette discovered that dialogue worked best to re-connect dysfunctional groups she wrote “Safe Place for Dangerous Truths.” The purpose was to develop a replicable “recipe” for facilitating dialogue. She began to successfully train others to facilitate dialogue. Storytelling revealed itself to be such a powerful tool that she wrote “The Story Factor.” By 2002 she was giving speeches, facilitating interventions, and delivering training days. When demand exceeded capacity, Annette hand-picked two long time friends (and incredibly talented individuals) to deliver training and facilitation true to the philosophy of her work.
GPC now offers the services of Annette Simmons to deliver keynote speeches, training days and ten days of specially priced intervention work a year. Annette is careful to stay connected to real life problems and since most consulting work can’t match the per diem of speaking, she allocates ten days each year at a normal consulting rate. Pam McGrath, a professional storyteller has been trained to deliver storytelling training and Cindy Franklin a Manhattan based OD consultant has been very successful in facilitating dialogue for workgroups.
Since dialogue facilitation training never really ends, Annette sponsors a group of highly skilled facilitators in twice-yearly retreats to report, reflect, and refine the GPC methodology for facilitating dialogue.
Annette’s next book reports on four years of research concerning women’s love/hate relationship with power. Annette Simmons continues to conduct qualitative research, experiment with interventions that make work easier, and report on her findings.
Philosophy:
Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.
Albert Einstein
Teambuilding-Rnt-Us!
Life is too short to continue doing things that are supposed to work, but don’t. Sometimes consulting can go awry – consultants promise to create results that don’t materialize. Sometimes it is the consultant or her techniques that are to blame, and sometimes the client wasn’t willing to do the hard work necessary to achieve results. Both share responsibility, the consultant for being explicit about the risks involved and the client for being honest with him/herself about how much risk he/she is willing to take for results. Just like anything else, rewards in group process reflect the level of risk.
GPC is only interested in creating and delivering experiences that make a significant difference in the quality of work, and the quality of experience of the people doing the work. We only offer techniques that are tested and proven effective. All of our work inevitably requires the group to take risks. Specifically each individual must be willing to tell a little (at least!) more truth than they’ve previously been willing to share. Individuals must be ready to peel back defensive reasoning and examine core assumptions about how the world works. The group must be ready to let go of old habits and experiment with new tools.
The good part is that people crave the opportunity to tell the truth and hear the truth. Most groups experience a profound sense of relief and newfound hope when GPC facilitates dialogue, metaphor mapping, storytelling, or any of the other techniques.
Ultimately GPC is in the business of researching and developing techniques that help groups develop trust and faith – faith in themselves, each other, and their purpose as a group.
BIO IS IN THIS SECTION
INTERVIEW WITH ANNETTE IS IN THIS SECTION
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