Overwork the process
January 13-17, 2020 – Wroclaw, Poland
This week three trainers of L’Orma are in Wroclaw (Poland) to partecipate to “Overwork the process”, a seminar for experienced trainers hosted by PRACOWNIA NAUKI i PRZYGODY. With them, participants from four different countries (The Netherlands, Poland, Latvia and Romania) are gathering together to share their experience and developed new methods. The topic has a central role in every work as trainer: how to deal with conflicts, crisis and traumas during a group management.
The first step of the training was dedicated to getting participants to know each other and to start reflecting about group dynamics, especially during crisis moments. According to an experiential education approach the chosen instrument to work on this topic was game: cooperation games and group challenges allowed the participants to reach a comprehension, as a metaphore, of what crisis processes are during training work.
For focusing on which are the differences between conflict, crisis and trauma, the group was then splitted in three parts and every subgroup tried to write down a definition of one of these concepts, for trying to get at the end to a common language. The brainstorming ended up with three scientific definitions provided by the facilitators: crisis as a relevant moment among a group; conflict as an opposition/disagreement; trauma as a long-term changement.
In a second phase the group started to analyze some case studies taken from their real working experience as trainers. This method of getting straightly into real cases allowed the participants to have a clearer idea about what is the main porpouse of the training. Additionally, some theoretical models were provided as tools to improve the awerness of group processes and dynamics. At this purpouse, the Tuckman model was analyzed, and criticized, as a frame to reflect about the stages of the group process. The most interesting thing was to observe the different perceptions of the participants about the stage they would have put themselves in as a group. As before, the selected approach was experientially oriented, giving the opportunity to live in a practical activity the theoretical contents that were presented.
Getting deeper, the theme of leadership was raised up through a group activity chained to non-verbal communication and movement. In this case some significant conflicts appeared: sharing reflections about what happened made the group more concious on how complicated is to manage a breaking up moment and the discrepancy between different strategies to reach the same goal. It was useful to underline how conflicts could be connected with leadership dynamics.
Another task for the group was to summarize which are the different roles that a trainer can act. After choosing some relevant lables the main focus was on six: self contol, mediation, active listening, motivation, higlighting, and first aiding. The six roles can be used as models during a moment of crysis: when a delicate moment appears, one of the six can be usefully choosen to correct the critical situation.
Being a seminar designed for experienced trainers the workshop was structured with the idea of a co-creation between partecipants. For this reason, after defining the main topics, every trainer was asked to propose a workshop according to its specific background.
During the next few days there will be some precious exchange of ideas, contents and competences. The final result should be the concrete realization of an algorithm capable of providing to trainers a guide to manage moments of crisis.
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