With so many people operating under cost constraints, skill-based learning now comes in all shapes and sizes at The Grove. We’re focused on equipping you with the tools and skills you’ve asked for, as economically and flexibly as possible, so we’re offering a variety of formats to fit your needs and availability—from public and custom workshops to one-on-one coaching and webinars.

Coaching
Sometimes you only have one shot at getting it right. One-on-one coaching can be a lifeline for just-in-time meeting planning and process facilitation support as you lead key initiatives for your clients or within your organization. It’s also ideal for supplemental and ongoing learning as you fine-tune your skills and improve your practice. Grove senior consultants are available on an hourly and daily basis—by phone or in-person—for visual planning, graphic facilitation and team performance coaching. Call us at +1.415.561.6139 to schedule a coaching session.

House Calls!
The Grove offers workshops designed specifically around your needs, the size and skill-level of your team, and your budgets. The advantage, especially during these times of tight budgets, is in having workshop content built specifically around actual work you and your team need to do anyway—so working and learning are combined. Call our workshop coordinator at +1.415.561.6132 to find out more.

New Public Workshops at The Grove Future Center in San Francisco
In addition to offering our perennial favorites—the Principles of Graphic Facilitation, Strategic Visioning and Team Performance Workshops and—we’ve introduced a few new workshops this year:

A One-day Graphic Facilitation Tune-up for graduates of the Principles of Graphic Facilitation (PGF) who would benefit from structured practice sessions and suggestions for improvement, along with analysis of participant cases

A One-day Graphic Facilitation Master Class, also for PGF graduates, introduces advanced techniques for experienced practitioners and prepares participants for the Mastery Workshop.

The Introduction to Grove Visual Planning Workshop is a great way to get started using our Visual Planning Systems™, especially for those who recently ordered our new Strategic Visioning Agenda Planning Kit. Participants work with the Agenda Planning Cards and facilitate Best Practices that incorporate Graphic Guide® templates for use in face-to-face or web-based meetings.

In response to strong interest in The Personal Compass: A Workbook for Visioning and Goal Setting, we are offering One-day and Two-day Personal Compass Workshops for anyone anticipating a life transition. The focus will be on reflection, dialogue and exploring creative options.

Webinars and Web-based Training
Our How-To Webinars on a variety of topics give you a quick overview of the latest and greatest do-it-yourself tools from The Grove and a chance to pose questions to our senior consultants about their use. Watch our newsletter and e-announcements for coming opportunities.

In addition, watch our workshop schedule for new Web-based Training Workshops—coming soon.

Call our workshop coordinator at +1.415.561.6132 or email training@grove.com to find out more about any of these options, enroll in a public workshop, set-up a custom workshop at your offices or arrange for one-on-one process coaching.

Goeghedacht, South Africa

It was while doing community development on farms in the Boland region of South Africa that Alinda Nortje, a former social worker with a statuesque frame, warm smile and wildly contagious energy, became deeply aware of the emotional baggage many people at the lower job levels in her country were carrying. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, lack of a personal vision and a feeling of hopelessness due to generations of social oppression were common.

Nortje searched for an indigenous personal-empowerment program that would be accessible to people with an educational deficit, but found that most available self-development programs were either aimed at management-level employees or were addressing the symptoms and not the underlying problems.

Free To Grow was born when she set out to design such a course herself. Over a four-year period she trained hundreds of farm workers, incorporating their feedback into the course design and ensuring that the program was relevant to address both their often painful past as well as the challenges they were facing daily. Since its inception Free To Grow has trained more than 35,000 people in more than 400 organizations, such as Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, Barloworld, Woolworths, and AVIS, as well as UNICEF and numerous NGOs in South Africa, Namibia and Kenya.

EXPANDING THE SKILLS
This year Free To Grow invited The Grove to conduct two Principles of Graphic Facilitation training workshops in the surrounding areas of Cape Town, South Africa. A diverse group of 50 people from Free To Grow’s offices and client organizations in South Africa and Namibia participated in the workshops and are now actively using their new skills in their work as trainers, facilitators, HR professionals and senior executives. Some of FTG’s client companies represented were De Beers, South African Breweries and Sun International.

“Visual metaphor helps people—especially those with an educational deficit—to understand and retain concepts that otherwise would easily have been too abstract or complex. Because of our strong focus on graphics, The Grove’s methodology immediately appealed to us when we came across their website,” Nortje said.

The Grove, in conjunction with its Swedish partners, RBStrategisk Konsulting and UCC, held its Facilitation Mastery class overseas last spring with more than a dozen consultants and facilitators in attendance. Participants, many of whom had been through other Grove workshops, enrolled and shared a week of intensive work at the lovely Smedsmora Conference Center about 30 kilometers north of Stockholm. David Sibbet and Jonas Kjellstrand (of UCC) co-led the workshop, with partner Roy Bartilson (of RBSK) participating.

Participants worked with the latest installment in The Grove’s Facilitation Guide Series—Graphic Facilitation: Transforming Group Process with the Power of Visual Listening in addition to the usual assortment of planning templates and guides. This workshop was distinguished by participants taking over and planning the last day and a half as a practical application of the principles and practices experienced earlier in the workshop.

For more information about the Mastery workshop, please contact our workshop coordinator at 1.415.561.2500 or, in the continental U.S., 1.800. 494.7683, or email us at training@grove.com.