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Strengthen the Collective Power of your Team

This section is for teams, organizations and communities that want to expand their collective power and capacity to work together.

Big Waves can support you to transform conflict, relate better,  reaffirm common goals and face challenges with care for everyone involved. Build a vibrant and healthy culture.


Workplace Culture Change Process

Create a Healthier Culture

You can create safe, caring, and transformative work environments that support the equity and dignity of all members of the workplace. This has been shown to create happier, more effective, and more creative workplaces with higher retention and sustainability. What’s more, by transforming systemic issues in our workplaces, we move toward shifting them in the world. Whether you are looking for a prevention strategy, or responding to an identified problem, Big Waves can help you make the changes your organization needs to be successful. 

Culture change is an adaptive process customized to your workplace. It goes through the following stages:

  • Discovery: Together, we will identify the underlying causes of the problem, or the elements of culture that you want to shift, and then plan for initial interventions.
  • Intervention: We will start with one to three targeted interventions to move toward your goals. These interventions will be picked based on expected impact and level of complexity.
  • Evaluation: We will then do a mini assessment to learn what has shifted and what else might help. The plan is then adapted based on this evaluation.
  • Capacity Building: If needed, we will introduce new interventions that emphasize internal capacity building to make sure these changes stick!
  • Maintenance: We will check in after 3-4 months to determine if there is a need for any further support. It is recommended to do the check in at least twice.

Interventions may include creation or modification of processes and procedures, group process facilitation, mediation, leadership coaching, training, team building, and visioning. 

Ever since the investigation three years ago, the workplace was on edge. Everyone was on alert for signs that something else would go wrong, and morale was lower than ever before. Tatiana, the HR Manager, reached out to Big Waves to make sure they didn’t end up in the same situation again. We collected feedback from the entire staff and developed a plan to create a workplace that felt safe and supportive. Three years later, they have a whole new system for addressing conflict and have trained the entire staff in conflict resolution and giving and receiving feedback. In addition, all managers continue to participate in one-on-one leadership coaching focusing on building strong teams, giving helpful feedback, and encouraging a growth mindset. As a sign they have made a major culture shift, in spite of COVID and the move to remote work, staff report they feel closer and more engaged than they did before the crisis.


Conflict Transformation

To be adaptive in today’s work environment, workplaces benefit from diverse perspectives and different ways of thinking. But this can create conflict and teams need support to find their way.

When faced with conflict or difficult conversations, people need to feel safe enough to engage. Big Waves uses a trauma-informed approach to supporting better relationships at work. Through mediation, facilitation, coaching and training, you can renovate your relationships to make more space for the work that really matters.

Some of the reasons you might need support around conflict:

  • People on your team don’t get along and it’s impacting their ability to work together
  • You’re building a more diverse workplace, and discovering it’s leading to more difficult conversations that you don’t know how to navigate
  • People avoid each other or are afraid to disagree
  • People are leaving because the workplace culture feels toxic


Group Process or Meeting Facilitation

Build understanding and agreement where there are diverse perspectives. A group process or facilitated meeting can help to improve relationships in a team or workplace. A group process often focuses on promoting dialogue about difficult topics or addresses specific tensions within a group. Meeting facilitation can help a group make decisions on agenda items where there is a high level of disagreement.

Big Waves uses a wide range of creative and collaborative facilitation methods to encourage engagement and ensure that all necessary perspectives are surfaced.


Mediation

Mediation is a voluntary process in which two or more people who are having a dispute are supported to negotiate an agreement that works for everyone. Mediation supports people to have a conversation about their areas of disagreement, and helps them to understand each other, communicate more effectively, make agreements and improve their work relationship.

Once the mediation process is complete, a written document is provided that describes what the people involved have agreed to.


Conflict Coaching

Conflict coaching helps you develop the capacity to approach conflict in the workplace and in personal relationships with curiosity and hope. For more information about conflict coaching, visit the Leadership page>


Workplace Restoration

A comprehensive approach to restoring good workplace relationships after a major conflict, investigation or other workplace trauma. Workplace restoration usually begins with an assessment and recommendations, which may include mediation, a facilitated group process, team-building exercises, conflict management coaching, policy review and/or trainings. Once the interventions that are recommended have been tried, there is often an evaluation period to make sure the process has been successful.


Customized Training

Trainings are designed in collaboration with you, based on the needs of your organization.

Potential topics include:

  • How to build democratic group processes and make decisions as a group
  • Courageous conversations
  • Creating cultures of feedback
  • Understanding power
  • Shifting from power-over to power-with
  • Basic conflict resolution
  • Creating healthy, inclusive workplaces
  • How to be an emotionally aware team
  • Working with different personalities and conflicting styles

​And many other topics depending on the needs of the workplace.

Upcoming Trainings

Sign up for the Big Waves newsletter to find out about upcoming training sessions