.

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.

Putting the Workplace Back Together

A major trauma in the workplace such as an investigation, a complaint of bullying or harassment, employee terminations or organizational change can be a devastating experience for management and employees. Broken relationships, stress, anger, confusion, fear and distrust can be just some of the emotions experienced. Such emotions make it difficult for people to want to come to work each day, much less be productive and creative. You may even lose key staff as a result.

Through the Workplace Restoration process, we help organizations put the workplace back together. The process will relieve tension, restore employee relationships and confidence and help you move on, leaving the stress behind.

While it might seem impossible, your workplace will be one where people are happy to come to work, eager to communicate constructively with their fellow employees, feel empowered to bring forth new ideas and give their best every day. This is good on any given day, but especially good for your future.

When to consider workplace restoration

If there has been a complaint of bullying or harassment, workplace restoration may be the next step after an investigation.

Anytime discord takes place in the workplace, where relationships have broken or teams are no longer able to work well together, a restoration can help restore good relations before it escalates to the point of employee terminations, legal actions or other extremes.

When considering extensive organizational change, it’s a good idea to include workplace restoration and be proactive on any workplace discord, tension and distrust that may take place as a result.

What is the Workplace Restoration Process?

Workplace restoration usually begins with an assessment and a recommended plan of action.

During the assessment, we interview management and staff and review your current policies regarding conflict resolution. We ask, “What happened here?” and “What could happen differently to avert or heal from a traumatic event?” We recommend a plan of action for restoring harmony in your workplace and establish a process to deal with potential future events.

Depending on the nature of the conflict, the plan of action may include the following:

Mediation: When two or more individuals are in conflict, mediation can be a good option. The goal of mediation is to build understanding and communication, along with a specific agreement on how to deal with concerns. In mediation, Big Waves creates a safe space, helps the people in conflict communicate more effectively about their areas of disagreement, and supports them to develop an understanding. With mediation, the team’s healing can begin by improving work relationships.

Group Process Facilitation: Conflict in the workplace often impacts many people. In these situations, we recommend a large group process. A group process often focuses on promoting dialogue about difficult topics, improving relationships in a team or an entire workplace and addressing specific tensions within a group.

Pre-mediation Coaching: Sometimes participants in mediation need additional support to get them ready to talk and communicate with each other and to participate successfully in a negotiation. Big Waves offers one-on-one pre-mediation coaching to help people define their objectives, consider their options and prepare emotionally and logistically for the mediation.

Conflict Management Coaching: In conflict management coaching, Big Waves works one-on-one with people who are affected by a conflict. We help them develop and practice the skills to approach conflict in their lives and workplaces more effectively. If required, we also help managers develop the skills necessary to manage conflict in the workplace. Skills include constructive communication and feedback, understanding diverse perspectives, emotional intelligence and problem solving.

Policy Review: Big Waves often reviews conflict resolution policies and procedures. After reviewing, we offer suggestions to make them more specific, effective and reflective of the needs of the organization. We want to make sure that people clearly understand how to bring issues forward in the future. Policy review often goes in tandem with training to ensure everyone in the organization understands the new policies.

Workshops and Training: Workplace training is an important part of a conflict resolution process. Topics may include constructive communication, working with different personalities and work styles, understanding human rights or conflict resolution policies and processes, conflict resolution and negotiation, equity and inclusion, preparing for difficult conversations, emotional awareness and literacy, and other topics, depending on the needs of the workplace.

After the recommendations have been implemented, there is an evaluation to make sure the process has been successful. This often involves checking in with key people via interviews, focus groups or surveys to assess what feels successful and where there may still be areas for improvement. The evaluation may lead to further recommendations.

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

Newsletter Sign-up