Think about a time you were at your best. Now, think about a word to describe you at your best. When was the last time you experienced this?
You should feel energized in your role. You are what drives the business, and you spend most of your time at work. When you’re not at the top of your game, it affects your performance and impacts the organization. So, how can you do both what you love and what you’re good at?
In this two-hour workshop, you’ll explore areas that motivate you as well as drain you. By looking at the times you felt your best and were “in the zone,” you can identify your key competencies and connect those strengths with what truly drives you. You can then allocate your time and focus on areas that are meaningful and productive, improving your overall quality of work.
What to Expect:
You’ll receive your personalized strengths profile as part of the workshop, and through exploring your strengths and the areas that energize you the most, you’ll understand how to effectively bring forth your best self at work while balancing out any performance risks (areas of weakness and overdrive). The workshop will help you activate your full potential by positive self-awareness.
Logistics:
June 12 at Carriage House 1431 Waverly St, Palo Alto, CA 94301
June 13 at 1155 5th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607
Each workshop is open to 20 people (max three people from company)
2 hours in duration with a mixer to follow, including light appetizers and wine
$225 per participant, including a personalized Strengthscope profile (value of $395)
Not only will you get to figure out how to stay positive and productive, but you’ll have time to connect with other leaders and build your network after the workshop. Register today.
“What are your greatest weaknesses, and how are you overcoming them?” is a common question asked. This question is asked in interviews, performance reviews, and overall, is the main question people ask themselves. People tend to fixate on their problem areas. Ask someone their thoughts on their performance, and most likely, they will start with a negative point.
Because people tend to focus on improving what they’re not good it, it can often lead to uneasiness and stress. Companies and teams try to fill these weakness gaps, and that can create a work environment that is unproductive and disengaging. Rather than understanding what each person brings to the table, organizations are busy trying to make people fit a certain mold. But, what if it was the other way around? Look at the image above and think about a time “when you were at your best” and think of one word that describes how you felt when you were at your best.
Dragonfly Consultants is excited to announce that we are partnered and certified in Strengthscope®, a relatable but extensive strengths profiling and development system that measures work-related strengths. Rather than focusing on your deficiencies , Strengthscope® is a positive approach on how to best utilize an individual and team based on both what energizes them and what they are good at (energizers and competencies). By targeting strengths and opportunities, people are more engaged and energized to deliver higher performance.
Though not fully disregarding weaknesses, Strengthscope® empowers individuals and teams to overcome their weaknesses, drainers, strengths in overdrive, and performance risks by optimizing their strengths.
Employee performance is on average 36% higher when line managers focus their appraisals on staffs’ strengths and talents. (Corporate Leadership Council, 2005)
The Strengthscope® assessment report contains several resources and coaching tools to utilize with individuals and the team. It includes:
How to effectively use strengths to maximize performance
How to effectively mitigate performance risks, including overplayed strengths
Tips on how to use your strengths more
Not only is Strengthscope® simple and easy to use, but it is also backed by extensive research. It gives a roadmap and strategy for strength optimization. Strengthscope® provides a way to assess and develop you and your team and truly helps motivate everyone to be at their peak performance.
Exciting news! On March 24, 2018 in San Francisco, CA, Dragonfly Consultants will be at the Empowered Women’s Leadership. Dragonfly Consultants’ co-founder, Adrienne Seal, and NativeVR’s founder, Nathalie Mathe, will be featured speakers at the one-day summit and will discuss why inclusion and diversity is important, how it positively benefits organizations, and how to tackle diversity and inclusion issues. Dragonfly Consultants will also have a demo booth throughout the day that will allow people to explore their new VR Diversity Workshop experience. If you get to visit Dragonfly’s booth, you’ll also get the chance to enter a free giveaway. Don’t miss out on this event full of leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators and influencers. Get your tickets today!
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Stories of gender discrimination and inequality are rising everywhere – in news headlines, tv reports, social media, and even at work. People are demanding equality and inclusion, but organizations are falling short. Today’s data time and time again shows that with gender and diversity discrimination, companies are experiencing higher turnover, which costs them millions of dollars each year. Employees are experiencing a lack of morale, leading to less productivity and innovation. But, why are organizations failing at overcoming these issues?
Current diversity programs are taught through lecture, slides and maybe a few exercises, where interactions are limited. It’s not sticking and only touches the surface of creating awareness and cultural change. Gender discrimination lies deeper within unconscious bias, and in order to understand all personal biases, programs need to work at the individual level, as well as the group level.
Inspired by personal experiences and hearing from a variety of connections, Dragonfly Consultants’ co-founders, Adrienne Seal and Michelle Sullivan, found it critical to develop a more sustainable method of cultural change. Stories around the lack of career advancement for women, low representation of women in leadership roles, experiences of gender stereotypes, and overall, unequal behavior towards women have ignited the need to tackle the issues of gender bias and inequality. So, what makes Dragonfly Consultants’ method different?
Dragonfly Consultants is offering customized VR Diversity Workshops with the help of NativeVR to create an immersive, 360 experience to uncover and explore today’s issues around inclusion and diversity. By tailoring the workshop with what is going on in the organization, people become more connected and accountable. Utilizing virtual reality as a tool in the workshop portrays real-life work experiences that offer different gender perspectives, and participants can explore various diversity issues. People can actually “live” in other people’s shoes, creating empathy and a new felt experience that is otherwise difficult to emit through presentation slides and handouts.
Along with the VR experience, the workshop dives deeper by:
1) Understanding the felt experience at the individual level
2) Recognizing the group dynamics and how to self-regulate group behavior
3) Identifying the organizational levers for change to align and reinforce the overall values of the organization for sustainable inclusion
The overall Virtual Reality workshop is designed to foster a positive dialogue around diversity issues by letting each viewer explore both gender perspectives at their own choice. No-one sees exactly the same story.
On March 24, 2018, Dragonfly Consultants will be sharing more of their experiences and background on why they developed this VR Gender Workshop at the Empowered Women’s Leadership Summit in San Francisco, CA. Adrienne Seal will be a featured speaker, along with other women leaders from companies like Pandora, Visa, Broadway Angels, LinkedIn, and many more. Dragonfly Consultants will also have a booth, offering live VR demos and additional information on how companies can create more diverse and inclusive environments. Don’t miss out, and purchase your ticket here.
When you think of conflict, what comes to mind? Misunderstanding, issues, arguments… the list is usually negative. But, why does conflict have such a negative connotation?
Conflict typically arises from two things: communication and emotion. People tend to misinterpret messages and situations, which then effect their feelings. When conflict happens between individuals, it changes their behavior and relationship with each other. Because conflict can be uncomfortable and sometimes lead to big disagreements, teams often see less productivity and lower team morale. Conflict is inevitable, and there’s no avoiding it. It’s not about conflict resolution, but instead, it’s best to understand the situation and encourage meaningful work conflict that’ll help build effective problem solving and team relationships So, how can teams turn conflict into a more beneficial tool?
Conflict management isn’t a one-size-fits-all tactic. Individuals perceive and experience different things as they interact with each other. So, in order to improve conflict management, you must start with the individual.
Dragonfly Consultants now offers Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict, which helps learners improve self-awareness around conflict behaviors. Rather than focus on a step-by-step process for conflict resolution, Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict helps learners curb destructive behaviors so that conflict can become more productive, ultimately improving workplace results and relationships. By increasing self-awareness around conflict behaviors, Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict helps learners effectively respond to the uncomfortable and unavoidable challenges of workplace conflict.
The Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile gives an in-depth report highlighting techniques to improve self awareness around conflict behaviors. The Profile contains highly personalized information that is specific to a participant’s responses to the assessment and to their corresponding DiSC style. As a team, once you explore and understand each other’s Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict Profile, individuals can learn each other’s conflict style, differences, and ways to work around their behaviors.
Productive conflict helps teams problem-solve, improve collaboration, and increase team morale. By understanding each others’ styles and behaviors, the team is able to work in a safe and inclusive environment that is open to feedback, discussion, and overall support through effective communication.
An immersive, 360 experience to uncover and explore today’s issues around inclusion and diversity
The time to take a serious look at your company culture is now. Are you fostering an environment of equity and inclusion? Are you seeing the full potential and value of having a diverse workforce? We believe that it’s a continuous commitment from the whole organization – top to bottom, to create positive change, transparency, and involvement.
To do so, Dragonfly Consultants is offering customized Virtual Reality “unconscious and conscious bias” workshops through April 2018 with the help of NativeVR’s UTURN series. Each workshop is designed specifically for you and your team, creating a customized experience for the organization. This Virtual Reality workshop creates an experience that touches each person and their truth, even if the story is not their own. You actually get to feel what happens when a young female engineer joins a male-dominated, floundering startup that’s deep in an identity crisis. And with a comedic twist, this immersive, award-winning, live-action VR experience allows you to experience both sides of the gender divide.
As you “live” the VR experience, you’re exposed to challenges such as career promotion challenges, lack of teamwork, support and recognition biases, and the influence of the venture capital landscape. From there, the workshop reflects back to your perception and:
Understands the felt experience at the individual level
Recognizes the group dynamics and how to self-regulate group behavior
Identifies the organizational levers for change that ensure there are behaviors and practices that align and reinforce the overall values of the organization and create sustainable inclusive conditions that welcome diversity.
The overall Virtual Reality workshop is designed to foster a positive dialogue around diversity issues by letting each viewer explore both gender perspectives at their own choice. No-one sees exactly the same story.
You can learn more about the Virtual Reality experience and view the trailer here.
Hope Scott, the Vice President and Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Blue Shield of California, was interviewed by one of Dragonfly Consultants’ Co-Founders and Executive Coach, Adrienne Seal. Scott was featured in American Healthcare Leader for her work and leadership in the healthcare industry, and during the interview, Scott shares how executive coaching has continuously helped develop her professional career. Seal has coached Scott on how to overcome work obstacles that she otherwise wouldn’t have known how to deal with, including transitioning into a new promotion.
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Hope Scott, the Vice President and Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Blue Shield of California, was recently featured in American Healthcare Leader for her work and leadership in the healthcare industry. Scott’s work at Blue Shield has allowed millions of Californian Medi-Cal members to receive quality care through Care1st, and she has also launched a new Medicare compliance initiative to mitigate risk. With 27 years of healthcare and legal experience, Scott shares how executive coaching has continuously helped develop her professional career in an interview with Dragonfly Consultants, a certified women-owned business that offers executive coaching in leadership development and organizational culture.
The interview was led by one of Dragonfly Consultants’ Co-Founder and Executive Coach, Adrienne Seal, who has had experience working with companies, including Blue Shield, Clorox, HP and Cisco on executive coaching, leadership development and team development. Throughout the interview, Scott shares how having an executive coach like Seal has helped her overcome work obstacles that she otherwise wouldn’t have known how to deal with.
One of the ways Seal has helped Scott was through the transition into her promotion of her current role. Scott was now managing a team of about 50 people and soon learned that becoming a leader was more than just managing employees. Scott shares, “My biggest learning was that it was possible to have a plan in how to move forward and how to transform who I appear to be in the organization. To go from a Director to being an executive in the organization required a lot of transformation on my own part but also how other people thought of me. And having [Seal] as a coach in particular, I think the most important initial steps were for you to help me realize that people looked at me differently now. Even though I’m the same Hope that has been there the day before the promotion was announced, people looked at me differently because now I was a Vice President and now I was in a different category of leadership in the organization.”
In order to successfully lead the team, Seal worked closely with Scott to develop a roadmap on how to best strategically plan and execute on team objectives. With Scott’s passion in healthcare and law and Seal’s coaching, Scott has been able to transform into a virtuous leader. Words of advice from Scott were, “As a leader, you can’t be timid… As a leader, you have to think about what’s really important.”
Scott’s early years of professional work has allowed her to overcome and defy gender and racial stereotypes. Proving to be more than just another label (“she’s a woman; she’s of color; she’s inexperienced”), Scott takes on all challenges with an open-mind and thick skin. Utilizing all types of resources, Scott recommends mentoring, coaching, joining groups and creating a professional development plan to continue to learn and grow.
“Working with Dragonfly and working with [Seal] as a coach has been transformative; it has made me accept who I can be and makes me want to strive to be better all the time. And I really appreciate the fact that even after our coaching engagement formally ended, we remained in touch; we remained connected. I think that stands out to be from the person you are, but it’s reflective of the nature of your coaching… You and your organization has really helped to transform my career.”
About Blue Shield of California
Founded in 1939, Blue Shield of California, an independent member of the Blue Shield Association, is a nonprofit health plan dedicated to providing Californians with access to high-quality health care at an affordable price. The organization serves over 4 million health plan members and nearly 65,000 physicians across the state.
Click here to read the full press release on PRWeb.
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
Dragonfly Consultants is offering a series of Read to Lead group book study sessions, starting next January 2018. Join us in the Dragonfly Reading Room (virtual) as we explore and discuss books on a variety of interests that will be sure to engage, challenge and inspire you as a leader. With each selected book, participants will read on their own and then join in on a lively 90-minute discussion led by a Dragonfly moderator and special guests, the authors of each book. The reading room is limited to 20 participants. You can still register for the last session for Humble Inquiry with Ed Schein on May 7th for $25. To sign up, get tickets here.
What participants will get out of the book study sessions:
Study guide questions
Post meeting recording
Access to a private Dragonfly Reading Room Linkedin group where you can continue the learning
Overall, the ability to connect, discuss and learn with other leaders, the books’ authors and experts
Layout of each virtual session:
First 45 minutes – Book discussion facilitated by Dragonfly Consultants
Last 45 minutes – Q&A with the book’s author
Featured books and sessions:
Michael Papanek’s From Breakdown to Breakthrough on January 12, 2018 from 5:00pm – 6:30pm PST
In From Breakdown to Breakthrough, Papanek introduces the concept of the heat curve, a graphical representation that shows how relationships perform under stress. There comes a point where the “heat” – in the form of creative tension, interpersonal conflict, and extreme emotions – becomes too much for the relationship to handle, which leads to breakdown. The goal of building resilient relationships is to shift the heat curve as far as possible, so that it can withstand heat before breaking down. “The more resilience you have, the higher you are able to ride the heat curve and leverage the benefits of increasing stress, without the costs,” he says.
Michael Papanek, grandson of the pioneer of group dynamics and organizational psychology, Kurt Lewin, draws from the latest research and his thirty years’ track record of success with clients, including Apple, Facebook, VMWare, Salesforce, Kaiser and Google to reveal the success strategies of the most resilient leaders.
Florence Williams’ The Nature Fix onMarch 12, 2018 from 5:00pm – 6:30pm PST
For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams sets out to uncover the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain in The Nature Fix.
From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to groves of eucalyptus in California, Williams investigates the science at the confluence of environment, mood, health, and creativity. Delving into completely new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and ultimately strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.
Edgar Schein’s Humble Inquiry on May 7, 2018 from 5:00pm – 6:30pm PST
Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people—especially those who report to us—we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry.
Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.” In this seminal work, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry with other kinds of inquiry, shows the benefits Humble Inquiry provides in many different settings, and offers advice on overcoming the cultural, organizational, and psychological barriers that keep us from practicing it.
Dragonfly Consultants is honored to become a certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB).
Why is this important? As some women-owned small businesses in certain industries are underrepresented, this enables us to compete for business in the federal government at a level playing field. As a certified diversity supplier, it opens more opportunities for our business to serve federal customers.
As a women-owned business, we are proud of our team for making great strides as we continue to grow Dragonfly Consultants.
Dragonfly Consultants is proud to announce that we received our WBE (Women Business Enterprise) Certification!
What does this mean? This makes us a Diversity Supplier in both the corporate and government sectors. Our specialty is Leadership & Team Development (focused on Director level and above), Executive Coaching, Organizational Cultural Transformation.
We have a toolbox of partnerships and resources that allow us to tap into to best meet the needs of our clients. Through our partnerships with Wiley, Human Synergistics, Kilmann Diagnostics, Strengthscope, and others, we offer expertise and assessments in the following: Everything DiSC (363 for Leaders, Work of LEaders, Sales, Management, Workplace), Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, MBTI, Emotional Intelligence, Organizational Culture and Effectiveness, Strengthscope, and TKI (conflict management).
Dragonfly has partnered with Dr. Ralph Kilmann of Kilmann Diagnostics to offer a series of online courses created by Dr. Kilmann himself, the co-author of the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI). TKI is the world’s leading assessment of conflict-handling behavior, with more than 7,000,000 copies purchased!
In 
For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, 
Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people—especially those who report to us—we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry. 
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