Encounter is the ultimate opportunity to experience yourself as others experience you, an opportunity to embrace what is working well for you and to take a good look at what is not. It offers a safe environment to practice working through conflicts versus the more common response; ignore it, gloss over it, or hope it goes away.

Encounter allows you to look behind the veil of polite conversation, political correctness and hidden agendas to discover how others really react to you. This is the real “no spin zone.”

The origins of this approach can be traced to Will Schutz’s pioneering work in early T-groups at the National Training Laboratories (NTL) in Bethel, Maine and later at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

Focus
Globalization, the flattened organization, and expectations of professionals in the workplace have changed the dynamics of work. Increasingly, getting the job done means working with and through other people, often with no role power or authority. Success depends on your ability to build trusting relationships, understand others, decipher subtle emotional cues, communicate effectively, resolve conflicts and influence outcomes. And, the faster the better. This is complicated in that people do not react to your intentions, but rather how they interpret your behavior.

Participants get candid feedback on the impact of their interactions and understand how their actions help create an engaged, inspired workforce or result in conflicts and resistance. Participants learn to improve their ability to influence the actions of others and gain insight into their patterns of behavior that build successful work and personal relationships and those that do not.

Who Should Attend
This experience is designed for people who work with people, for people or through people. Leaders, managers, supervisors, individual contributors, coaches, trainers and consultants will all benefit from this experience.

Outcomes

• Learn to avoid the pitfalls of interpersonal conflicts
• Increase comfort in dealing with emotions and emotional issues
• Discover unconscious blocks to personal effectiveness
• Develop greater skillfulness in giving difficult feedback that supports productive relations
• Learn to deal more successfully with the defensiveness of others
• Learn how you trigger resistance and defensiveness in others, and how to stop it
• Learn how language and behavior is interpreted by, and impacts others.

Special Features
Encounter has its roots in social psychology. In its present form, it is the artful blending of a variety of methods including visualization, nonverbal, meditation, sensory awareness, and others involving the body and energy. Encounter focuses on the here and now, ensuring that each group is unique, its character the result of the particular members of the group and the group facilitator.

Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites.

Facilitator
Gary Copeland has been a Senior Trainer of The Human Element for 20 years. In addition to certifying trainers in The Human Element and Element B, he consults with companies and organizations, including Johnson & Johnson, Mitsubishi Imaging, NASA, Eli Lily and the U.S. Army Missile Command.

Quick Facts