As organizational design expert Arthur W. Jones astutely observed, “All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.” Living in Right Relationship in the Workplace begins with understanding what underlies effective engagement with others.

 

While most organizations define their mission and values, this isn’t enough. It’s essential that everyone in the organization, beginning with the leadership, explore their own underlying assumptions and how these support (or don’t) the company’s stated mission and values.

 

Sometimes very powerful breakthroughs emerge when these assumptions are unveiled. Missions may be redirected, or there may be important work to do around communicating and realigning varying perspectives.

 

Employees must be given specific knowledge and skills to interact well with their colleagues and thrive. For example, if a company states that innovation is one of its values, do the employees know how to navigate differing perspectives so they are empowered to bring their brilliant and perhaps conflicting ideas to the table? Do they then have the skills to make strategic decisions about which ideas and directions to adopt?

 

Barbara frequently collaborates with other experts to:

  • Design and Administer Cultural and Organizational Effectiveness Assessments
  • Create Systems to Recruit, Hire, and Onboard for Cultural Fit
  • Develop and Refine Periodic Review and Feedback Processes
  • Facilitate Meetings regarding Vision, Innovation, Strategy, and Values
  • Conduct Trainings on Specific Competencies such as Communication, Working as a Team, and Conflict Resolution
  • Lead Sessions to Explore and Resolve “Real Time” Group Conflicts
  • Provide Leadership and Executive Coaching.

Unleashing Team Genius

Barbara is a partner in Synthesis, a team dynamics coaching firm that brings Right Relationship to Leadership Teams. Synthesis facilitates the unleashing of Team Genius–the sweet spot where a team’s intentional efforts to create results brings forth the team’s greater collective wisdom and creative intelligence.

Unleashing a team’s genius requires that team members move beyond individual agendas and toward the greater good of the team and the organization. Barbara works with Synthesis Founder, Sandra Visser, to help team members bring their gifts to the table, refocus their reactive tendencies, and be intentional about their impact. For more on Synthesis, visit synthesis-in-action.com.

“Barb has worked with our Board of Trustees over many years. She increases our productivity while bringing forth each person’s gifts, values and talents. She frames the big picture and allows the group dynamic to get to the soul of the matter. Through her process, ideas and clear goals come forth and she helps us zoom into the essentials of how to take those creative thoughts and turn them into purposeful, meaningful work.”
-Victoria Burke
Former Board Member, Shining Mountain Waldorf School

“I had the pleasure of working with Barbara Edwards on a very exciting and challenging effort to bring a new model of social synergy and cocreativity into form. She was able to facilitate the designing process for the event, and then her presence during the event was superb. I have confidence when she is present that the flow of expression and coherence will be evoked. She is a master facilitator.”
-Barbara Marx Hubbard, Founder, Foundation for Conscious Evolution

“I took a 3 day 7 Habits of Highly Effective People course with Barb. I am a professional facilitator and I have several pages of notes on facilitation skills from being with her. I would give her Master status as a facilitator of group process. In a few hours, she took a group of reluctant Accenture Managers and had them completely curious and interested in what she had to say. Brilliant.”
-Accenture Manager, Organizational Change