BALM Strategies

BALM Strategies is the branch of Peace in Praxis focused on organizational leadership. BALM is dedicated to enabling leaders and their organizations to reach their potential through experiential educational programs that foster better leadership, conflict resolution, decision-making, management practices, organizational strategy, and storytelling.

At BALM, we are committed to ongoing learning. We believe that good training can be transformative. We view organizational culture as a critical contributor to career longevity and organizational productivity.

Offerings:

• Working through Conflict Core Series

• Single Training Sessions

• Customized Learning Design & Facilitation

Working Through Conflict Core Series

This signature learning experience explores three core elements of navigating conflict:  The Science of Threat + The Theory of Listening + The Art of Engaging

This Core Series will enable you to better understand your own responses to threats, how to uncover what is being communicated even when it’s not being said, and how to effectively engage especially when difficulties are present.

The Science of Threat

The Science of Threat grounds our understanding of conflict and communication in brain science around how we perceive threats and rewards, how our identities play a role in our perception of ourselves and others, and how assumptions impact our decision making.

The Theory of Listening

The Theory of Listening is designed to interrupt our typical listening behaviors and replace them with careful, thoughtful processes that enable us to listen to create understanding and insight that is critical for addressing conflict.

The Art of Engaging

The Art of Engaging provides practical skills and frameworks for moving conflict away from dominance and competition and toward mutuality and shared satisfaction with both the process and the outcomes.

Single Training Sessions

BALM Strategies offers single training sessions on critical topics for leadership and organizational development.  Three of our most popular sessions include:

• Dealing with Difficult Conversations,

• Negotiation as a Leadership Practice

• Creating Cultures of Feedback

Dealing with Difficult Conversations

Avoiding difficult conversations and conflict is not a sustainable leadership practice and can fray relations and organizational culture.  This training sessions explores how we manage conflict and creates opportunities to explore our own barriers to productive engagement.  Using a scenario-based approached, participants will build skills for understanding when to engage and how to navigate situations involving potentially difficult conversations.

Negotiation as a Leadership Practice

Our culture tends to highlight and valorize loud, bold, brash authoritarian styles of leadership as both desirable and effective.  This session is built on the notion that this narrow view of what leadership looks like disadvantages us in a key leadership practice- negotiation.  The best negotiators are able to understand the perspectives, positions, interests, and needs of their negotiation partner.  This session uses a scenario-based approach to help participants more effectively engage in negotiations that are positive in both their undertaking and in their ultimate resolution.

Creating Cultures of Feedback

Receiving feedback can activate a threat-response in our brains.  Many people are conditioned to avoid giving it and fear receiving it.  In work contexts, feedback is most often left to a formal process that occurs once a year, if at all.  This session approaches giving feedback by stressing the ongoing nature of feedback given in short, constructive guidance that addresses two aspects of performance- what is done well and what might be done differently in the future.  This session will help participants identify what feedback is, how to craft feedback in productive ways, how to distinguish between an observation, an interpretation, and a judgment, what gets in the way of giving feedback and how to handle those obstacles. Participants will be more prepared to create and contribute to cultures of feedback that both enhance performance and also build organizational culture.

Customized Learning Design & Facilitation

We specialize in training design with an emphasis on developing leaders, managing workplace conflict, communicating effectively, leading teams, and building organizational culture. We tailor our trainings to an organization’s specific goals.  Our process begins with a conversation about your needs and goals. Our offerings range from a 90-minute session to multi-day engagements.

Specialized Training to Unlock Your Group's Potential

We specialize in training design with an emphasis on developing leaders, managing workplace conflict, communicating effectively, leading teams, and building organizational culture.

We tailor our trainings to an organization’s specific needs, beginning with a conversation about your needs and goals. Our offerings range from a 90 minute training session to multi-day engagements. Contact us to begin a discussion about how we can partner together to design bespoke training for your group.