You might be a manager, a human resources consultant or team leader looking for fresh professional development and training to offer your team. Perhaps your employees prepare for high stakes presentations, pitches to potential clients or deliver oral submissions. Or maybe they repeatedly deal with distressed clients or people who are angry.
More than just burnout prevention, you want to enhance your team’s workplace resilience so they stay creative and productive.
Stress and pressures lands in the body and makes everything more difficult. When we can ease the knot in the stomach or the lump in the throat before we pitch to a prospective client, report to the committee or respond to an angry client or colleague, we deliver more effectively. With the techniques I’ll teach to ease how these pressures affect the body, you can think and communicate effectively and clearly.
Improving team dynamics
Some months after attending a resilience workshop one employee in a large agency surprised me by greeting me in the hallway. Excited, he told me that since the training he has been able to notice when he is starting to irritate his co-workers. Pleased, he told me he can now catch himself, settle his own mounting anxiousness and change how he is behaving to others before he gets carried away (and drives them away). The dynamics of their team’s communication, needless to say, are improving.
Fa·cil·i·ta·tion: The act of making something easier.
I teach techniques grounded in science and explained in understandable formats. Three distinct foundations shape this work: I have a bachelor of science in physical therapy (McGill University); completed the trauma training program at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (Boulder, Colorado) and have a graduate certifcate in adult education (University of British Columbia, Vancouver).
Before I work with your team, the first step is for you and I to have a conversation. Ideally we would meet in person for about 45 minutes to an hour. Each of my training sessions is highly customized so the more I learn about your group, the more I can prepare activities tailored to your specific situations. I love really listening. I’ll be curious about the nature of your group’s work, what constitutes your successes, where you are feeling challenged and want help. How would you describe the morale at your workplace? Have you just come through a crisis or critical period? Is your organization bursting quickly into new and exciting terrain? Has this brought your group together or driven it apart? What would you hope to achieve together with me? What would success look like?
We’ll discuss logistics, weigh pros and cons and make decisions together.
We’ll consider things like:
- What is the most engaging focus for the first training?
- Is it better to initiate the training with the whole team?
- Might we work in smaller groups first?
- What format is required and is least interruptive and most suited to your organization? (e.g., two sessions of two hours, one half day, a full day, etc.)
I’ll then write and ask you to send an email to your group members. With this email I’ll introduce myself and offer the opportunity to connect with me individually so people can offer any insights or make requests. I keep this information in strict confidence: I don’t share this with anyone.
Over the years, participants continually report that they appreciated me making myself available to them before our sessions together—that it helped make the training more effective.
I typically recommend that you build in some brief follow-up time one or two months after the training for short individual coaching sessions (30-45 minutes) should participants want to enhance or modify the techniques they’ve been using since the training.
Once we’ve picked a date, secured the location, ordered some refreshments, we’re ready to jump in! I look forward to working together with you.
Ready to try a session
with Shayna Hornstein?
Guarding against burnout
A manager in a large organization engaged me to coach one of her employees. Their department fielded phone calls from clients who were often angry. This employee was excellent and she worried that this woman would not be able to sustain the persistent pressure, that she would get sick or otherwise leave. Her most effective employee, she would ill afford to lose her. The other employees were not as effective and this manager hoped my coaching might bolster her resilience and prevent this woman from burning out. The employee told me of her exhaustion and she often left her shifts with headaches. I provided four coaching sessions.
Results: Through my coaching, this woman became able to identify early signs of tension in her body and we developed strategies for her to release it right away, while still on the phone. She became more able to maintain her focus during tough calls, handled them more effectively and no longer left her shifts with headaches. The manager was relieved.
Shayna Hornstein is a Vancouver-based trainer, coach and therapist with 20+ years of combined education, research and professional practice in workplace health and safety, as well as treating people with chronic illness.