What if your company were radically
more productive?

Workplace divisions cripple productivity and innovation. Group dynamics are tricky and teams fall apart. We provide solutions for Unconscious Bias, Diversity and Inclusion, and related conflicts and challenges between management, team players, and clients. Fewer tensions means greater productivity, healthy innovation, and satisfied employees and customers.

Harmony Strategies Group offers consulting and professional development solutions to grow and ensure workplace harmony. Our coaching, consulting, workshops, and Circle processes tackle everything from individual to public forums for increasing harmony and efficiency.

 

Organizational Ombuds - your company's conflict management specialist

When conflicts are bubbling beneath the surface, employees and teams are less productive and innovative, and companies end up wasting precious time and resources with high turnover rates. Organizational Ombuds serve as an independent, impartial, confidential and informal office for employees to raise concerns and discuss festering issues. Not only do Ombuds help empower these employees to better handle their situation, but we also provide vital feedback to senior leaders on key complaints and problems that they otherwise may not recognize.

Want more information about Ombuds Consulting? - contact us for pricing and details.

 

Workshops

HSG workshops focus on Conflict Management, Collaboration and Team-Building, Sensitivity & Bias-Awareness, and Management and Leadership Skills. We offer multi-day series' as well as one-day programs, and a robust list of our offerings are now available via FindCourses.com. Generally, workshops are customized to suit specific client interests and needs. Below is a list of our popular workshops that can either be led individually or grouped together as a package:

More often than we know, our decisions, choices, and perceptions are guided by cognitive biases that are beyond our control. These biases can lead us to think we know things that we don’t, believe truths that are actually false, and guide us to make poor choices. These choices affect our lifestyle, livelihood, and overall success. Harmony Strategies Group’s "Understanding Unconscious Bias" engages participants in deeper understanding of what unconscious bias means, how it plays out in our lives, and some options for how to tame or correct misperceptions and associations. As with all of our workshops, this program is highly interactive, such that individuals reflect and share their learning process.

With the increased attention focused on Diversity practices, there are questions around cultural sensitivity and mindful integration into company systems. This program highlights a key component of successful and effective inclusion: Cultural Humility. We discuss what this concept means, exploration into common pitfalls, and effective ways of promoting in cultural sensitivity and awareness. Participants come away with rich understanding on how to be mindful of cultural differences and practical ways to engage in healthier, more effective workplace practices.

Body language and non-verbal communication can dramatically alter how a conversation progresses. Your subconscious messaging can convey myriad signals that are likely beyond your awareness but can dramatically workplace success. This workshop highlights how non-verbal cues frame interactions and what to do to maximize awareness and control over them in your office dynamics.

Listening-skills are at the core of effective communication, and this practicum challenges participants to re-think how they listen. With a combination of theory and exercises, we reframe what listening and communication means, so that we can have more enriching conversations and better, deeper understanding.

This program highlights how people of different backgrounds and cultures have different perspectives on issues and events. Through simulations and discussion, participants better understand that different perspectives are not by nature “wrong” but rather “new”. As such, listening to other people’s perspectives opens opportunities for growth, change, and cooperation. Participants in this seminar come out with better skills for facing identity-based and issue-based conflicts.
This program develops practical skills that empower participants to confront when conflicts with others arise. Often, perceived conflict and social friction are crippling and emotionally draining. People become overwhelmed with fear and let the conflict fester and grow. This program empowers participants to face conflicts with confidence, rather than fear confrontation.

This program introduces the concept of schemas and how they frame our perception of infinite daily routines and patterns. It then develops how schemas lead to stereotypes, prejudice, and ultimately racism and racial profiling. Lively discussion and role-plays help develop sensitivity to the problems that schemas raise in modern society, followed by brainstorming remedies.

This program provides a basic introduction to conflict. Key definitions and explanations of how conflicts arise, escalate, and sometimes erupt aid participants in early detection and awareness. Participants are invited to explore their own attitudes towards conflict and resolution.
This program focuses on how to be a patient and attentive listener. Developed around the idea that silence is a powerful and useful tool, participants consider scenarios where silence plays a key role. Silence allows the speaker to be heard and feel comfortable, and a skilled listener will use this tool to help the speaker open up with confidence. Silence also breeds compassion and empathy, essential for effective business, family and community relationships.
This program focuses on the individual within the group, and how groups behave. Emphasis is placed on teambuilding, motivation, and dealing with conflict and stressors. Participants learn about different personalities and how they effect the team, ultimately analyzing their own team and group behaviors and attitudes.
In the wake of #MeToo and the incident at Starbucks, corporations large and small are realizing the need to address Unconscious Bias and how Culture, Race, Sexual Identity, and related social cues play out in the workplace. This program informs participants on how our minds process information into categories and how to unravel and become more aware of those conceptions.

 

 

Harmony Circles: Building Collaborative Teams

Employee relations can make or break a company's morale, productivity, and innovation-potential. Companies save time, money, and resources when teams feel a strong sense of purpose, interconnectedness, and mutual concern. Companies large and small struggle with how to create that sense of belongingness among their staff. 

Community dialogues are the ideal solution. Harmony Circles, based on Restorative Practices, bring employees together in an equitable, trust-building, and impactful conversation. More importantly, Circles are immediately effective and build long-lasting results. We can train your team leadership how to implement these Circles, as well as lead and facilitate them ourselves. Some examples of Harmony Circles that we lead are:

  • Trust-building Circles
  • Team Productivity Circles
  • Leadership and Management Circles
  • Women and Minority Circles
  • Performance Appraisal Circles

Harmony Circles can be customized as brief, 5-minute introductions to your team meetings or longer, 2-hour+ conversations about a workplace issue or challenge. 

We can also lead virtual Harmony Circles at your next team retreat - contact us for pricing information.

 

Conflict Management Systems Design

Most companies experience backlog when conflicts aren't handled efficiently. Usually, this happens because there isn't a specific system in place for how to deal with problems that may arise. For example: Who is in charge when employees aren't getting along? To whom should an employee turn, when her manager is not listening to her? Often, the person trying to manage the situation is untrained to do so efficiently or effectively, wasting hours or weeks of work time. Harmony Strategies offers comprehensive conflict management systems design consulting, to assess the current situation, advise on opportunities for improvement, and training the right individuals to handle internal conflicts in the future.

Coaching & Consulting

Our coaching and consulting services target the specific needs of your company. Solutions include:

When handling diversity and inclusion, we can guide management in one-on-one discussions to assess the organizations needs and interests and address specific corporate challenges to embracing inclusiveness. We can provide one-on-one coaching to individuals, develop workshops for larger groups, and offer mediations to facilitate better discussions between specific parties who may be expressing insensitive or even unlawful sentiments and opinions.
Many corporate leaders have been promoted to management positions without honing their "soft-skills" to best motivate and inspire their teams or employs. We can conduct a strategic analysis of executive strengths and weaknesses and make targeted recommendations, accordingly. Likewise, we can coach managers having difficulty "relating" to their teams and help open the lines of communication for fewer misunderstandings and better group efficiency.

Sometimes groups develop bad habits. There are groups that implode with infighting and groups that work terribly inefficiently. Some members will rely on others to do the heavy-lifting, and over time this breeds ill-will and poor group morale. We offer group dynamics assessments to address where are the main pitfalls and then coach group leaders accordingly. Likewise, we can offer targeted analyses to review and revive the group culture, by strategically assessing individual players' strengths and weaknesses.

Developing new teams is a delicate and important step in many corporations and organizations. Individual personalities, strengths, and even hobbies can play a part in how the team performs. We can assist management in matching complementary skills and personality types, to bring out the best in each player and optimize team performance.
Invariably, we all have highs and lows in our professional careers. When we face dry spells and boredom, it can affect the overall company morale, by triggering others in a downward spiral. With a combination of individual executive coaching and retreat workshops, we can help develop ways to address burnout and low-morale and bring the company to greater heights by reviving individual motivation and inspiring employees.
Mindfulness at work creates a corporate culture of respect, compassion, healthy team dynamics, and high morale. Executives that lead with mindfulness benefit from higher productivity, greater employee dedication, and overall quality-of-life in the workplace. We offer mindfulness coaching for management, executives, administrators, and employees alike, and we consult on applying mindfulness practice during the workday.

We always include a free consultation to clarify client goals and develop action-plans to achieve them. These action-plan solutions may include: facilitations, focus group discussions, online or paper surveys, and dedicated conversations with leadership and management. Coaching may be one-on-one or small-group or team coaching for up to 8 individuals.

Mediation

Even the best corporations and well-run organizations experience dynamics-turbulence. We provide mediations for individuals and teams, where we guide parties to improved communication and better understanding. Through the mediation process, underlying attitudes, incidents, or work habits that are dragging down productivity can be appropriately aired and addressed, in a safe and confidential environment. Mediation brings grievances to light and helps parties develop solutions and strategies to handle the situation. Clients come away with a written agreement and/or strategic plan for how to move forward.

Note: We customize all solutions to meet individual client's needs. For more information and an overview of our services, visit our services page.