TRAINING & CONSULTING
"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”
―Malala Yousafzai
HOW CAN TAPROOT JOURNEYS HELP MY ORGANIZATION GROW?
A taproot is a primary root that grows vertically downward and gives off smaller lateral roots. It is the central element or position in a line of growth or development. Taproot Journeys offers you opportunities to explore how your taproot has been nurtured or neglected, and how you can grow stronger based on what you want to harvest in your business, your personal life, career, and so forth. In fact, we see these as interconnected.
Teaching communication courses for 22 years has given me a strong skill set to offer progressive organizations who want to be cutting edge. Imagine how much your company could grow if you showed your employees you understand that their business life integrates with their personal, spiritual, and community lives. Cultivation of a strong taproot must include a culture that is rich with employee diversity and appreciation. When we incorporate an integrated approach to our work-life our success can only grow.
At Taproot Journeys we follow “The Circle Way — taking a seat to take a stand.” Circle has been a part of humanity for centuries. It seems like such a simple practice yet it is so powerful to actually face each other as we shape our goals. Circle is a gift we appreciate for enriching most every environment where we thrive. The simple choice to sit in circle increases our capacity for generative creativity and human connection.
My training structure creates a positive learning environment that is one of diverse and free expression where the greatest numbers of voices are heard. As a trainer, I choose materials and activities that utilize strategies to engage, listen, and empower. I approach my trainings collaboratively. This approach highlights the reciprocity between myself as the trainer and the employee as the learner. Collaboration allows employees to share and learn from their experiences and challenges.
Creating a plan for your organization that works to engage, listen, and empower helps us achieve objectives that work to understand and explore power in organizations, ideology construction, hegemony, knowledge construction, socioeconomic class, cultural politics, privilege, and emancipatory action/resistance. You are probably thinking “this has nothing to do with my business/organization” or “I don’t even know that word.” If you are thinking either of these please schedule a free 20-minute call with me and I will tell you why it affects you and what that word means.
"The full and complete development of the world and the cause of peace requires the maximum participation of women as well as men in all fields." ―United Nations Declaration on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
A NOTE ON LANGUAGE
Taproot Journeys can teach you how to have a difficult conversation in a safe space, putting you a cut above as a successful company that takes diversity seriously for the health and wealth of all concerned. One key beginning step to constructing positive work environments is through our use of language.
When you work with Taproot Journeys, you get a seasoned communication specialist who understands the importance and power of language to shape reality. Human language is symbolic. The letters we use are symbols making words and our words name our experiences, shape attitudes, and define identities, ideas, events, places, and things. In this way, the meanings we understand as a society are in people, not the words. Language is powerful because it helps create the world around us. It constructs or constitutes the world. This seems like it would be straightforward but language is also arbitrary, ambiguous, and abstract causing us to misunderstand each other in a variety of contexts. Our language symbols are far from neutral. They are, in fact, laden with values. Sometimes this can stress a workplace.
Taproot Journeys can help your staff understand the impact of microaggressions on morale. We can help you understand how subtle sexism happens and impacts your perceived work ethics causing suffering for your employees. We can create focused trainings that help you unlearn what has been seen as commonplace in a pre-MeToo era. The world of the future is the youth and they will not accept anything but diverse work environments that create organizational culture and corporate ritual that works to help employees thrive in all ways.
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what
kind of difference you want to make.” ―Jane Goodall
TRAINING TOPICS
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The Power of Language to Shape Reality
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Communication Basics or I thought I knew that but I didn't
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Communication with Integrity or Interpersonal 101
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Defining Authentic Safe Spaces
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PC Language unpacked
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Explaining and Understanding White Privilege
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Standpoint theory and Avoiding Spotlighting
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Womyn’s leadership
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Understanding Organizational Culture 101
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Understanding Gender and Organizational Culture 101
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Perception and the Workplace
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Self-Care and Empowerment in the Workplace
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Feminism 101 or Learning to Change Behaviors in a Me-Too Era
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Understanding the “F-Word” (Feminism Unpacked)
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Ecofeminsm as Sustainability Training
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Internatural Communication 101
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Coping with Environmental Fatigue and Other Survival Strategies
SAMPLE TAPROOT SERIES
FOR ORGANIZATIONS, COMMUNITY GROUPS, OR INDIVIDUALS
Taproot Journeys will work with you to customize this series for the unique needs and harvest outcomes you desire. Below is a “skeletal” outline.
1) Exploring your Taproot
I would like you to image a tree that is dead but still standing. This tree still serves a purpose for other living things to have a home, for birds to land on, for bugs to live in and so forth. But how did it die? Perhaps there was a block with the tree’s taproot. Sometimes in our everyday and work-life we can become like this tree, like the walking dead. We need to explore what makes up our taproot in order to know how to open up to new opportunities. What feeds your taproot?
2) Opening your Taproot
This part of the series asks you to open up to possibility and change in order to strengthen and grow your taproot.
3) Strengthening your Taproot
Now that you have explored what makes up your taproot, we look at what you need to strengthen your taproot. A deep taproot allows you to hold strong and even flourish in hard times.
Taproot Journeys also offers one-on-one “Stand in Your Power” consulting chats related to professional or spiritual goals. These can be done face-to-face or electronically. Contact me for more information.