As many of my readers know, I frequently facilitate workshops that deal with psychological trauma -- personal trauma, the trauma of addictions, vicarious trauma, cultural trauma, and so on. I’ve created a resource package that provides much of the information I cover in these workshops. The package is available here (attached, as pdf, to the bottom of this post).

Here’s a preview of the items in the resource package:

Lately I’ve been doing a fair bit of training for corporate supervisors in team building, conflict resolution, communication skills, and so on. On the one hand, corporate folks are refreshingly open to new ideas from psychology and sociology. Generally they have no knowledge of the ideas and approaches that underlie much of the other work that I do, and in a sense they possess that elusive Zen quotient known as the beginner’s mind.

Recently, I’ve been facilitating a number of workshops — in the corporate, educational, and social services arenas — for teams of managers and colleagues trying to develop more effective ways of working together. All good working teams share commonalities of behavior and habit. A few are listed below, as suggestions for the evolving team:

Meet Every Day

Many working teams in both the corporate and social services fields spend time and money on so-called bonding activities (such as whitewater rafting) designed to help people become more familiar with each other. Almost universally, such practices do not work: they are superficial, brief, and contrived. Conversely, effective team integration derives from the same kinds of experiences as those that contribute to good family and community relationships: time spent together every day. Ideally, the team should meet at the beginning of every day for a meeting of about fifteen minutes. This is a time to hear about personal or professional items that may impact upon the day, to hear how people are doing generally, and simply to chat. It is extraordinarily difficult for a team to work well if a daily meeting is not held.

As I’ve been working on the new book, I’ve been making little notes about approaches to recovery and healing: for parents, siblings, spouses. Here are a few:

The various tricks, systems and strategies all distil down to one thing: focus on yourself. You cannot change the habits or behavior of anyone else. If you are a professional counselor or social service worker, focus on empathy and clarity. Understand that the various recovery strategies for substance use (motivational interviewing, medications, cognitive behavioral treatment) are simply means of making contact, nothing more.

Strategies for Education and Facilitation

Teaching (in its various forms) is one of the most influential roles in society. After parenting, it is perhaps the most crucial, for all ages. And yet, teaching — whether to children or adults — is a profession in which few practitioners have any substantial training. Some instructors have certificates or degrees in teaching, but there’s so much to know about the subject that most good instructors pick up their best skills after training, in the field, thinking on their feet and trying to keep learners awake.

In an age of plastics and composites, wood has not surrendered its claim on the mariner. The color and texture of grain, the particular warmth of wood in the sun, the way a teak gunwale is shaped precisely to meet the grasping hand:these qualities of wood embody the romance of the sea. But unlike our nautical forebears, who were intimately acquainted with the properties of spruce and cedar and teak and jarrah, many mariners of today are not familiar with the proper means of selecting woods for marine use. In this two-part series, we’ll explore a straightforward procedure for choosing, installing, and finishing wood. In this issue, we’ll begin on the boat, with the challenge of wood selection.

They were led, one at a time, from the smoky dark of the hold and up the narrow companionway. Each man was flanked by a crew-member who spoke in clipped and rushing tones. The ship was quiet, the sails slack.The men in the hold waited, unsure of what was happening. Dread spread among them. They did not speak the language of the crew, though they understood perfectly the gestures of the guns.

More than two dozen men climbed from the hold into the bright day. The glassy surface of the sea stretched to the horizon on one side, and on the other they saw their destination: hills rising from a rocky shore, a forest tinged with the sea’s blue, white-flecked mountains to the north. Golden Mountain.

Geek: a person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
(The Jargon File)

I prepare the altar in the quiet of early morning, before my day becomes cluttered with tasks and appointments and obligations. I lay aside my cup of ginger tea, adjust my posture on the polished walnut seat, and clear away the accumulated detritus of yesterday. With the heel of my hand I sweep dust from the base of the lamp. I reposition an errant cord and wipe a smudge from the screen. I reach forward, in the attitude of supplication and expectation shared by devotees the world over, and gently grasp the hand of the oracle.