YPO / WPO Forum Trainings

Forum Moderator / Officer Workshops

Structured as either a half-day or full-day session, these workshops help chapter forum officers or regional forum champions strengthen and expand the skill sets of their forum moderators.

Objectives / Take Home Value

• Tools for addressing the ugly, often unspoken, conflicts within a forum or among members of the forum.
• Tools, exercises and coaching for addressing and resolving the more difficult issues and relationships of struggling forums.
• Tools, exercises and coaching for helping high-functioning forums get to deep or taboo topics / issues, including: Power, money, sex, fragile marriages, death, anger, fear, grief, loneliness, spirituality.

Time Required

• A minimum of three (ideally, seven) hours is allotted for the workshop. The half-day version can be coupled with other education programs offered by Jim to the chapter or individual forums.

Target Audience

• Chapter forum officers in a region ... or ...
• Moderators (member and spouse) in a chapter.

Summary

• Prior to the workshop each participant completes a customized, two-page checklist on the most pressing issues within his / her chapter (forum officers) or individual forum (moderators)
• At the workshop we invest our time together in a blend of:



• Addressing the most prevalent / pressing issues brought up in the checklist,
• Actually doing some deeper, experiential exercises (abridged versions) that can be used immediately within forums,
• Free-flowing Q&A.


• Typical issues (from past workshops) include:



• Meeting venue musts and wants; tips and traps
• Guidelines / norms for meetings and retreats
• Tools and exercises for creating safety at meetings and retreats
• Conflict within the forum (spoken or unspoken); Personal conflicts among members; hidden agendas; business conflicts
• Flat, stagnant, stale, shallow, boring forums; how to jump-start these forums
• Weak moderator
• Techniques for new moderator selection
• Mixed gender forums
• The chapter member that no forum wants
• Forum saboteurs, including: dominant members, brash behavior, inappropriate humor
• Dysfunctional member(s) (e.g., addictions, immature behavior, dangerous behavior)
• Breaches of confidentiality (alleged, confirmed)
• Handling emotional outbursts
• Asking a member to leave the forum
• Cliques, pecking order, widely varying net worth among members, other inequalities
• Fast integration of new members into a forum
• Honoring exiting members (e.g., 49ers, members who no longer qualify)
• Reluctance to share personal, delicate, deep issues with the forum
• Exercises to stretch, but not break, the group
• Exercises that force members to take a position
• Delving into taboo topics
• Use of ritual (music, iconography, other)
• Attendance, punctuality, norms, rules, covenants: The law approach (more structure); the grace approach (loosen up, let things flow)
• Key success factors for retreats
• Advanced retreat tools and exercises
• "Any time" questions to use in a forum meeting - when all else fails

to schedule a Forum Moderator / Officer Workshop for your chapter or region.

Advanced Forum Training - Mastering Relationships

This experiential training offers potent tools for forum moderators and YPO members and spouses to realize authenticity and deepen intimacy with their forums, spouses, children, extended families and work teams. Structured as a one-day training intensive, participants create a confidential, forum-like environment for breaking through relational bottlenecks, and restoring or igniting honest, productive, caring communications.

Mastering Relationships is a blend of proven communication models and experiential learning. The training is built upon Jim Warner's experience leading both forum retreats and the popular Navigating Midlife Transitions seminar. Mastering Relationships is ideal for forum moderators seeking advanced tools for taking their forums to deeper, more truthful levels, and any YPO members and their spouses desiring a transformation in their personal and vocational relationships. Mastering Relationships is also ideal for individual forums who wish to be trained as a unit.

Typical Relationship Issues of Participants

• Shallow, guarded relationships that inhibit truth and intimacy
• Hidden agendas and facades which gridlock communication and stall growth
• Little knowledge of the backgrounds of others so you never know where the other person is coming from
• Politeness over honesty so groups never get to the root issues
• Patterns of concealing, complaining and controlling
• Constant friction among team members drains the energy of the entire group.

Take Home Value

• Proven techniques for creating safety, clearing issues, cutting through fluff, addressing conflict and holding emotions
• Immediate applicability in forums, work teams and marriages
• Tools to take personal and forum relationships to deeper, more intimate levels
• Greater awareness of the underlying dynamics of small groups
Predicting, facing and navigating through resistance to change
• Tools for dealing with chaotic or dysfunctional relationships
• A new paradigm for member breakthroughs during presentations at forum meetings
• "Fast feedback" tools for measurable goal-setting and accountability (ideal for forum environments and work teams)
• A wealth of self-awareness exercises for your forum or work team.

to schedule a Mastering Relationships Training for your forum, chapter or region.