How do we design workshops for sustainability professionals that support the shift form business-as-usual to regenerative business practices?

The standard resilience and change management workshops are boring. There, I said it. More importantly, standard resilience workshops are not fit for purpose to move our way of thinking beyond business-as-usual to foster regenerative business practices.

Building resilience and adapting effective change management strategies have long been staples in employee development and organisational design practices. The nature of doing business - any kind of business - in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, requires employees to constantly navigate changing roles, responsibilities, stakeholder expectations and their own role and power in this game. On an organisational level, flexibility and adaptability are key to navigate quickly changing global markets. Building the capacity in employees to navigate these realities and complexities with confidence and without loosing momentum, are key to the wider business success.

Why Resilience Matters in Sustainability and Regeneration

Organisations in the climate and sustainability space are dealing with an additional layer of complexity. Not only do sustainability professionals face the same challenges as traditional companies, they are dealing with an extra set of realities that impact psychological and emotional wellbeing. Working in climate-focused organisations requires impact professionals to build the capacity of thinking differently.

When you work in impact, it’s not enough to be comfortable with change. You need to be comfortable to be the change.

Thinking outside the box is not just a nice to have, it is at the core of change management for sustainability organisations. Doing this work while also navigating the uncertainty, anxiety and urgency of climate change, makes resilience the most important skill to cultivate when working on climate.

Nature as a Model for Organisational Growth and Adaptation

In the business-as-usual word, every problem is analysed based on the belief that we can invent ourselves out of any crisis towards a solution. Business-as-usual notoriously ignores any non-human influence on organisational realities, acting as if humans act in isolation and distant from the rest of this magnificent living planet.

What happens if we consider nature as a model for organisational and human change management processes?

Think Like A Tree is a change management workshop for small and large groups that invites the wisdom of our more-than-human kin, deep time thinking and systemic perspectives to rethink resilience.

The Cyclical Life of a Tree as a Model for Organisational Resilience

Nature is doing that thing we call change since the beginning of time. One of the most impressive living examples are trees. Trees developed on Earth approximately 350 million years ago! I can’t even fathom that timescale! I have become fascinated particularly with older trees that are scattered around the globe. One of such trees grows in the Piemont Forest in France. It’s an Old Oak and believed to be 850 years old. Imagine the things it has witnessed in it’s lifetime. Imagine the stories it can tell from people and animals walking by, finding shelter in its branches, or gathering together at it’s trunk.

Using the seasons as a framework, we can relearn and reimagine how organisations navigate growth, adaptation, and change. Rather than chasing linear, endless growth, the seasonal model reminds us of the natural process of growth, decay and rest, an essential rhythm of sustainable life.

Each season reflects a stage in the organisational journey.

Spring: Planting New Seeds of Innovation

Spring symbolises renewal and fresh ideas. This is when we focus on ideation, nurturing creativity, and initiating new projects. It’s a time for brainstorming and exploring new strategies, much like a tree puts forth new buds after a dormant period.

Key questions to tap into the spring energy:

What new opportunities or innovations can we cultivate?
How do we ensure the soil, made of our mission, values, and culture, is fertile for growth?

Summer: Sustaining Growth and Building Strength

Summer is a period of flourishing and nurturing ongoing efforts. It represents stability, consistent energy, and tending to the "branches" of projects to ensure they are thriving. Collaboration and team building are critical, as is addressing any challenges that arise to maintain healthy growth.

Key questions to invite summer into your reflection:

How do we sustain momentum and energy in our initiatives?
What resources or support systems are needed to keep operations vibrant?

Autumn: Harvesting and Reflecting on Outcomes

Autumn is the time for reflection, celebrating successes, and learning from failures. Just as trees shed their leaves to conserve energy, organizations should focus on letting go of what no longer serves them, whether it's outdated processes or unproductive strategies.

Key questions to bring autumn inspiration to your change management process:

What have we learned from this cycle?
What do we need to let go of to prepare for the next phase?

Winter: Rest, Regeneration, and Strategic Planning

Winter is often perceived as dormant, but it’s a vital period of rest and preparation. This is the time to pause, reassess, and lay the groundwork for future growth. Just as the roots of a tree deepen during winter, we can use the season of winter to strengthen our foundational systems and strategies.

Key questions to invoke the reflexivity and slowness of winter:

What can we compost to ensure healthy renewal come spring?
What long-term goals should we plan for in the coming cycle?

This seasonal metaphor not only provides a natural framework for re-designing growth and productivity, but also emphasises the cyclical nature of change, encouraging teams to embrace each phase with purpose and intentionality.

Core Elements of a Resilience and Change Management Workshop

With nature now an active partner in our reflective process, what does makes a resilience workshop most effective? I draw from a range of practices and frameworks to create learning-rich group workshops that work in-person and online. I have found that combining human psychology with innovate learning methods works best when you want your teams not only to learn, but also connect to each other on a deeper level to foster engagement and collaboration.

Positive Psychology in Resilience Workshop Design

As a Positive Psychologist there is one question at the heart of everything I do: how can we design workplaces that ensure human and planetary flourishing? And we can learn so much from the science of Positive Psychology!

• Strengths-based approaches to work: Working from strengths, rather than fixing weaknesses, never fails to empower, build instant confidence and get the room smiling.

• Appreciative Inquiry: This is a style of inquiry that ties into the above, with the idea to learn from positive experiences, eliciting wisdom from moments when we are at our best and to use a language that is compassion focused.

• Mental and Emotional Fitness: Wellbeing is more than the sum of its parts. In the organisational context, wellbeing considers emotions, relationships, meaning, accomplishment and relationships.

Incorporating positive psychology strategies into team workshops is a great way to create psychological safety and sets the stage for in-workshop innovation and authentic collaboration.

Theory U in Workshop Facilitation

Theory U is a change management framework developed by Otto Scharmer (watch a video where he explains the theory with all its stages). It incorporates embodiment practices in its first to stages of sensing and presencing as a model to invite perspectives and creativity into a co-created space that allows participants to design transformative solutions.

• Sensing as a creative tool in workshops: inviting all senses to activate, giving space and movement to participants is an effective technique to tap into more than just our rational mind

• Presencing as a skill for deep collaboration: a reminder that our most important skill is active listening and observing our own dialogue to unpack complexity

• Co-Creating and Prototyping: What I love most about Theory U is the prototyping phase, ensuring that a good ideation and brainstorming session encourages a concrete model, or prototype, of how we put transformative ideas into practice in the real world.

Deep Time Thinking as a Change Management Tool

The timeframe of humanity on this planet is rather small compared to the time Earth has been alive in this universe. Deep time is a concept that is often hard to fathom and can be best experienced through facilitated time walks, connecting with objects from the natural world that can tell stories from many lifetimes ago. The Deep Time Walk is a great way to experiment with deep time by literally walking through Earth’s history. I bring deep time thinking into my workshops through guided visualisations, sensing activities and having natural objects scattered around the room.

Systems Thinking to Build Resilience

Systems thinking is often labelled as the skill of the future. It is more than that. It is the skill that allows us to understand complexities in the here and now, so that we can start envision regenerative futures with a holistic view on dependencies, interconnections and levers of influence. Our predominant mode of working happens in four walls, looking into a screen most of the day. We are working in a way that excludes most of what we call life. That happens on an individual level, where we often feel that we need to leave parts of ourselves at home, bringing a work persona to work, that is mainly operating from the head, the rational mind. Businesses, while aware of systemic complexities, still mainly operate from a rather human-centred view, KPIs only defined with and by human standards. How does your organisation look like when we really think in systems?

Nature Connection as the New Default in Interactive Climate Workshops

All of these approaches invite us to expand our often narrow view to include all our senses, our feelings in the body, the systems we are part of and remind us of considering time on a larger timescale. All of these approaches can be elevated by consciously and purposefully invite nature into our thinking and how we do business. I see it as part of my role as a facilitator, to give nature a voice and an active part in our explorations. This works in windowless conference rooms and large virtual meetings alike. Nature connection is the default in my work and I invite you to experiment with this too.

Groups that Benefit from this Workshop:

• Sustainability teams in corporate organisations

• Organisations focusing on impact, social justice and humanitarian projects

• Organisations who are going through an organisational change management process

• Teams with challenges around engagement, burnout and motivation

The workshop takes 90 minutes, can be done in person or online and works for group sizes from 8 to 100+ participants, making it an ideal candidate for team development workshops, large group conference workshops and organisational initiatives to foster resilience and connection.

Are You Ready to Think Like A Tree?

Gift your employees a workshop that connects! I love facilitating innovative workshops for small and large groups. Book me as your workshop facilitator online or in person for conferences, team meetings, community gatherings or incubator programmes.

• Book me for a 90-minute interactive Think Like A Tree session!

• Do you want something more bespoke? Let’s design a learning initiative for your team matched to your organisational goals and current lifestage.

• Your employees need more personal support? Book me for 1:1 employee coaching as part of your wider L&D strategy.

Have a look at my workshop and coaching portfolio and book a time in my calendar to discuss: