(from 9am to 5pm Days 1, 2, 3)

Messaging for Change; Designing Integral Communications that Shift, Bridge and Focus Meaning for 21^st Century

 Audiences

The focus of this workshop will be on messaging, languaging and translating using Spiral Dynamics’ 4Quadrant / 8 Level lenses. 

The objective of this workshop is to develop approaches for effective messaging in an ever-changing world. It will help participants listen for what is important to others. It will enable them to hear what others say with an awareness of the physical, social, cultural and emotional contexts experienced by other people. It will provide a communications strategy to verify and validate what others say. The workshop will help participants learn how to craft messages that others will respond to naturally. It will create the space for participants to create presentations that connect with their audiences in a way that matters to them. It will give participants the opportunity to practise the skills of translating messages from one set of filters to another within a 4 Quadrant / 8 Level spectrum of languages. The workshop will help participants design messages that resonate with the audience’s experience of change.

10 Reasons You Should Attend 

1. Access new research on how to connect and communicate effectively with people
2. Refresh old messages by breaking open horizontal demographically focused communication strategies  
3. Gain energy, vision and connections thru learning values-based communication approaches
4. See the importance of Four Perspectives that show up in every language and that pull us together or push us apart
5. Learn how to target audience hot buttons by designing communications based on what’s important to them
6. Discover why the practise of observation is a vital communication skill
7. Learn how to add value to messages in an ever changing world
8. Give yourself practise space for trying out new communication skills
9. Enjoy a community of practise with other peers in the Spiral Dynamics Integral Age
10. Get coaching from skilled SDi communicators, change agents and writers

Who Should Attend?

Communicators, writers, teachers, professors, facilitators, psychologists, therapists, coaches, counselors, designers,  public relations specialists, marketers, sales people, executives, leaders, students, media, storytellers, government, NFP, private sector, authors, editors, publishers, dialoguers, deliberators, strategists

Participant Activities

Participants will be active in:

• Learning the basics of Natural Design so they can create messages that people hear through the filters of what is important to them
• Practising the fundamentals of communicating as Speaker, Listener, Observer so they can slow down the communication process and notice how it works
• Learning the 8 levels and 4 integral perspectives that the Observer can use to expand their integral communications options
• Mindmapping and creative writing processes that help users access untapped intelligences for discovery, planning and designing
• Practicum of creating messages for the invisible four (or more) audiences who are alive inside the visible audience
• Using a team to deepen learning and expand intelligences for bridging communications to a variety of cultures
• Creating a design team to collaborate on creating communications that speak effectively to/for/and with people
• Developing and designing presentations for conveying messages through the audience’s preferred gateways of learning
• Critiquing self and others for capacity development
• Discerning the differences between the designer’s multiple design intelligences (emotional, sensory and intellectual) and the audience’s multiple receptor intelligences: Learning why if it looks and sounds good to you don’t say it (that way)!!

Main Features

In this Spiral Dynamics integral training, participants will learn the Design Basics of communicating with Spiral Dynamic design principles. They will recognize the impact that life conditions have on designing effective communications and on receiving communications effectively.  Through narrative, image, poetry and song messages, participants will listen to memes, themes and stories that unfold as people make meaning on the different stages and throughout the different phases of life.

In interactive small groups, participants will experiment with discovering their own v-meme clusters, through assessments, mind-mapping and writing the natural way. 

The role of observer will be examined through eight communication lenses and participants will have the opportunity to assess themselves as communicators and audiences. 

Our Writer-in-Residence will share the story of writing up and down the spiral, as well as help us explore perspectives from the four quadrants wearing integral lenses. 

Dr. Hamilton’s research on integral connections, re-calibration and reflection will give participants new insights into gaining and maintaining audience attention. 

In practicums, participants will have the opportunity to create practical communications that can be used in a variety of circumstances: for different audiences; a variety of media; and a range of demographics. 

Communication coaching will support participants to discover how to effectively present content in presentations that relate to change states with a variety of  4Q8L audiences. Messages will be tailored to integrate the intelligences that appeal to emotional, sensory and cognitive ways of knowing. 

This highly interactive workshop will engage participants with individual, small group and large group work. They will have opportunities for self, peer and expert coaching to gain skills of creating and critiquing messages for communicating in a world of dynamically shifting values.
 

The course will include the following: 

ü  Designing Naturally

[In contrast to rigid, artificial, and one-size-fits-all communication models]

• The underlying principles and processes of “the natural.”  How to detect the ebb and flows, the unique patterns within the dispersal of information and energy unique to diverse environments.  How to detect the deepest vMemetic code within audience groups and in power centers. Ways to detect the “natural flow” within your organizational, culture or community contexts.
• The basic characteristics of “design.”  Forms, types, expressions, and manifestations of different types of designs from specific blueprints to linear sequences to simultaneous happenings to feedforward/feedback loops, and to fields of wisdom and knowledge that connect functions and people in holonic zones.
• An assortment of “Natural Design Messaging tools.”  +Deciphering vMemetic Codes   +Constructing vMemetic Maps +Elaborating  Quadrants  +Creating Integral Storyboards +Exploring Mindmaps   +Applying Templates   +Reading Expressions   +Assessing People

 ü  Messaging for Change

[In contrast to linear, technical, writing rulebooks] 

·         Conducting an Observational LandscapeSCAN.  How to scan the complexity of internal and external settings, to identify the dynamic patterns of vMemes at play and emerging in the human environment. 

·         Enabling Strategic Messages.  Using 4Q8L lenses to discern, create, explore and adapt messages for the 21^st century.  Formulate content, media, presentations.

·         From Story Board to Storytelling.  Developing a map to tell the story you want to convey. 

·         Checking the Change Landscape.  How to create messages that adapt to audience change states – helping them hear the message that fits naturally to their experience.

 ü  Communicating from the Second Tier

[In contrast to one-size-fits-all First Tier messages, stories, dramas, scenes] 

·         Basic Assumptions of Communications at the Second Tier: distinguishing characteristics

·         Archetypes and Expressions of First Tier Messages

·         Emerging Second Tier stories

 ü   Addressing Audience Diversity

[In contrast to black-and-white-washing audiences as all the same] 

• Crafting and adapting messages for different audiences in different places
• Designing messages that bridge cultures within the same audience
• Connecting:  memes across value systems; messages to be conveyed; motivations to be tapped; messengers to be enabled; media to be accessed; meshes to be woven; and meaning to be made.
• Essential components, characteristics, and dimensions of effective Spiral Communications: how these dynamics can be identified, designed, conveyed, implemented and critiqued.

ü   Integral Meaning Making   

The Meme-Lab: Where vMEME codes and Spiral Dynamics integral principles are translated collaboratively into effective communications, messages and stories 

• Integral Translation: How to deliver similar content in different ways to people with differing intentions, capacities, circumstances and expectations.
• Integral Communication: Learning how to speak the language of various vMEME codes in the design of messages, advertising efforts, and sophisticated public relations initiatives.
• Integral Activation: How to activate motivations based on multiple value systems, through appreciative inquiry, positive energies, possible futures, and natural motivational flow.
• Integral Marketing: How to align key decision-making motives of the customer, clients, stakeholder, shareholders, constituents to appeal and relate to their deep vMEME codes.