Using the Tools of Bridging

Using the Tools of Bridging to Improve Productivity and Retention

Work cultures have been shaken up in the last few years creating both challenges and opportunities. How do we work well in a culture with heightened differences? How do you design a great hybrid workplace? 

One key component is good communication and relationships. Living Room Conversations offers a set of conversation guides that leaders can use as part of building a strong culture of connection and engagement. Research has confirmed that these conversations improve mindset and listening skills both in person and by video.  

YOUnify designs custom interventions to reduce polarization and cultural divisions of all kinds in service of accelerating progress in problem solving throughout community life–whether in the halls of congress or in the halls of a corporation.

This 90 minute workshop will include an overview of how Living Room Conversations guides and YOUnify’s grassroots principles can be used within your organizational engagement strategy to improve both productivity and retention in work communities. 

Together we will select one conversation guide for a shortened small group conversation experience followed by Q and A. 

Conversation guides that build understanding and a shared sense of belonging in teams:

• Communicating with Care
• Listening Courageously
• Belonging 
• Trust 
• Respect 
• Kindness
• Healthy Conflict 
• Calling In & Calling Out  (We also have an excellent set of guides that are helpful for DEI efforts.)  

Living Room Conversations is an open-source project with over 160 conversation guides. These guides are customizable, enabling leaders to adjust them for the unique needs of the communities they serve. 

Joan Blades is a co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org an open-source effort to build respectful caring connections across ideological, cultural, and party lines while embracing our shared values. When we care about each other we work to find ways to meet each other’s core needs. She is also a co-founder of MomsRising.org  and MoveOn.org.   She is a co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace,  winner of a Nautilus book award in 2011, and The Motherhood Manifesto, which won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize in 2007. Last century Joan was a software entrepreneur, a co-founder of Berkeley Systems – best known for the flying toaster and game You Don’t Know Jack.  A mediator (attorney) by training and inclination, she is a nature lover, artist, and true believer in the power of individuals. We can honor the dignity of everyone and seek understanding even as we hold differing beliefs. 

Pedro Silva brings a wealth of cross-sector experience. A veteran of the United States Air Force, he has cultivated the capacity to think missionally and practically–strategically and tactically–on a wide variety of concerns. In his post military career, Pedro worked as a corporate recruiter for 8 years serving dozens of for-profit, not-for-profit, and B Corporations in the areas of technology, biotech, and more. This was followed by 10 years serving as a pastor in the socially active United Church of Christ, and 3 years serving as the State Representative for the Boulder Caucus of Together Colorado, an organization of the Faith In Action Network. In addition to these efforts, Pedro has hosted numerous in-person and online conversations with Living Room Conversations and delivered multiple trainings as Director of Engagement with YOUnify.