TRAINING & CERTIFICATIONS
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Foundation Certificate November 2012
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a collaborative, strength-based approach to both personal and organizational development.
The underlying assumption of appreciative inquiry is that people and organizations are full of assets, capabilities, resources, and strengths that can be located, affirmed, leveraged and encouraged.
While AI is very effective in facilitating change at the individual and small group level, AI is particularly useful in complex environments and situations with culture transformation, restructuring, mergers, acquisitions, program formulation and evaluation, strategic planning and for relational processes such as management relationship, team building, conflict and capacity building.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner Certificate February 2013
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a holistic, solution-focused approach to communication and personal development. NLP describes the fundamental dynamics between how we think (Neuro), how we communicate with and without words (Linguistic), as well as the patterns of our behavior and emotions (Programming).
NLP is generative, moving from the present towards the future to help you change the patterns of your thinking and behavior. It gives you a conscious choice over what you do, and the way you act, increasing your ability to reach your objectives.
greytogreen Facilitator Training February 2014
greytogreen supports organizations of all sizes in improving creativity, collaboration, and productivity. It is particularly effective within knowledge-intensive firms as well as any organization looking to encourage more flexible, agile work environments where everyone’s opinion is heard, and where employee-led initiatives are supported.
greytogreen can be used alone or as a catalyst to prepare for and improve the effectiveness of larger organizational development or change initiatives. Clients leverage this approach to:
- Bring teams together around a common set of goals, values, or vision
- Keep employees engaged in periods of change
- Improve collaboration within and across teams
greytogreen develops a participants' ability to consider alternative perspectives and co-create successful outcomes for themselves, their team and their organization.
It fosters authentic team dialogue and improve listening skills. It increases your self awareness and helps you gain a clearer sense of what truly motivates you.
greytogreen is based around two mutually reinforcing but independent one-day workshops - greytogreen CHOICES & RESULTS and greytogreen PURE MOTIVATION - and a series of complimentary modules and learning tools including such as Tranformational Leadership, Bringing spirit to the Team and Resolving Team Challenges.
Dynamic Facilitation Training
March 2015
Dynamic Facilitation is a distinctive and powerful approach to group facilitation, that can help groups arrive together at creative, practical, and elegant solutions.
It's especially valuable when people face important, complex, strategic, or seemingly impossible-to-solve issues, when there is conflict, or when people seek to build teamwork or community. It’s a way to encourge ongoing dialogue, systems understandings, trust, wisdom, and to generate the spirit of involvement.
Dynamic Facilitation fosters shifts of heart and mind by following the natural flow of conversation and supporting group spontaneity. Sometimes these shifts take the form of new ideas; other times they bring a new sense of what the “real problem” is; and other times there is a change of heart.
The approach welcomes divergence as well as any convergences that occur naturally as part of the creative process.
Gamestorming Training
April 2015
Gamestorming is a holistic collaborative approach that - in our increasingly fast-moving business environment - makes it possible for individuals, teams, partners, and customers to participate in creative and design-oriented activities.
Whether it’s planning a meeting, generating ideas, understanding customers, creating prototypes, or making better decisions, It's a way for groups to “work better together.”
-- Overcome conflict and increase engagement with team-oriented games.
-- Improve collaboration and communication in cross-disciplinary teams with visual-thinking techniques.
-- Increase understanding by role-playing customer and user experiences.
-- Simulate and explore complex systems, interactions, and dynamics.
-- Identify a problem's root cause, and find the paths that point toward a solution.
-- Encourage either divergent (opening) or convergent (closing) thinking.
Solution-Focused Thinking
Fall 2016 - Co-hosted a series of "Curious" lunches & workshops in Geneva, Swizerland.
Traditionally we approach problem solving by thoroughly analysing the problem before generating solutions. But what if we changed the focus of where we look: forwards, towards solutions, rather than backwards, by studying problems?
What if by focusing on strengths (rather than weaknesses) and on what’s going well (instead of what’s going wrong) we generate an extremely positive and pragmatic way of making progress?
Community Dialogue Training
February 2017
A community dialogue can be a strategic conversation with a few key people or a big gathering that involves many different people from a community. Facilitation approaches that support community dialogues and engage diverse audiences include:
- World Cafe: A simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. It is particularly effective in surfacing the collective wisdom of large groups of diverse people.
- Storysharing: Storysharing is a process where individuals bring their personal experiences in response to a research question or theme. Through stories, knowledge can be shared and strengthened, by helping others to understand complex issues that exist in a person’s life and community.
- Focus Groups: A focus group, or focus group interview, is a qualitative research tool often used in social research. The
goal of a focus group is to gain insight and understanding about a topic by hearing from people in-depth.
Entrepreneurial skills in action
greytogreen and other professional development workshops
June/July 2021. Co-facilitated online greytogreen CHOICES & RESULTS workshop as part of a three-phased program to create maximize synergies of a new organization composed of two BUs: new products, technologies, and processes to be understood following this merger. Objective was to provide an approach that ensures that the whole team works in a common way in line with the strategy, while taking into account their local specificities and strengths.
April - November 2019. HRBP Action Learning Initiative with coaching. Served as a strategic sounding board for the development/design of a 1/2-day "Co-Development HR Team workshop" facilitated by internal staff. Individual “at-a-distance” coaching sessions followed to address professional challenges, offer additional resources, as well as an outside perspective.
October 2016, October 2017. In support of the L³Alliance initiative for female managers and executives, facilitated greytogreen CHOICES & RESULTS as a key element of the Leadership through Enhanced Communication and Creativity (LCC) program. The aim was to provide participants with the tools to increase their ability to manage change and get the best from their team during those times in a cohesive and holistic manner.
November 2016 - March 2017. Designed and facilitated a competency development program for Human Resource Business Partners - "HRBP as an architect of change” - championing the role of HR as innovators, integrators, and capability builders. The program included two one-day workshops, one-to-one coaching sessions by phone, and a closing webinar. In July 2017 a follow-up “HRBP Coaching Passport” program was initiated.
April 2016 - September 2016. Facilitated greytogreen CHOICES & RESULTS for executive managers, team leads and Human Resource Business Partners as a catalyst and foundation for an organizational culture change initiative. As part if the initiative I developed a webinar exploring leadership and change, as well as provided transition coaching for managers.
Developmental coaching
From wide-ranging conversations with corporate executives, managers and team leads around professional development and relationship management issues, to in-depth discussions with individuals experiencing personal and career transition,
to addressing strained team dynamics and identifying root sources of conflict.
Over a large part of my professional career I have provided developmental coaching, both in informal and formal capacities. Learn more about the coaching services I offer. References are available upon request.
“I had chosen Naida to work with me because she is authentic and understands how to trigger a dialogue which brought me to more self awareness. As a result, I could translate my true competencies in a personalized yet professional way into my CV. I have felt respected and energized every step of the way, and got a lot of positive feedback on the contents and presentation of my CV. Thank you Naida."
A. McNamara, July 2016
Business skills training
Facilitation services
American School of Grenoble - Grenoble
January - March 2019. Facilitation of five workgroups supporting the development of stakeholder “Reflective Statements” as part of the CIS Preparatory Report for re-accreditation. Facilitation and report generation, as well as draft review was provided.
June 2017. Facilitation of a half-day strategic planning working session with members of the ASG Board, and representation from faculty and staff. The aim was to provide an opportunity to review, synthesize and prioritize key initiatives.
March - June 2015. In support of ASG's completion of the “Five Year Report on Progress and Planning" for the Council of International Schools, services throughout the project included process coaching (acting as a sounding board, identifying critical questions to ask, framing the issues, assisting in interpreting data), the identification of key stakeholder groups and the development/facilitation of five workgroup sessions.
For each 2-hour workgroup I helped define their related objectives, implemented the facilitation, and provided interpretation and reporting of the results. Various frameworks, tools and approaches were used.
Quai d’Orsay Language Center - Grenoble/Paris
October 2006 - August 2019.
Provided custom-designed sessions for IT Consultants, Project Managers, Executive Management, Human Resource, and Sales professionals. Support included one-to-one language training and facilitation of semi-intensive courses and small group workshops.
January 2014 - February 2020
In collaboration with the Career Center, I supported students entering into the workplace offering key document review and professional skills development programs. I participated in internal initiatives (Career Boot Camp, Flash CV Reviews, Mock Interviews) and developed/delivered customized workshops including - "Making it Real: Successful Interview Tips and Strategies," "Salary Negotiation," "Forward Thinking: Career Design Strategies" and "Building Your Career Confidence."
Offered additional workshops exploring wider subjects such as "Women at Work: Managing Your Career Readiness."
Grenoble Ecole de Management
Grenoble, Paris, Berlin/GISMA campuses
University lecturer
IAE Savoie Mont-Blanc - Chambery
November 2015 - April 2018; Spring 2020, 2021 & 2022
Serve as a part-time instructor delivering courses designed for Master level students in CITHEME (Centre International de Tourisme, Hôtellerie et Management des Événements). Courses feature lectures, class discussions and debates, videos, problem-based and/or project-organized assignments and case studies.
Heritage & interpretation (10hrs) - Spring 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
The course explores the power, responsibility, importance and challenges around heritage interpretation. Skills in verbal and written articulation of complicated forms of heritage; skills in explaining heritage to diverse publics and engaging diverse publics in heritage practices; and skills in verbal articulation, dialogue, and interaction are developed through class exchanges and various project assignments. Final project consists of developing an interpretive plan that addresses content, audience, and methods.
September 2017 - Present.
PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH - incorporate problem-based or project-focused group assignments, as well as case studies; employ differentiated instruction, with a balanced mix of teaching styles in the classroom; providing a wide range of at-home assignments for continued learning (reading, videos, exercises); encourage student-centered learning and open debate while remaining respectful of varying perspectives and points of view. Pedagogical Excellence Award: Academic year 2018/2019 and 2020/2021.
Courses for 2023 - 2024:
Bachelor Level - Leadership and team building for entrepreneurship (24hrs) for Programme Grande Ecole (PGE) 2A Alt Parcours Entrepreneuriat/Innover pour entreprendre; Innovation Week (24hrs) for PGE 2A English Track; Social Entrepreneurship and Ecosystem Engagement (9hrs) for PGE 3A specialization (Grenoble); Social Responsibility in International Business (two 3hr modules) + Intercultural Business Skills (15hrs x 2 groups) for Bachelor in International Business (Grenoble); Change Management (3hr module; 12hrs) for PGE 3A English track Company transformation specialization.
Electives offered for PGE 2A students (spring 2024) - The “Business” of NGOs and the Rise of Social Enterprises (24hrs), Relatives, Not Resources : Indigenous wisdom traditions' alternative "sustainability" (24hrs).
Master Level - "Managing Global Teams” for mixed MSc M1 students (15hrs); Strategic Transformations though HRBP (15hrs) for MSc International HR Management In the Digital Age (Grenoble); Managing Crisis Situations (15hrs) for MBA FT (Grenoble/Tbilisi, Georgia); Managerial Creativity for Business Development + Innovation, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship programs (15hrs combined class); Collaborative work and Project effectiveness (18hrs x 4 groups) for Advanced Master in Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Management (Paris); Responsible Leadership and Social Intrapreneurship (18hrs x 2) for Manager Spécialisé Management Technologique (Paris/Grenoble)
Grenoble Ecole de Management - Lecturer
Grenoble and Paris campuses
CIMPA - PLM Consulting & Services - Toulouse
May and June 2017. Co-facilitated several two-day “New Way” Manager workshops whose objective was to empower managers and key staff in adopting a style of management to enable them to better design their strategic projects, and more proactively support themselves and their teams. Offered feedback on the program flow during the last phases of internal development, provided on-site logistical support and delivery.
October 2016. Facilitated their Top 100 Managers two-day meeting. Designed interactive elements for Day Two including a BU Ateliers Actions & Commitments session (to encourage co-development and co-ownership of the strategies moving forward) and the Community “Best Practice” Working Session (cross-BU sharing of best practice, ideas, and experience).
The University of Law - Berlin/GISMA Campus (Spring Semester)
March 2018 & March 2019
Serve as a visiting lecturer: Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility (36hrs) for MSc Corporate Financial Management; Coaching & Mentoring (36hrs) for MSc Leadership and Human Resource Management. Courses featured lectures, class discussions, as well as case study analysis. Assessment includes group presentation and individual case analysis.
IAE Savoie Mont-Blanc - Annecy
March 2018, February 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
One-day workshop for Master Advanced Mechatronics students exploring the root of team dynamics and the varying degrees of collaboration, learn how to “lead from the middle,” increase “self” and "other" awareness, and discovering the important role of lleadership, ownership, and creating an "atmosphere of excellence."
BUSINESS SENSE TRAINING - facilitation, coaching, and business skills training
"The Sucessful Woman" L³Alliance conference - Paris
March 2019. In conjunction with International Women's Day, co-facilitated two "Mastermind" roundtable sessions at "The Sucessful Woman" L³Alliance one-day conference for female managers, business owners, and executives. Focus of the sessions - "Bringing Clarity to My Life" and "Creating Change."
January 2019 - present
Developed and deliver to Master level programs the "Creating an Atmosphere of Excellence" 2hr/3hr workshop whose aim is to explore the magic ingredients that support team success and uncover the things that get in the way of working well together.
L³Alliance - Feminine Mastermind Workhop Series
The Feminine Mastermind sessions focused on cultivating growth within the participants, in their professional and/or personal lives. Held online, each 3-hour session explored themed areas of inquiry featuring facilitated exercises, reflection and pair work. Topics included: June/October 2022 (Seeding + Sovereignty) and January/April 2023 (Abundance + Alignment).