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Healthy Occupational Identity Management Skills for Victim Services Professionals
“The victim services field has over 30 years of collective experience to draw on as we define best practices guidelines. We have learned and will continue to learn from each other and most importantly from victims what works and what does not. Together we can identify best practices and support one another in building a network of effective, sustainable programs, integrated within our communities, which provide high-quality services to victims of crime.” –Office of Justice Programs Department of Public Safety 2011 Best Paractices Guidelines
Join the Minnesota Alliance on Crime for this new series, in which participants will learn how to develop healthy Occupational Identity (OI) skills for transforming organizational culture. This series will feature two tracks: one for leaders (Nov 2021 – Feb 2022) and one for anyone working in victim services (Feb – May 2022).
While some of these workshops may be over–we think that it is important for victim service professionals to have access and revisit the concepts over time.
Leadership Track
Leadership Skills for Occupational Identity Management and Organizational Culture Change
The leadership track is designed to provide leadership staff with an overview of leadership skills essential for OI management and organizational culture change. Trainings will focus on:
- 6 Core Skills of Leadership
- Formal Culture Development
- Informal Culture Development
- Sustainability for Leaders
Each month, we offer one webinar and one workshop to practice the skills described in the webinar. All events will be virtual. These sessions are best suited for leaders with a basic understanding of Organizational Identity 101 content.
Leadership Track Workshops & Webinars
Changing How We Talk: Practicing Communication Skills for OI-Informed Leaders
Description: In this applied workshop, participants can expect to come for an interactive experience and for deeper learning on the topics presented in the Six Core Skills webinar. Through modeling, group conversations, 1:1 practice, and more, every leader will have opportunities to refine their deep, active listening skills as well as their direct, ethical, and collaborative communication skills. Plan to walk away with new ideas, tools, or more practice to build your OI Informed leadership skills!
Learning Outcomes
- Strengthen listening practices through 30 minutes of applied practice
- Deepen strategies of direct, ethical, and collaborative communication through 30 minutes of applied practice
- Select 2-3 strategies, ideas, or practices to use in your daily work
Building the Structure of Sustainable Formal Organizational Culture Development for Healthy Occupational Identity Management
Description: Formal organizational culture isn’t about bowties and briefcases. Formal organizational culture is more about the written rules and documentation on how to be a successful employee in an agency. The 2ndof four sessions of the Cultivating Culture Change: Leadership Track, join Dr. Johnanna Ganz for this webinar that explores the role of formal organizational culture in developing long-term sustainability and healthy occupational identity management. Through the lens of leadership and focusing on the skills of mission and values alignment and inclusive systems thinking, we will discuss the heart of organizational culture, the core sources of formal culture, and review how to document and build lasting occupational identity management changes into the very fabric of your organization!
Learning Outcomes:
- Learn about formal organizational culture and review the primary sources
- Examine the relationships between individual OI management, leadership, and formal organizational culture
Articulate the specific steps and strategies needed to develop 2 of 6 leadership skills to support healthy OI in formal organizational culture.
New Ways to Do Familiar Work: Grounded and Informed Decision-Making Processes
Description: Many mission-driven agencies rely on top-down decision-making processes for many important decisions that directly impact the lives and occupational identity management for workers. Leaders using top-down processes often see staff resistance, confusion, or passive-aggressive behaviors. Yet, these actions stem from unmet needs that are normal within a mission-driven environment and within formal organizational hierarchies. Participants should come prepared to dive in-depth into the Grounded and Informed Decision-Making Process to practice their skills of power-sharing and leading familiar work in new ways that better address the occupational identity connection! This process serves to meet the needs of all impacted parties, work through typical channels of decision-making, and restructure decision making processes to be focused on making decisions through communal participation.
Learning Outcomes:
- Access and review the Grounded and Informed Decision-Making Process Tool
- Practice the OI informed leadership skills of Connection to Mission/Values and Inclusive Systems Thinking
Spend 45 minutes in applied practice using the process to guide group decisions
Weaving OI Management into Everyday Practices: Informal Organizational Culture for Leaders
Description: The everyday interactions of working in a mission-driven agency—from how you write emails to the emotions people express in the office—are shaped by the informal culture of your organization. Informal culture is a critical source of information about how, when, and why individuals manage their connections to their occupational identities. Join Dr. Johnanna Ganz for the 3rdwebinar in our series focused on supporting leaders working in the victim services field! This session will focus on the skills of coaching-based feedback and growing accountable relationships. How can you more effectively talk about hard, personal issues related to OI management in your agency or teams? Come to find out more about what it means to make OI management an everyday practice that lasts in your work and in your organization.
Learning Outcomes:
- Learn about informal organizational culture development and a few common pitfalls in OI management
- Define the relationships between individual OI management, leadership, and informal organizational culture
- Articulate the specific steps and strategies needed to develop 2 of 6 leadership skills to support healthy OI in informal organizational culture.
Building Stronger Relationships: Using Coaching-Based Feedback in Everyday OI Management
Description: Occupational Identity is a deeply personal, psychological, and emotional connection to our work. Many times, this means that mission-driven people may resist changes or input on their boundaries and habits, even if it is for the greater good of an organization. In this applied workshop, leaders should come prepared to dig deep into the skills of using coaching-based feedback to strengthen their informal culture around OI management. Participants will learn more about what makes coaching-based feedback an effective practice and spend time sharpening their skills with one another.
Learning Outcomes:
- Access and use the Facilitative and Exploratory Questions Tool
- Build additional knowledge of the tools and concepts to enhance participants’ OI management skills from themselves and others through coaching-based feedback
- Spend 45 minutes in applied practice and exercises to build tools of coaching-based feedback and accountable relationships
Cultivating the Change with the Language of Stress and Rest: Sustainability Through Organizational OI Management
Description: Working in victim services brings so much joy and many challenges in maintaining a healthy balance—this is especially true for leaders who often pick up the slack of services to care for other team members. Join us for the 4thand final webinar in the Cultivating Culture Change series where we will focus on building mutual definitions of chronic work stress, burnout, and what it means to work towards sustainable wellbeing through changing the patterns of OI management in agencies.
Learning Outcomes:
- Learn about the differences between acute and chronic work stress and burnout
- Define organizational practices of sustainability and wellbeing through organizational patterns of OI management
- Articulate specific strategies needed to bring together all 6 leadership skills to support healthy OI management in your organization
Walking the Talk: Practicing OI Management Conversations for Culture Change
Description: Cultivating culture change in the victim services field starts with the current generation of leaders, especially knowing how to have conversations about occupational identity (OI) management with peers and staff who report to you. This final workshop for leaders will focus on putting all the content and skills we have learned together through holding conversations about OI management with other participants. Participants will use the materials in the Supervisor’s Check-In Checklist in addition to previously used materials such as your leadership purpose statement. Come ready to put it all into action in a safe environment to build your own learning culture skills!
Learning Outcomes:
- Identify components of OI management conversations with staff members
- Use the 6 core skills to build OI management capacity for leaders
Spend 45 minutes in applied practice of OI management conversations for long-term sustainability.
Individual Track Upcoming Webinars & Workshops
The Individual Track is for any staff member, intern, volunteer, or board member looking to enhance their skills of effective occupational identity management.
Participants should have attended Dr. Ganz’s prior sessions on Occupational Identity management in victim services. For a quick refresher, please see: https://youtu.be/Qqtn76kdXyo
- Webinar 1: February 3, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Workshop 1: February 17, 12:00-1:30pm
- Webinar 2: March 3, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Workshop 2: March 17, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Webinar 3: April 14, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Workshop 3: April 28, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Webinar 4: May 5, 12:00-1:30 pm
- Workshop 4: May 19, 12:00-1:30 pm
Upcoming Individual Webinars & Workshops
Exploring Your Connection: Practical Occupational Identity Management
Description: Our ideas, backgrounds, and experiences shape how and when we connect to our work. Our connection is even more strongly influenced through participating in mission driven fields, such as crime victim response and services. Join Dr. Johnanna Ganz for the 1stof 4 webinars on the topic of individual occupational identity management. This webinar will dive into the four core skills of occupational identity management and explores some of the roots of connection to your occupational identity. Participant will walk away with new ideas and places to increase their self-awareness around practical and sustainable patterns of occupational identity. This session is designed to pick up where the Occupational Identity foundational course offered through MAC’s Fundamentals of Victim Services leaves off.
Learning Outcomes:
- Name and describe the four core skills of healthy occupational identity management
- Build core knowledge of practical OI management strategies for victim services professionals
- Identify skills, strategies, or ideas that offer new ways of connecting to your work
Tools: Greatests Exercise
Building the Roots of Effective OI Management: Cultivating Self-Awareness About Your Work Self
Description: In this applied workshop, participants can expect to come for an interactive experience and for deeper learning on the skill of Self-Awareness for OI management. Through self-exploration exercises and group activities, every participant will have opportunities to build the basics of their self-awareness with areas to continue to grow. Plan to walk away with new ideas, tools, or more practice to build your OI management skills!
See webinar recording for preparation: FILL IN
Learning Outcomes
- Access and use the guided workbook to build your OI management skills and plan
- Strengthen self-awareness practices through 45 minutes of applied practice
- Select 2-3 strategies, ideas, or practices to use in your daily work
Must have watched/attended prior webinar for full participation.
Tools: Self-Check & exercises workbook
Building Foundations of OI: Emotional Literacy and the Mission Driven Environment
Description: Define and address what emotional literacy about OI means, pitfalls, and strategies to address. Create foundational information about how the mission-driven environment of victim services escalates our experiences and how to bring it back down
Tools: Boundaries, Habits, Supports Worksheet
Increasing Your Emotional Literacy and Establishing Clear Boundaries/Habits
Description: Focused on deep dive/practical application of what it means to set work boundaries and habits; building on foundations of OI management skills for long-term sustainability
Tools: Boundaries, Habits, Supports & exercises workbook
Accountability & Adaptability the Mission-Driven Environment
Accountability & Adaptability in the Mission-Driven Environment
Description: Define and address the skills of accountability and adaptability in OI management (pitfalls, strategies). Connect to roots of Strong OI and finding new ways to build on sense of self and activism
Tools: Donut Sort (COIN??) & worksheets
Managing Your Values-based Conflict When the Stakes Feel So High
Managing Your Values-based Conflict When the Stakes Feel So High (personal vs. Org. or personal vs. personal)
Description: Strategies of containment, practices of accountability for outcomes and adaptability when the environment sucks. Ways to ground conversations that include differences in values about the work as a core component to manage OI in mission-driven environment
Donut Sort, COIN Feedback Method
Building the Tools to Sustain: Chronic Work Stress, Burnout, and Moving Towards Wellbeing
Building the Tools to Sustain: Chronic Work Stress, Burnout, and Moving Towards Wellbeing
Description: Describe/define chronic work stress, burnout, and wellbeing. Review all 6 areas of wellbeing and map to wellbeing guide & OI management work
Tools: Wellbeing Guide
Workshop 4: May TBD
Building Your Personal Change Map: OI Management for Career Sustainability
Description: Understand the Wellbeing guide, engage in change immunity mapping exercises to discover the roots of emotional commitments to professional ideas
Tools: Wellbeing Guide