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Upgrading Trust to Energize Collaboration
February 27, 2019
ICF-NM Program - North Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center, 7521 Carmel Ave NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87113 - 4:30pm-6:00pm

We’ve all experienced it: behavior that breaks trust. It stops us cold or burns us up. It feeds cynicism and defensiveness. Moving forward, an openness and creative willingness are lost. Collaboration suffers.

We know trust breakdowns in business and workplace settings are costly. Even with an espoused commitment to strengthening trust in leadership and professional relationships, we can be blind to the trust factor in persistent difficulties or "breakdowns."

What can be better than this?

We all want to work with leaders and teams with high, resilient levels of trust. As coaches, trust dynamics are at play for all of our core competencies: setting the foundation, co-creating the relationship, communicating effectively, and facilitating learning and results. The trouble is that, when challenged, cultivating trust can quickly take a back seat to other priorities. Then before you know it, relationships have soured and the environment is somehow toxic and people don’t know what to do to make it better.

Well-intentioned, capable people can get very cynical about "flavor of the month" and patterns that resist change, no matter what "how tos" you present. What can we do to restore trust, even in the face of enduring difficulty or difference? What does it mean for you to embody trust?

Join us to explore elements essential for upgrading and embodying trust. Together we’ll explore options for helping yourself and others "move the needle" where you now hit your limit. Join us as we get to the heart of being more of the change we wish to see in the world.

Presenter:
Beata Lewis, President of Bridging Lives LLC (www.BridgingLives.com), brings over 20 years experience providing guidance to accomplished business owners, senior leaders and knowledge professionals for transformational leadership, collaboration and sustainable growth. As an Executive Coach and Change Consultant – with a specialization as a Master Somatic Coach – Beata loves helping leaders committed to sustainable enterprise grow in their authentic leadership with greater presence and capacity for powerful, mutually enriching partnership. A mediator and former attorney, herself, Beata is an insightful ally when you need to co-create generative solutions in tough situations and challenging relationships – like swimming with "sharks" without becoming one.

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Succeeding Together: Conversations for Moving from Blocked to Brilliant
January 23, 2019
Santa Fe Business Incubator, Santa Fe, NM - Part of the Building the Business Different series

Where do you want to struggle less for better results as you lead your business and life this year? Whatever your answer is, you’ll find an essential key here. Whether you work alone or lead a team, your entrepreneurial success depends on the quality of your conversations. Our conversations ignite curiosity and passion, galvanize commitments, and coordinate skillful action. Indeed, practically everything happens through conversation. That includes, of course, the ways we experience being “blocked.” Stuck. Tangled. Derailed. With whom are you challenged to lead and co-create important outcomes under pressure, transform conflict and express your creative brilliance…together? Insights emerging from neuroscience reveal the power of conversational intelligence for succeeding together. Join us to explore ways to upgrade vital conversations where you are so you can feel the joy of moving from blocked to brilliant.

Presenter:
Beata Lewis, JD, MSC - For over 20 years as an Executive Coach, Beata has partnered with business owners and senior leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals for next-level leadership and collaborative excellence. Getting to the heart of what capable leaders struggle with, Beata’s clients transform and innovate from a new center of being. They transform conversations, clarify choices, and cultivate an embodied capacity for leading with powerful resonance, resilience and wellbeing. Beata’s clients are accomplished professionals in (1) STEAM-driven businesses (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics), (2) entrepreneurial businesses dedicated to sustainable enterprise (growing specialization with B-Corp leaders) and (3) personal transition, reorienting to create a new path or impact.


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Building Bias Awareness for Coaches
July 10, 2017
WBECS Social Impact Coaching Community of Practice Session

What helps shift our thinking and embodied practices related to bias, inclusion and diversity? This session continues a community inquiry for building a bias awareness tool for coaches who are members of this professional Community of Practice. How do we as coaches show up with the broadest, most helpful lens and presence for being more effective with these complex - and often conflicted - dynamics? How does our experience of and facility with bias, diversity and inclusion relate to core coaching competencies? Starting with the core biology of our social threat response, what choices do we have for bringing new qualities of self to conversations that make an empowering difference, both for our clients and ourselves?

Join us to for new or renewed appreciation for diverse frameworks that offer a bridge to deepening our understanding of and effectiveness with bias, diversity, and inclusion.


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Pitch-Perfect Presence
September 8, 2016
Optional BONUS SESSION for participants of
Fund & Fuel Your Dreams!

Meeting with potential investors has a lot in common with speed dating. You’re quickly sensing into what feels like a “fit” for further exploration and possible partnership.
What helps you bring your “best self” to these conversations so you stay focused, resourceful and effective under pressure?

You carry great power in your presence.

The presence you need for these essential conversations is a version of executive presence. It’s more than making a good first impression, having cogent content or being a knock-out presenter. Join us to explore three core practices that increase your capacity to engage with greater authority, authenticity, resilience and ease.

By your presence, you change how this game is played and open new possibilities for investing in the future you’re choosing to co-create.


Presenter:
Beata Lewis, owner of Bridging Lives, brings 20 years of experience providing guidance to accomplished business owners, senior leaders and knowledge professionals for transformational leadership, collaboration and sustainable growth. As an Executive Coach and Change Consultant - with a specialization as a Master Somatic Coach - Beata loves helping social venture entrepreneurs grow into their authentic leadership with greater presence and capacity for powerful, mutually enriching partnership. A mediator and former attorney, herself, she is an insightful ally when you need to co-create generative solutions in tough situations and challenging relationships – like swimming with “sharks” without becoming one. Beata has coached a wide variety of emerging entrepreneurs, including those with the Women’s Technology Cluster (now Astia), Stanford Graduate School of Business, and GreenMBA Program of Dominican University. In 2015 she coached a first-time CEO for her first-time TV presentation on ABC’s Shark Tank with the exceptional result of three “shark” investment offers.


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Upgrading Trust to Energize Collaboration
April 20, 2016
SF Bay Area ORSC Meeting, Albany, CA
(ORSC = Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching)

For all we know about trust work in systems, where do we still struggle to build and sustain trust?

The inclination to take risks and work creatively with others thrives on a dynamic foundation of trust. Indeed, we all want to be in work and family systems which have high, resilient levels of trust. The trouble is, cultivating trust can quickly take a back seat to other priorities. Then, before you know it, relationships have soured and the environment is somehow toxic.

Finding a way realistically to renew trust together - even in the face of persistent difference and difficulty - challenges the best of us.

Beata Lewis will bring her deep experience in all things trust to up-level our skill and discernment in working with trust dynamics. Join us to:
  • Identify 3 types of transactional trust that are central to healthy human relationships
  • Explore our own capacity to trust in an embodied and experiential fashion
  • Sense the distinction between skillfully containing distrust (sometimes a useful activity) and actually renewing trust

Beata Lewis, owner of Bridging Lives (www.BridgingLives.com), provides guidance for transformational leadership, collaboration and sustainable growth in business. As an Executive Coach and Change Consultant, Beata applies a systems-oriented, multi-disciplinary approach to leadership, group dynamics and sustainable enterprise. She brings nearly two decades’ experience specialized in trust, presence and communication dynamics working with highly accomplished professionals leading innovation, especially in science, technology and the arts. Certified through the Strozzi Institute since 2004 as a Master Somatic Coach, Beata takes an integrative and presence-centered approach to professional development. A mediator and former attorney, she leverages the vital and dynamic nature of agreements, ethics, and conflict for more creative and productive partnering. Multi-lingual and with overseas work experience, Beata seeks out the wisdom in diverse perspectives and across boundaries. An artist herself and former instructor of alpine skiing, Iyengar-style hatha yoga and piano, Beata teaches to inspire and share what she loves.


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Building and Nurturing the Right Team:
3 Critical Habits for Startup Leaders

March 23, 2016
SoCo Nexus - Toolkit Lunch Seminar, Sonoma, CA

Investors buy your team as much as they buy your idea or technology. This is true even before you have a team; it’s a question of engaging diverse perspectives, resources and skills for the long haul. Can you and your people fulfill on your promise?

Your capacity to build and nurture the “right” team distinguishes you and gives you staying power. But this can be a struggle, even for entrepreneurs with innate leadership talent. Leading in a “fishbowl" has unique challenges; for one, the impact of your behaviors is amplified.

With the best of intentions and with the best people, conflicts will arise. How you deal with those conflicts can alienate the very people you need and who would otherwise help you. We’ll zero in on three critical habits for overcoming blind spots in conversational intelligence. These habits help you tame the chaos of constantly retooling on the run. You increase the conversational agility essential for high-trust, high-performance engagement.

Beata Lewis, owner of Bridging Lives, provides guidance for transformational leadership, collaboration and sustainable growth to accomplished business owners, senior leaders and knowledge professionals. As an Executive Coach and Change Consultant - with experience as a mediator and former attorney - Beata helps entrepreneurs navigate and overcome human obstacles to making the difference that matters to them.


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Changing Our Minds About Conflict: The Power of Story to Empower Transformation
March 19, 2016
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
ADRNC 2016 Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA
Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California


What is the purpose – the real point – of our efforts to work more masterfully with conflict? If transformation is the point, then what will be different? What will be your part in that?

Something is moving our “story” of who we are and what we do with conflict in new directions. Why would we change our minds about conflict? Conflict “transformation” was hardly thinkable in the 1990s when ADR was first being promoted in the U.S. as a socially and economically viable alternative to litigation. The language and practices of “win-win” negotiation and mediation wove into our legal, business and political cultures…our culture at large. Parties to all kinds of disputes continue to gear up for “war” but also can legitimately opt for co-creating a mutually live-able future. An essential shift was in the locus of decision-making control and enforcement. People could create solutions to meet actual needs, not just accept given legal remedies. What more do we need?

What is happening now in our “conflict culture” that demands another shift?

The very word “conflict” automatically conjures feelings and images of fear and loss for most people. What does transformation have to do with the creative side of conflict, with growth and what we embody?

We use story – our internal and external conversations – to name and interpret reality, express our thoughts and feelings, cultivate relationships and architect our future. Science is revealing new dimensions to the power of story: with story we literally change each other’s minds. There’s a pattern interrupt creating new, emotionally compelling connections. Where it matters, we’ll shift from “what’s in it for ME” to “what’s in it for WE.” What is your story about distinctions between conflict resolution and conflict transformation and why it matters?

Leveraging diverse perspectives and wisdom in the room, we’ll consider the “hero’s journey” and what’s at the heart of your quest for transformation. What is becoming possible for you that might be more satisfying, more sustainable, more enlivening, more…somehow better?


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Building Trust in the Wake of Destructive Behavior at Work
October 23, 2015
Host & Registration: Bay Area Society for Organizational Learning

We’ve all experienced it: behavior that breaks trust. It stops us cold or burns us up. It feeds cynicism and defensiveness. Moving forward, an openness and creative willingness are lost.

What makes rebuilding trust worth the trouble?

Let’s look at what restores and sustains collaboration and key relationships at work.

In theory, trust is the foundation for all creative collaboration; it is essential for conscious leadership and culture growth. In practice, our relationship to trust can be ambivalent, paradoxical and trying.

We know trust breakdowns in business and workplace settings are costly. But we can easily miss seeing that “breakdowns” are even about trust. Or we can be at a loss for what to do that would really help restore what matters.

Who do we become when creative tension or conflict arise? What can we do to restore trust, even in the face of enduring difficulty or difference? What skill and conscious choice are necessary for evolving our thought, language and action so we can be more at our best in necessary yet tough interactions?

In this experiential session we will take a mindful and honest look at trouble we have with trust. We’ll identify telltale signs for an undercurrent of trust erosion. We’ll reveal pitfalls of “blind” trust and explore useful distinctions of “transactional” trust. We’ll play with ways to redirect the energy so you can better rely on trust as the ground beneath your feet and move forward building what you’re really there for.

You will come away with a new sense of possibility and options for helping yourself and others “move the needle” where you now hit your limit. We’ll experiment together to sense deeper into what’s necessary for restoring trust in several situations:
  1. trust with others where you’re part of the breakdown,
  2. trust with others where you inherit a breakdown and
  3. trust in yourself.

As we call greater truth, wisdom and compassion into the workplace, our capacity to lead in trust must also evolve.
Join us as we get to the heart of being more of the change we wish to see in the world.


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Woman Alive! 5 Keys to Empowered Leadership without Burning Out

Please click image or title for more information about this interactive presentation.
More Ideas…
Collaboration: Communication, Conflict, Negotiation & Trust
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A QUESTION OF TRUST
Life Matters TV
Recorded 12/26/14
Special Guest: Beata Lewis

Communication: Building or Breaking Trust?
(Stanford GSB / Management Communication Program)
Core Reflections: Paying Attention to Trust
(Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern CA, 2004 Annual Conference)
Collaborative Leadership Skills
(Northern California Chapter-Association of Women In Science, 9th Annual Career Development Workshop)
emBODY-INg Conflict Transformation
(International Association of Facilitators, 6th and 7th Annual Conferences)
Fresh Perspectives for Everyday Negotiations
(Guidant Corporation – sponsored by SCORE; Intel Corporation)
Me, Ask for That!? Yeah, Right.
(Roche Molecular Diagnostics)
Negotiating as Women: Non-Traditional Settings & Successes
(German American Business Association - GABA - panel moderator)
Balancing Difference and Common Ground: Race and Ethnicity in Conflict
(“Creating Value Through Mediation” Conference sponsored by American Society of Professional Mediators, Sacramento Mediation Center, & McGeorge School of Law-ADR Student Forum)
Listening Beyond Culture
(“Creating Value Through Mediation” Conference, see above)
Business Growth: Tipping the Balance of Post-Deal Success
Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce - SACC - Stammtisch
Leadership: Choice, Change & Presence
Leadership: Living Your Core Ethic
(USF Guest Speaker / MBA Program)
Leadership: Directing the Human Capacity for Strategic Innovation
(San Francisco State University Guest Speaker / MBA Program)
Leaders Wanted!
(Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce)
Leading for a Change
(Association of Women in Science - AWIS - San Francisco Chapter)
Leadership for Life: Call for Wisdom & Partnering
(Women of Vision & Action - WOVA - Leadership Institute: Leading Without Limits)
Leadership Presence: Where Is Your Energy Going Now?
(San Francisco SIRENS)
Presence: Succeed by Putting Your Best Foot Forward
(PATCA dinner meeting)
Leadership: Women & Well-Being
Woman Alive!
(Silicon Valley Forum - Tech Women)
The Feminine Face of Leadership in Science: Do You Recognize Yourself?
(Association of Women in Science - AWIS - Palo Alto & East Bay Chapters)
Breakthrough Leadership
(UCSF)
Play Like a Woman, Win Like a Man
(San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Conference)
Can You Be Tough Enough?
(GROW Conference for Leading Women - Monterey Institute of International Studies)
Focus on Self for What’s Next
(NextKids Leadership event)
Lead. Collaborate. Grow. ... to Thrive!