What will we learn?

We will:

• Learn to see the "dinner salon" as a significant tool that enables organizational and career objectives such as knowledge transfer, diversity & inclusion, change management, and the practice of interpersonal skills necessary for advancement. Hone your facilitation skills further, or design a low-stakes learning opportunity for junior staff you are mentoring to practice their skills.

• Examine assumptions that prevent valuable experimentation with informal learning conversations, including why and how the time of day, day of week, physical space, presence or absence of food, and introductory activity can affect outcomes as much as the presenter’s content.
• Develop confidence in our ability to design simple yet effective group experiences that promote boundary-spanning conversation, build trust, and facilitate learning. This will make us more valuable to the organization at the same time that it uncovers potential new career enhancement.

Presenter: Kitty Wooley

Kitty worked at the U.S. Department of Education for 19 years. Her first position involved moving from one side of the desk to the other – from college financial aid director to institutional review specialist in San Francisco. The first two years, she traveled as part of a West Coast team to ensure that millions of dollars intended to help students pay for college were being administered capably. Subsequent positions in Washington, DC involved data and risk management, project management, business intelligence and decision support, stakeholder outreach, translation of I.T. issues into plain language for nontechnical employees, reporting to Congress, OMB and OPM, staffing the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Performance Improvement, and creating flash mentoring experiences for interagency budget staff. She retired in 2013 to become her 90-year-old mother’s sidekick and caregiver in Colorado Springs.

Through the Senior Fellows and Friends network, Kitty created over 60 conversational containers that energized and encouraged capable federal employees to significantly enhance the scope and impact of their work by building collaborative networks across organizational boundaries. This work has been refocused to include everyone who seeks to cultivate organizational adaptability and resilience or harness untapped talent and capacity.

All-Inclusive members = FREE