Any organization could utilize this approach to help their talent feel valued and appreciated to work with their organization. HR teams could utilize this approach to implement it in their organization to attract and retain top talent. This prototype is to be used by those responsible for recruitment/retention of employees (e.g. HR). The intended outcome is for participants and their teammates to be able to answer the question:
“Why would a highly talented individual choose to work for us or choose to stay employed with us because they’re satisfied with the nature of work?”

Standardize A System for Onboarding of New PhD Students

The goal of this activity is to help university faculty consider learning problems students may have in their classes that they may not currently be aware of. After completing and reflecting upon this activity, faculty could apply this new insight into adapting their teaching, assessment, or feedback practices to address these newly discovered concerns. If necessary, they would have a better idea of what type of professional development they may need in order to help improve and adapt their teaching practices. This activity relies upon faculty participating in four exercises: 1) Perspective Taking, where faculty consider a situation in which they learned effectively and what that looked/felt like, followed by considering a learning situation that was difficult for them and how those experiences differed; 2) Ego Transcendence, in which faculty define how they developed their teaching practices and what feedback they have received on their teaching; 3) Reflection-in-action, in which they examine their implicit reactions to situations with students both in and out of the classroom and take note of those reactions; and 4) Real-Time Value-Behavior Alignment; where faculty examine their teaching philosophy statements and documented learning objectives (espoused theories) to see if their teaching practices (theories-in-use) match.

The goal of this activity is to help participants let go of their attachment to strategic paradigms and shed light on organizational weaknesses that are difficult to admit. The central process of this application includes imagining what it would be like to wear your rival organization’s hat. To do so, this approach has adapted psychological methods including (1) Perspective Taking by assuming the view of a successful competitor, (2) Presentational Knowing in the form of giving a speech about their success, (3) Improvisation in which participants engage with each speech, (4) Mindful Savoring Practice in which participants enjoy what it is ‘like’ to be successful, and (5) Generative Scribing that captures the flow and key strategies behind their success.

The underlying goal of this application is to shed light on the insidious nature of mission creep, by demonstrating in real-time how subconscious ego needs often derail the organizational strategy. The practical purpose of this activity is to develop common criteria for strategic initiatives and let go of activities that do not resemble the organization's mission. To do so, this approach has adapted psychological methods including (1) Spontaneous Activity in which participants engage in a rapid process of brain-dumping all strategic initiatives they can think of in the moment, (2) Implicit Association that forces an immediate choice between two strategic initiatives for greater value, (3) Decentering Mindfulness Practice that allows individuals to notice a variety of different thought patterns that made them chose initiatives that they felt a strong attachment to, (4) Storing Objects for Reflection by identifying which of these attachments showed up the most vividly for them, and (5) Rapid Prototyping a set of ‘mission-fit’ criteria or standards for assessing the value of all strategic initiatives.

The goal of this guided process is to reveal and transform the qualities of consciousness that participants associate with the different roles they play with stakeholders, including colleagues. At the close of this application, participants should be able to identify the limiting nature of their assumed professional identities and test new ways of relating. To do so, this approach has adapted variations of the following psychological methods, including (1) Jungian Imaginal Technique allows participants to visualizing numerous roles played at work where conflict is present, (2) Generative Metaphor that assigns a different metaphor that captures the essence of each of these conflicts, (3) Somatics Practices to identify how those conflicts are known in the body, (4) Reframing Experience by noting the qualities of consciousness between the different roles they play, and (5) Value-Behavior Alignment to identify the disconnect between espoused and values in use, followed by the development of a revised role and value-aligned behaviors that may be tested.