Essential to any workplace, but especially creative and passion-driven companies, is a robust culture of multi-directional, psychologically safe feedback. But feedback is so often fraught, avoided, or mishandled, especially when the issue or project at hand is subjective, personality-specific, or sensitive. Participants leave this workshop with models and recommendations for all types of feedback along with avenues to handle high-pressure or tense feedback interactions.

Establishes the integral role managers play in the employee life cycle not just ensuring direct reports get their jobs done, but can actually thrive and feel comfortable innovating and taking initiative. Takeaways include techniques to make the most of key touch-points, ways to inspire motivations, opportunities to show support, and pitfalls to avoid.

What makes your organization’s culture special and where is it falling short? How would you define it in 15 seconds to someone who was not familiar with it at all? Does what happen day-to-day match that description? In this highly interactive workshop, participants consider the ways their work culture should shift in order to reach a more ideal state. Through a variety of exercises and discussions, participants will leave with potential ways forward to bring that ideal state closer to reality.

In the race for AI integration at work coupled with polarizing perspectives on how it should be used (or if it should be used at all), many organizations have moved hastily past how its AI expectations connect to the company’s values and goals. How does its implementation affect the culture? Without considering and defining this framing, the way AI is used becomes siloed, inconsistent, inefficient, and could even be damaging to the company’s reputation. This session provides structure to align AI implementation with company culture and day-to-day operations and offers tactical recommendations for establishing concrete and realistic AI practice norms and policies.

Cultural humility goes beyond competency and awareness. It is a commitment to embracing differences while recognizing that one’s own perspective is not the central reference point, but one of many. This practice enriches workplace connection, understanding, and productivity. Participants learn to spot cultural defaults within their team and to deliberately engage with different points of view to foster more innovative, collaborative outcomes.

Human minds crave stories to understand, engage, and connect. This workshops offers employees the chance to exercise their ability to storytell within their work culture to achieve alignment and motivate action. The workshop defines the key pieces of a classic narrative arc and applies it to relevant workplace contexts with opportunities to practice new skills via case studies and/or participants’ own upcoming work. Whether its a presentation to senior leaders, a pitch to a client or partner, or a decision to move in a particular direction, being able to effectively and succinctly tell the story of why and how sets up the storyteller for success.

These workshops allow teams to gain greater awareness of a variety of social identities that often face discrimination or challenges at work. Through various discussions and scenarios, participants can better appreciate one another’s differences and root in common values that allow them to work better together even in complex situations. Identity topics covered can include LGBTQIA+, Jewish, Muslim, Anti-racism, Disability, and more. Workshops may include co-facilitation with partner expert organizations.

In today’s world it’s difficult to ignore sensitive external topics or issues that can significantly affect employee well-being and cause disagreement between employees depending on points of view. This session quells nerves around “saying the wrong thing” and offers systemic tactics for sensitive conversations and disagreements at work. The workshop employs various exercises and prompts to root in shared values and common purpose followed by models and best practices for broaching these issues. What results is not just a way to connect across difference, but more innovative ways to work together based in a deeper understanding of and respect for one another.

Employee leaders of ERGs and affinity groups rarely come into these roles with the same types or levels of experience of leadership. And leading these types of groups, even with other experience, is unique. This session offers new and experienced ERG/affinity group leaders tools, best practices, and frameworks to successfully manage their group and its dynamics as well as strategy skills to meet their group’s and the overall programs mission through impactful, feasible, resource-conscious planning.

The rhythm of work and life has never been more murky. With that reality, understanding the risks and flags of common mental health issues along with ways to mitigate them for yourself and others is essential to sustaining a healthy and productive work culture. This workshop explores the most ubiquitous mental health issues at work such as burnout, depression, anxiety, and loneliness with recommendations for managing these conditions and recognizing warning signs in others. These can be further tailored based on your specific company’s work culture and industry. The session also provides resources for further support if needed.

Through a prompt-driven narrative creation exercise, teams have the opportunity to share their own stories and discover unexpected connections with one another. The session provides the opportunity to use the classic narrative arc for empowering self-expression followed by active listening practice, reflection, and investigation of productive vulnerability at work.

Less formal than a workshop, these sessions are based on a particular issue or topic that would benefit from a structured discussion facilitated by an objective third party. Sessions can range from hot button issues in the world to particular crises or conflicts in the workplace. They offer employees a chance to share their own perspectives, actively listen, ask questions, and develop any pertinent next steps if needed. These sessions are not official mediation nor are they meant to replace HR conversations.

Many times after moving through a workshop, employees just want more time to get new practices into their muscle memory. While all workshops offer time to start that practice, to truly integrate a change in how a person works takes time to process, repeat, improve, and repeat again. These labs offer dedicated time and various scenarios, case studies, or working sessions to ensure employees feel that they didn’t just learn something new in a workshop that changes what they did the next day, but that they feel comfortable sustaining those changes over time.

Each workplace has its own set of priorities, goals, values, and levers. Gestus can work with clients to design and facilitate custom workshops based on specific issues, needs, and nuances to best resonate with participants.