The Writing Shift
A workshop series for leadership teams
Time-tested skills that are old-school, creatively retooled
Group Registration up to 10 Persons
Giving yourself permission to write honestly, open-heartedly, and without filters is the best way to understand what you’re thinking, the changes you are considering, the priorities that need deciding, and the things you truly value. Alongside members of your group, discover how writing in a journal can help you move beyond rumination to get grounded with your reasons to be grateful, strengthening team resiliency, and emboldening individuals to face the future — together.
Ready, Set, Slow
Grassroots Gratitude encourages a reflective practice of writing that is
personal and private. By starting the day with slow thinking that is
creative, heartfelt and original, leaders make better decisions and
become better thinking partners.
Writing longhand, in the privacy of your personal thoughts, without distraction, is a leadership tool that warrants serious consideration. Challenging, rewarding, and empowering, to write longhand in a journal is a skill that improves with training.
With encouragement and a deeper understanding of the science behind the practice, participants will be reminded of old school thinking that is refreshed with more recent research. Teams will become more collaborative as they manage their time more wisely, make decisions more thoughtfully, rebound from adversity in a more supportive atmosphere, and enjoy greater fulfillment every day.
Gratitude is an essential spark that ignites creativity and joy. Writing longhand is the best way to explore its transformative power. Leadership? Most effective when teams act like they know what's important and care about impact.
As a complex psycho-social emotion, Gratitude is a life skill, a character strength, and a way of seeing the world through a window of possibilities – not only problems. Gratitude is defined as a kindly feeling that relates to savouring, giving, and receiving. Gratitude is an awareness of the good things and grows stronger when honed with intention. Writing about the things that are going well, translates joy into action and expressions of thanks. The great irony of gratitude is that it is cultivated in private, but works to maximum advantage when expressed publicly. The Writing Shift will help leadership teams witness first-hand, the advantages to thinking privately, speaking and acting publicly, as another irony of life.
Find More Joy
The science abounds – Gratitude is a personality trait, a character strength, an attitude, a complex psycho-social emotion and a pro-social motivator. Gratitude grows when trained and practiced with intentionality. Gratitude is the great rhizome that connects us to each other and anchors us in our world of relationships.
Grassroots Gratitude has experience helping everyday leaders make personal investments in themselves that can:
- Find better words
- Increase personal resilience when facing transition, change and chaos
- Foster meaningful relationships — internally (with one’s self) as well as outwardly (in relationship to others)
- Build emotional and social intelligence skills in leaders that aligns personal values and strengths with activities
- Improve inter-personal communications
- Identify priorities and tactics in pursuit of intentional work/life balance
- Realize the benefits of writing and reflecting in pursuit of greater trust, increased levels of respect, better understanding of meaning and purpose
- Improve workplace culture, health, and employee retention
- Help with focus, time management and decision making
Leadership Team: Writing Shift
How it Works
Change doesn’t happen overnight—experts suggest that it takes at least 90 days of persistence and some discomfort to develop new habits that are sustainable. This series introduces team members to a daily practice of writing longhand, in order to foster self-awareness, gratitude, and mutual respect setting the stage for collaborative change. Groups will be encouraged to stay accountable to each other, increasing levels of gratitude that the keep team’s growth goals growing.
Here’s what you’ll get in the workshop:
- Mix of in-person and online format
- Max. 10 people / session
- Timing, delivery and schedule customized to meet group needs
- Four dates with Lorraine with the option for more interaction.
- Initial launch and final debrief sessions with Lorraine, each 90 – 120 minutes long, preferably face-to-face.
- Customized writing prompts to inspire original thinking, creativity and spark positive change
- Two mid-sessions will be delivered virtually, 75 minutes in length.
- Includes ten signed copies of Gratitude Ignition Guide:Notes for My Leadership Self
- Investment: $2,500 per group. Includes up to 10 blank journals and pens
Meet Your Mentor
For almost 30 years, the practice of putting pen to paper has been my personal coaching tool and helped me understand how to keep growing and learning, by putting one word ahead of another.
Through the ups and downs, doors opening and closing, excitement with opportunity and disappointment in the face of challenge, my journal has been my personal confidante and my coach. More than 150 journals sit quietly on my shelf, testimony to hard work, messy thinking, creativity, occasional bursts of exuberance, insight, and many moments of joy.
Through my tenure as a caring and engaged citizen, as a mother, sister, team cheer leader, friend—and tens of thousands of pages written in the half-light of morning—here’s what I’ve learned:
- Writing in a journal and making gratitude lists improves my understanding of myself in the context of my world.
- Writing and reading are ways I choose to improve my social and emotional intelligence.
- Tracking my reasons to be grateful reduces my levels of resentment, fear and anxiety.
- Being grateful helps me get unstuck, click my reset buttons and find the motivation to keep moving.
- Writing longhand helps me find better words as I strive to express myself more clearly.
I’m convinced that a daily writing practice can serve all who are willing to try – to some degree. I believe that starting in the privacy of your personal journal can improve your skills to become more positive, more compassionate, more self-aware, and more fun to be with. By paying careful attention and opening your heart to new possibilities, we can learn to be more patient, curious, creative and confident.
Ready to unleash your creative potential and lead with courage and clarity? Join me as Grassroots Gratitude moves in the direction of its mission: Fostering gratitude as the secret strength of everday leadership. Every day.
Let’s do this!
Lorraine Widmer-Carson
Kind Words
Our values guide everything that happens here at Grassroots Gratitude, which means always being true to one’s core self. Leading from a place of integrity and authenticity is like following a North Star—you can never lose your way.
“I participated in Lorraine’s first Gratitude Trifecta workshops for leaders looking to lean into journaling and the practice of giving thanks as strategies for focusing on what truly matters in my work, and in my life. I loved it.
Lorraine is a talented and perceptive model for other leaders. She uses her own lived experience, research and writing to design a safe online space where people can explore the complexities of gratitude, writing, and all of the things that can intervene as we all struggle to balance all of the things all of the time. I had no way to anticipate the power of listening to other leaders from across Canada share their own reflections on their journaling practice or on gratitude as a lens through which they make decisions — but it was profound. We often work in our little silos. We interact with colleagues who are in our own lines of work, and who have been trained or brought up in similar professional cultures and practices. This group enabled me to listen to leaders working in sectors that are totally different from my own, and it was so refreshing! As it turns out, I have a lot in common with leaders in very different lines of work — and I loved bringing their voices and experiences into my own reflections on questions like work-life balance, how to sit with and respond to discomfort, grief, and difficult knowledge.
Thank you, Lorraine, for this incredible opportunity to build my own capacity as a leader centered in gratitude, and for helping me to build a network with colleagues across Canada doing the same.”
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Michelle Schira Hagerman, OCT | EAO, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
“One thing we know for certain: gratitude is simple, but gratitude is not easy. Until now… Lorraine Widmer’s distillation of key gratitude practices in Gratitude Ignition Guide is an excellent tool for people looking to master how they show up as a leader. Whether you are just starting your gratitude practice or you’re a seasoned professional, Lorraine will ignite sparks of vitality and joy in you. Rather than call for more research on the topic of gratitude, this guide will inspire you to embrace gratitude as a character strength, a relationship builder, an energy generator and as a social motivator. By embracing its simple and inspiring messages, you will foster higher levels of thinking, connectivity, and positivity—at home, at work and at play.”
Steve Foran, Founder, Gratitude at Work, Believer in Grateful Leadership
“Lorraine is a thoughtful and committed leader, an effective communicator, and a model for any leader looking to understand how to leverage journaling and gratitude as practices for good decision making and focus on what truly matters.
Thanks to this program, I now realize the power in meeting with leaders from across Canada grappling with similar questions such as how to balance work and life, how to focus energies on what matters, how to lead in ways that are authentic and grounded in my values, how to set intentions for my day that enable me to remain focused on the activities that are of greatest importance, and how to use gratitude as a framework for reflection and decision making.
Authentic gratitude is complex. It is not simply the performance of appreciation. Rather it is an intentional and negotiated commitment to listen, to observe, and to recognize the good things, especially when they may be very difficult to find. Indeed, I have learned that it is in those times when things are most difficult that authentic gratitude becomes most important.”
- Gratitude Trifecta Participant
Are You Ready To Grow?
To learn and grow is the journey of a lifetime and the path is not linear— invite Grassroots Gratitude to influence your journey. Our programs are foo all those who see themselves as leaders in community. Call us if:
- You are interested in cultivating greater self-awareness and ready to stand taller with more positivity.
- You are eager to transform relationships and use gratitude as a way to improve your relationships and connections.
- You’re committed to life-long learning, and interested in developing skills that challenge you to grow.
- You may already realize that gratitude and kindness are essential human qualities and character strengths. Now, let’s strengthen those traits with intentional focus, practice, and training.
- You’re prepared to build a writing habit that will serve you as you grow into a more authentic and self-aware leader, serving with grace and gratitude – everyday. Every day.