Happy Healthy Nonprofit Workplaces: How To Kick the Sit Out It

Last week, I was honored to do the keynote workshop at the Peel Leadership Center’s TimeOut Conference in Toronto, Canada. This conference is an opportunity for executive directors to build skills in resilience as part of a day-long seminar. (They gave out a special blend of tea as a Giveaway, something I have never seen before.) I was invited to teach an interactive workshop based on The Happy Healthy Nonprofit on how to link self-care with well being in the workplace.

Bringing Movement Into the Workshop
I’ve written about walking as work over the past few years, including walking meetings, Fitbits, standing desks, and more. And, of course, my book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit has a lot about this topic and bringing it into the workplace.   But there is always more to learn and participants shared a few ideas worth noting:

• Empathy or Discovery Walks: We talk a lot about the health and productivity benefits of walking meetings, but there is yet another benefit – building stronger relationships.  Empathy or discover walks are designed to build skills in relationship building across disciplines and understanding another person’s point of view. It comes from MIT’s U-Lab. You can learn more about it here.
• Kick The Sit Out of It:  This is a healthy workplace initiative in Canada called “Sitkicker,” designed to get people standing up at work. Created by PUBLIC Inc. in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada, this campaign not only educates people about need to move more at work, but also includes an inexpensive cardboard standing desk that can easily set up in an office.

Trainer’s Notes:

• Working with Graphic Recorders:   Charlotte Young, Picture Your Thoughts did graphic recording, visually note taking, for the session. Graphic recorders do some preparation for the session. They request a copy of the discussion guide or slides so they can create a visual lexicon of key concepts to use during the session. Also, it helps the graphic recorder in planning the use of their space on the paper if you can tell them how much content delivery versus discussion capture.
• I-Commit-To:  At the end of the session, I had folks write down and complete this sentence, “I commit to x.”  This helps participants identify what to put into practice. In addition, sharing it with everyone in the room (as part of raffle), makes people accountable and also let’s them hear everyone else’s ideas. I learned this from ETR’s facilitator tips.

All in all a great experience at the Peel Leadership Centre in Toronto. Have you been to a training workshop recently?  What part of the design made it an awesome learning experience for you?