Thirteen years ago, I joined Designed Learning as an independent contractor to assist in marketing and sales. I knew absolutely nothing about Designed Learning, Flawless Consulting, or Peter Block. I knew even less about setting strategic vision and its importance to organizational effectiveness.

So, What’s the Point?

Learning the skills to avoid siloed work environments and embrace collaboration within the entire organization is essential to successful outcomes. Setting strategic vision includes establishing realistic goals and working with others — fully utilizing the expertise of all.  It is also about communicating effectively, developing working agreements across organizational boundaries, and solving problems long term. The results include increased job satisfaction, employee commitment, and bottom-line improvement.

Setting strategic vision means learning to convene others in a way that quickly builds connection and trust. It creates a personal view that you are part of something larger than yourself, the people you work with directly every day or a single client. You learn to look beyond the immediate and begin to hold yourself accountable, voluntarily committing to the well-being of the whole.  Acquiring these valuable skills will ensure that every project and conversation moves the organization forward in a positive direction.

How It’s Done

Flawless Consulting® develops tools that enable participants to be more strategic in their thinking and more effective at solving problems. These essential skills include:

• How to recognize resistance in your clients and learn a technique to move forward effectively.
• How to be assertive.
• How to probe for underlying issues.
• How to deliver feedback in a way that honors the client but challenges them to act.

During the experience, participants practice in real time the skills needed to have their expertise used. Every phase is discussed and practiced ensuring that no phase is skipped or ignored for the sake of expediency.

The first and most critical phase of Flawless Consulting is Contracting. Contracting is about building trust, exchanging wants and offers, and deciding what you’re going to do together and how you’re going to do it. In other words, establishing a working agreement. The success of the entire project and the decision to act and implement a lasting solution is incumbent on this initial phase.

During Flawless Consulting, participants also learn what role they typically choose as a consultant and partner: Expert, Pair of Hands or Collaborative.  

The skills learned in Flawless Consulting are essential in setting a strategic vision. Putting them into practice means ensuring that every person’s expertise is fully utilized, accountability and commitment are chosen, and individual success is achieved. More importantly, Flawless Consulting creates a culture of collaboration, sets strategic vision, and ensures the health and success of the whole.

Article by Chris Witt

In our pursuit of more equitable, sustainable, and community-oriented systems, we often overlook a crucial element: how we come together. At Designed Learning®, we believe that the way we convene can be as transformative as the work itself. Our “Leader as Convener” program offers a paradigm shift in how we perceive and address societal issues, reimagining leadership for the common good.

This approach advocates for reimagining our relationships with human capital, natural resources, financial systems, and social connections. It calls for an end to commodifying humanity, a renewed respect for nature, a reevaluation of financial practices, and the building of social capital through trust and citizen engagement.

Whether you’re an impact investor, a foundation catalyzing systemic change, or an NGO empowering communities, the way you bring people together matters. Traditional hierarchical leadership often falls short in addressing complex, interconnected challenges. Leader as Convener offers a new perspective, emphasizing focusing on gifts rather than deficiencies, possibilities over problem-solving, and balancing covenants with well-structured contracts to ensure both relational trust and clear expectations.

Envision meetings where power dynamics are neutralized, every voice is heard, and authentic commitment replaces lip service. Picture conversations that move beyond problem-solving to possibility thinking, where diverse strengths are recognized and leveraged. This is the essence of our program.

Leader as Convener equips leaders with skills to facilitate Six Conversations That Matter®:

1. Possibility: Shifting from problems to potential
2. Ownership: Moving from blame to accountability
3. Dissent: Encouraging healthy disagreement
4. Commitment: Transforming intentions into action
5. Gifts: Utilizing diverse strengths
6. Invitation: Extending genuine, inclusive calls to participate

This approach encourages leadership by convening and motivating citizens to actively participate in shaping their communities and narratives. For those in urban development, manufacturing, or sustainability, it boosts collaboration with diverse stakeholders, fostering inclusive decision-making for economic development and business associations. Academic institutions studying sustainable development gain a new perspective for effective community engagement. In large corporations, this approach shifts traditional hierarchies to more collaborative environments, enabling managers to facilitate meaningful conversations, foster team ownership, and ensure all voices are heard. This results in greater employee engagement, improved decision-making, and innovative problem-solving.

This program isn’t just about improving meetings; it’s about transforming how we work together to create change. It’s about building trust, fostering belonging, and creating conditions for true collaboration and innovation. By focusing on gifts and possibilities, we can create a more inclusive and sustainable future.

As we face unprecedented challenges in creating equitable and sustainable systems, we need new ways of leading and convening. Leader as Convener offers a path forward, helping us harness our collective wisdom and power to create the future we envision. It’s a call to action for all of us to rethink our roles in society and at work, and how we can contribute to positive change.

Article by Derek Peebles.

Learn more about Leader As Convener by downloading this free eBook by Peter Block.

 “Resistance is not only predictable and natural; it is a necessary part of the learning process.”  – Peter Bock, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

When it comes to your ideas and beliefs that you hold, it can be challenging to take a step back and see your views clearly. As humans, we feel most at peace when we stay in our comfort zone. When you are around new people, places and are introduced to concepts that seem completely different from your own, you may initially resist accepting these things. Change is something that many people have a challenging time receiving as it requires us to adjust our habits. These routine behaviors and preferences make us feel secure because we know their patterns and how they will inevitably make us feel. 

We all face hardships and obstacles in our lives that cause us to be discouraged. We resist negative psychological pain to keep going. It is normal to deny these unfavorable feelings because we believe that it will be better for our mental health in the long term; this is rarely the case. In fact, this suppression of uncomfortable emotions will cause a greater blow back in the end. If you learn to accept how you’re feeling, rather than resisting what makes you uncomfortable, you become free of fear.

Through this learning process, you will gain awareness of how you subconsciously think and feel. To be an individual who is self-aware is a double-edged sword. While you can consciously understand the patterns you display, you may also get invested in analyzing these behaviors. It’s important to focus on the positive change that can take place, rather than drowning in pessimistic introspection. You must be intentional with being a more open-minded person to grow.

Take it Easy – Manage Your Resistance

Peter Block tells us that, “If things are not going well, I am a player in them not going well. So, I must ask myself, what’s my contribution to the difficulty I am experiencing with the world?” Through this process of self-analyzing, you can uncover your underlying doubts, insecurities, and fears that are holding you back. Effective change for yourself can happen at a more accelerated pace as you are clear on what you are resisting.

According to Psychology Today, you can begin to accept resistance as a good thing when you become aware of your mental and physical state, and the thoughts that accompany this. Try selecting one day out of your week to purposefully check in with how you react to certain things you encounter. If you experience any resistance, choose to relax your body and mind instead. You may take a few deep breaths or focus on a happy thought. Through deliberate practice in understanding your resistance to yourself and others better, you will automatically live a more peaceful life.  

Article by Rebecca Crowell

Rebecca Crowell is a Designed Learning intern and graduate of Social Sciences at the University of Central Florida. She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Stetson University in Deland, FL.

“The goal is to balance a life that works with a life that counts.” – Peter Block, The Answer to How is Yes.

If you want to live a healthy life that benefits your mind, body, and spirit, then it’s important to be intentional about incorporating balance in all areas of your life. Balancing your responsibilities and roles as an individual can feel especially overwhelming when there’s little to no time to put aside during your daily routine.

Workplace stress is rampant, so it’s vital to monitor our mental health to effectively represent ourselves to our co-workers, our employers, and ourselves. Research from the World Health Organization states that 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress, and 54% of workers report that work stress affects their home life.

Many of us prioritize competing deadlines, attending meetings, and working overtime to feel accomplished in the workplace. It feels rewarding to put all our energies into our careers so we may thrive and advance in our respected companies, but this comes with a cost. If your work-life balance is off-kilter, your mental health will start to decline, and inevitable stress will ensue.

The first step to feeling more fulfilled and at peace is knowing whether your work-life balance is healthy or unhealthy. You may think that overtime and endless hours of work are normal. However, if they’re becoming an issue for your health, it’s vital to address them. The Mental Health Foundation suggests five steps for addressing your work-life balance situation.

How to Find Balance:

1. First, ask yourself what is causing your stress and how it affects your work and personal life.
2. After addressing the cause, sit with those feelings. Are you angry with your situation now? Confused?
3. Next, you’ll become more proactive by brainstorming ways to reduce your stress. Could you come home early one night a week to spend time with your family? Reprioritizing what’s important to you in the current moment will leave you feeling more at peace.
4. After considering a few alternatives, consider how your work could accommodate these priorities. Then, you should speak up about these concerns and ideas for change with your employers.
5. The last step is to follow through with making these changes. When talking with your boss, try asking for more flexible hours, remote work, or adjusting your designated days off. Contract on what you want or don’t, and work to reach an agreement that works for all.

“Choosing to act on what matters is the choice to live a passionate existence, which is anything but controlled and predictable,” says Peter Block in The Answer to How is Yes. “It is the challenge to acknowledge that just because something works, it doesn’t mean that it matters.” He asserts that a “life that matters is captured in the word yes,” where yes expresses our willingness to claim our freedom and use it to be a “player instead of a spectator to our own experience.”

Our mental health is indispensable; living a life that counts means prioritizing it effectively. It is “being a player in our own experience,” dedicating time towards our relationships with family and friends, leisure activities, and spaces outside of the workplace to reduce the burden that work may bring where winning back the practical balance of our life allows us to say yes to being more present and finding joy during our busy routines.

Article by Rebecca Crowell

Rebecca Crowell is a Designed Learning intern and graduate of Social Sciences at the University of Central Florida. She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Stetson University in Deland, FL.