Today, more than ever, we all must become increasingly skilled at inviting people into dialogue about what matters, opening the way to improving effective solutions and services. Join us in experiencing, practicing, and exploring ways that support and build individual and organizational capacity to navigate the complexity of our world.
Through this 3-full-day experience, the Evans School at the University of Washington will bring powerful practices from around the world that enable authentic engagement, build community, activate shared intelligence, and motivate leadership for change in our regional community and beyond. The Art of Hosting & Harvesting Conversations that Matter is an approach to leadership that scales up from the individual to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation, and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges.
How do we boldly model democracy in action and promote the public good?
How do we courageously lead innovative change through collaborative decision-making, respectful dialogue, and skillful civic engagement?
How do we intentionally co-create human-centered processes and systems that promote connected and responsive teams, effective partnerships, and communities of belonging?
Join us and you will leave feeling empowered and ready to…
Build stronger teams and partnerships
Broaden the skill set within your group, work more effectively and enjoyably together, engage teams, organizations, and community stakeholders in meaningful conversations that promote resilience, belonging, innovation, and develop intergovernmental relationships to create collective impact.
Enhance skills and abilities to work with complexity, uncertainty, and change
Develop leadership confidence for facing challenges that do not have solutions, learn practices to engage skillfully with fear, conflict, and stuck patterns, use wise process planning architectures for small- and large-scale initiatives, and host strategic conversations.
Apply what you are learning directly to the change initiatives that are important to you, your community and/or your organization to increase engagement and participation in collaborative problem-solving processes.
Do you recognize these:
- Meetings that lead to no action?
- Conferences that have too many talking heads and not enough real engagement and wisdom?
- Silo thinking and political infighting?
- Decisions made too far away from those who are impacted by them?
- Organizations who work for their own purpose and forget the common good, the whole picture and collaboration with others?
- Communities or cross-sector teams that are marked by consistent lack of dialogue, tension, and difference of opinion or fall into apathy or indifference?
If so, then this workshop is for you! Whether you come from the public or non-profit sector, a foundation, you are self-employed, or are coming simply as an individual who cares about this work, this training is for you. We invite a variety of perspectives to create a vibrant learning space, which we can build on in our work. Attend as a team to make the application of what you’ve learned much easier to integrate!
Thursday-Saturday, July 10-12, 2025
8:00am-5:00pm
Evans School of Public Policy & Governance
Parrington Hall
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
*Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
Registration opens April 11, 2025. Payment is not required at time of registration.
Please note that limited space is available for this training due to room capacity and designated sponsor seats. If you sign up and seats are no longer available in this training, you will automatically be placed on a waitlist. Beginning May 1, we will follow up to either confirm your seat and request payment, or let you know that you are on the waitlist. Please contact us with any questions or difficulties with this registration process.
Contact the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) team at evansepic@uw.edu with questions, for more information, and to explore sponsorship opportunities.
