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The Appreciative Way
Enabling Innovation at the Speed of Life          

Director of Training

Rob Voyle
Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle

Appreciative Inquiry

Our foundational program that serves as an introduction for Coaching, Interim Ministry, and Leadership Development.

>>  Appreciative Inquiry

Coach Training

We offer a unique coach training program that blends Appreciative Inquiry, the work of Milton Erickson, and Contemplative Spirituality.

>>  Appreciative Coaching

Interim Ministry

We use the Appreciative Way as the foundation for our year-long Certificate in Appreciative Interim Ministry training.

>>  Appreciative Interim
        Ministry (AIM)

Leadership Training

Take your ministry to another level by learning the core competencies of Appreciative Leaders.

>>  Appreciative Leadership

Please contact Dr. Robert Voyle, if you have questions regarding the suitability of a program to meet your continuing education needs.

Our Training Philosophy

Radical Respect

As a faith based organization part of our vision is to be as liberal with God’s Love as Jesus was and is, for we see nothing conservative, nor exclusive, nor discriminatory in the way he loved. Consequently one of our organization"s core values is to respect the dignity of every human being and not use discriminatory practices that denigrate people. While the Clergy Leadership Institute is a faith based organization, offering our programs to people working in faith based settings, we apply our core value of radical respect to our engagement with participants and the organizations we deal with. We engage people with respect to their competence and without regard to age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or creed.

Helpful, Humorous, and Healing

The Director of Training, Rob Voyle's personal mission in life is to be Helpful, Humorous, and Healing. We want all of our training programs and coaching to reflect these three elements.

Helpful

Firstly, our training must be helpful. Our training programs are pragmatic and competency based. They must have utility to the practical day to day work of the participants. We are interested in knowing what you want to be able to do differently in your life and work. We are not simply concerned that you know about leadership skills, we want you to be able to manifest these skills in the world. Through our training programs we want to partner with you in helping you do those things that you want to be able to do and to be successful doing them.

Humorous

Humor is an important part of our approach to life and training. It helps maintain interest and energy during the training. Research has shown that positive emotional affect is associated with increased creativity, more accurate intuition, and greater resilience. Verbal humor requires that a person is able to perceive things from a different perspective. Often the humorous moment is created by a rapid shift of frames. This is the same as the reframing process that occurs in coaching. After a reframe, the framed element no longer appears the same and new awareness has taken shape. Such reframing requires creativity and we continually look for those creative moments in the training to make old things come to life in new ways.

Another aspect of humor is that it allows us to hold ourselves lightly. That while we take seriously what we do and the goals we pursue, we do so with a spirit of equanimity, not holding rigidly to a preconceived plan but open to those moments of possibility and transformational learning. We want our training programs to have that same spirit of equanimity. We hold rigidly to a flexible plan to ensure that the needs of the participants can be responded to and met.

Healing

We believe that the deepest longing of the human heart is for acceptance. Yet we often live life alienated from ourselves, our neighbors, and from God the source of our Being. In this alienation is the source of our problems. If alienation is the problem then acceptance is the solution. This is what we mean by healing or transformation. A way of seeing and living life from a place of acceptance that in turn invites others into a deeper place of acceptance. Our training programs are designed to promote participants awareness and acceptance of their own giftedness and the giftedness of others.

An Integrated Approach

We are deeply committed to living and working from an appreciative perspective. We design all the elements of our programs from the opening comments to the final evaluations to reflect, model, and be consistent with the appreciative way. We use didactic presentations, experiential exercises, demonstrations and real plays in our training programs. We also provide opportunity for reflection, personal synthesis and integration so that those things we learn in our minds can be experienced in our hearts and lived from the core of our souls.

Full Engagement

While practical in nature we design our programs to reach all aspects of our human experience. We are concerned about both the "Doing" and the "Being" of the leader. One of our participants, Miriam Erickson, the wife of a UCC Pastor said:

"I have been fully engaged emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Thank you for touching me at the core of my being."

I cannot think of a finer compliment for our training programs and it says that in that program we achieved our objective. It is our desire to provide that same opportunity for all our participants to be so fully engaged in their learning and in their lives.

What Participants Say 

"I have been fully engaged emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Thank you for touching me at the core of my being."
M.E. Member of the UCC Church.


"Of all the training I have been to, your notes are the ones I keep coming back to time and again for practical resources."
P.W. Conference Pastor.


"Rob models a fierce humility and an openness to learn from anybody, anytime, anywhere."
Anonymous evaluation response.


 Read Evaluation Summaries 

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