For over 20 years, Valerie Polunas has managed program portfolios focused on workforce skilling, leadership development, conflict management, and cross-cultural understanding. Valerie previously served as a Program Manager for both Envision by WorldStrides and the University of California, Irvine’s Division of Continuing Education and served as an Organizational and Employee Development Specialist for the Cuyahoga County Human Resources Department.
Valerie owns and runs her own business, Flowing River Conflict Solutions LLC, through which she provides training design, workshop and meeting facilitation, and Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™) services to help people navigate conflict with confidence.
Valerie earned both her Bachelors and Masters degrees in International Relations and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Applied Conflict Resolution from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. As a lifelong learner, she has continued her education through a variety of certificate programs, including Organizational and Relationship Systems Coaching, Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation, and Civil Treatment® Workplace.
Valerie is no stranger to remote work, having done it for years while traveling for work, collaborating with professionals in globally distributed organizations, and leading project teams during and after the global pandemic. She is excited to bring her relationship-focused expertise to Co-Think as your coach and facilitator.
Course Description
It can be difficult to connect and perform in today’s work environment. Co-Think was created to help your team build trust, think critically, and problem solve collaboratively, whether you’re always physically together, globally distributed, or somewhere in between.
Learning Outcomes
As a result of participating in Co-Think, your team will be able to:
- Uncover and articulate its values, motivators, needs, and positions on issues or problems the team confronts
- Implement a team approach to collective engagement and problem solving
- Evaluate and adjust its approach as needed
Disclaimer
This program uses a type of coaching that serves the team to help it reflect, challenge, and learn together, maintain psychological safety, set goals, create accountability, hold fruitful conversation, and take meaningful action together. Serving as an observer, curious questioner, and facilitator, your coach creates a space for team awareness, dialogue, decision making, and action planning.
Your coach will meet the team where they are and help them navigate important conversations using the outlined program activities. This set of outlined program activities is subject to change based on the needs of the team in the moment. Depending on what comes up in each virtual session, the team may or may not get through an entire activity as planned. While the goal is to accomplish each activity during your sessions, your coach will prioritize feelings and needs exploration over completion of those prescribed activities.
Full team participation in each virtual session is essential for Co-Think to be effective, so please make sure all members are able to participate during the entirety of each virtual session.
Instructions
Click on the first lesson title below to access course content.
If you encounter any difficulties with the course materials or technical issues, submit a Get Help ticket from your My Courses page.
