Professional Development and Workshops
For individuals, teams, leaders, and organizations.
Did you know porcupines have poor nearsighted vision? This makes it challenging for porcupines to see the bigger picture in the wild.
Similarly, humans can become nearsighted during conflict or difficult interactions, making it challenging to see the bigger picture in the field.
Our workshops help you see past the porcupine behavior for the underlying need and adjust your approach to communicate more effectively with prickly personalities.
We offer workshops designed for youth workers, leaders, teams, and organizations so you can find the training to meet your unique program needs.
What you’ll get with our workshops:
- Confidence when dealing with a prickly personality
- Tools to de-escalate communication breakdowns
- Skills to recognize behavior as an expression of communication
- Access to best practices and tips
- Ongoing support (dependent upon package level)
How to Talk to Porcupines pairs in-field experience with education and research to deliver practical techniques you can apply today.
How to Talk to Porcupines: Crossing communication divides
People who work with youths often encounter prickly personalities (porcupines) and difficult situations. Communication breakdowns such as differing perspectives, assumptions, or heightened emotions are often at the heart of these challenges. Unless you learn to quickly defuse and de-escalate these situations, your program or classroom outcomes may be at risk.
Effectively redirecting a young person can help both of you cross communication divides and Learning how to break down communication barriers will help you better engage with the young people you serve.
This training will give you a clear understanding of porcupines. You’ll explore principles of effective communication strategies, including active listening, questioning, body language, and non-verbal skills to positively engage with porcupines.
Through a mix of lecture and online interaction, you’ll broaden your communication know-how to skillfully handle porcupines and prickly situations. You’ll gain confidence by learning to implement your own action plan for de-escalating and redirecting porcupines. Come ready to learn, laugh, and engage! You’ll leave with a new appreciation for porcupines.
Time commitment: Minimum 90 minute workshop
How to Talk to Porcupines: ARISE to the challenge
Learning how to break down communication barriers will help you better engage with the young people you serve. In this scenario-based interactive session you will apply the principles of ARISE to communication breakdowns to skillfully de-escalate prickly personalities (porcupines).
Come ready to learn, laugh, and share ideas.
Time commitment: Minimum 90 minute workshop
Porcupine Academy
The Porcupine Academy combines all of the content in our standard How to Talk to Porcupines workshops with activities curated from the How to Talk to Porcupines field guide and self-guided exercises delivered to learners over six months.
Time commitment: Six months
Sign up for the waitlist.
Book Club: Ask the author
Read the book as a group and complete the study guide together. At the end of your reading, invite the author to join you for an exclusive discussion about the book, strategies, and best practices to keep going.
Time commitment: 30-60 minutes
Porcupine Pitch
6 month lead time recommended
Do you have a workshop need? We develop custom workshops, too.