Learning Experiences, Retreat Facilitation, and Interactive Workshops
CuriosityBased Connection
Are you looking for ways to strengthen team morale? Is your organization desperate to connect and meaningfully engage while working remotely? Do you want to offer creative options to socialize remotely? If you have been adding new members to your organization who have never met in person, this investment in time can pay off dividends in relationships. These fun, interactive workshops strengthen morale and communication skills simultaneously. Your team doesn’t have to wait to meet in-person to connect again. Session topic options include: Personal and professional goal setting; How to have difficult conversations; What respect means to you.CuriosityBased Goal Setting
Are you tired of overly complicated strategic plans that don’t address what your team actually cares about? Are you fed up with values-setting sessions that feel like exhausting word-smithing exercises? This fast-paced, interactive workshop can serve as a mini retreat or to kickoff your strategic planning. The session starts with a trust-building exercise. We’ll then guide you through surfacing individuals’ hopes and concerns so that as a team, you can determine your priorities. You’ll also get detailed documentation of the discussion from us to support your organizational planning. Read more here.CuriosityBased Inclusion
Are you committed to fostering an inclusive culture? Do you want to move beyond just talk? Are some people in your organization uncomfortable talking about inclusion or perhaps even tired of talking about it? The session can be held on its own or as part of a retreat. It can complement any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training you’ve already engaged in. You’ll build mutual empathy and trust while practicing vulnerability and curiosity. Your team members will become aware of their own individual blind spots through having personal and hard conversations. Session includes: Reflect on your personal history, explore and learn from your assumptions.CuriosityBased Communication
Are you worried about your communication skills eroding from too much remote work? Are you looking for opportunities to build your team’s morale and skills simultaneously? Then take one workshop, sign up for a series, or even make a session part of your next retreat. You’ll become more aware of your communication blind spots through fast-paced, engaging practice and individualized coaching in real-time. You can move from “fake, pretend” listening to effective listening and from asking the “usual, so-so” questions to powerful questions. Session topic options include: Listening skills, Inquiry skills, Giving feedback, and Admitting mistakes
Is your team struggling to collaborate effectively and efficiently? Do you want to foster a culture of respect? What happens when people define “respect” differently? We’ve developed the 7 Forms of Respect tool, on-demand online course, and live team workshops to help you transform your communication and relationships. We help you get clear on which forms of respect matter to your team and to individual team members.
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Check out our full list of services and price guide!
Email us to get a copy of our service guide and find which of our interactive learning experiences are best for your organization.
Testimonials
Team Building
“At the beginning of the year, I asked Julie to help us overcome a challenge many mid-size organizations like ours are facing: how do we recreate a collaborative, productive, engaging, and meaningful work environment for our staff--all within the context of hybrid work schedules, virtual and in-person meetings, and new protocols for health and safety. Julie and her team, through a series of retreats, has helped to facilitate connection and trust among our senior leaders as we emerge from the pandemic. In evaluations after each retreat, participants were glowing in their praise for Julie's facilitation and for the outcomes we achieved in less than a day. I can recommend Julie and CuriosityBased without reservation.”~ Ryan Calkins, Port of Seattle Commissioner
“I brought Dr Julie Pham and CuriosityBased in to facilitate a three month series on intra-team communication and empathy. We'd been having some difficulities with internal personality clashes and Julie was able to help us work through those issues and give us the tools to continue to build and maintain a healthy group dynamic. I will absolutely turn to Julie and the CuriosityBased team in the future as need arises.”
~ Ron Craswell, Sr Director of Engineering, OneLogin
“The CuriosityBased facilitators were thoughtful and creative team building coaches with our diverse and newly formed team. They helped us to understand some underlying issues we had around communication, encouraged us to be curious about our communication issues, and bravely helped us to work through them. They have a knack for creating safe spaces and bringing out the best in people.”
~ Sarah Valenta, Director, Community & Business Development, HomeSight
“We brought Julie and CuriosityBased into Zymeworks to help build our executives into an executive team. The workshops created an opportunity for people to dive directly into deep dialogue. It accelerated people building strong partnerships with one another. Most of the team had been hired during the pandemic and we had members divided by the closed US/Canada border. The workshop experience was incredible – people entered the zoom room as acquaintances and exited with real relationships. I had a couple of skeptics make a point of following up to tell me how surprised they were by the level of engagement they felt in the workshop. That’s a huge win in the world of leadership development!”
~ Kathy O'Driscoll, Chief People Officer, Biotech
“Our directors and middle managers experienced CuriosityBased's Giving Feedback workshops. The hands-on nature was very effective. The small group size allowed for meaningful discussion and individualized coaching from the instructor. We also got to strengthen our trust in one another by giving each other feedback. It has inspired us to find time to give each other feedback on a regular basis. It's a great team building exercise too.”
~ Yomara Gomez-Naiden, Vice President, Corporate Quality, AGC Biologics
"Julie has led very powerful and engaging interactive virtual workshops for our community. After the workshops we always receive multiple unsolicited responses of praise from attendees. They share about learning much more than they expected on topics that really matter to their professional relationships. Julie's talent for creating a fun, safe, vulnerable space allows workshop participants to quickly go deep into reflections that create valuable 'aha!' moments for them. Julie's CuriosityBased unique material is transformative and cannot be found anywhere else. I highly recommend hiring Julie and her team to improve your company culture from good to great!”
~ Brett Greene, Founder, New Tech Northwest
“I attended three workshops via Zoom facilitated by Julie Pham and they were very effective workshops, with great use of breakout rooms, small group learn/do sessions and evaluations. I will incorporate the techniques and tactics that I learned both personally and professionally. My favorite was how to apologize well: something as humans we all need to do. Learning to do it appropriately is key, and that workshop nailed it.”
~ Linda Bookey, Program Manager - People Operations
“I took three of the workshops on communication skills and I found each one to be helpful in different ways. One of the most unexpected ways they benefited me was to simply make space and time in my life to be more self-reflective. It was helpful to do this reflective work in a setting with other people so I could learn from their takeaways too. I left each session with new information about myself and how others perceive me that I will be able to use in my work life.”
~ Mary Dunaway, Executive Director of Development KNKX 88.5 FM
“Our entire team at Chateau Lill team enjoyed and benefited from your “Listening More Effectively” coaching session. We learned more about one another individually and as a team, and learned valuable skills to work more effectively, productively and harmoniously together. Prior to the session, we had a strong team however your coaching session strengthened our team in ways we had not imagined.”
~ Stacy Lill, Proprietor/CEO, Chateau Lill
Inclusion
"At a time where craving connection and being in relationship is craved by our team, CuriosityBased created an experience where our staff could find small moments of authenticity in a safe and intimate space. Being vulnerable and opening up about the very human tendency to make assumptions provided a unique pathway for people to both share about themselves, learn about others, and understand the varied impacts that drawing conclusions can have. As I have heard from many of my colleagues, I believe the work we have done with Julie and her team will be a helpful lesson we refer to as we continue the work of valuing, respecting, and relating to our coworkers."~ Lauren Flemister, Deputy Director, City of Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development
"My team at LRDG grew exponentially participating in the series Exploring Race-Related Assumptions with Dr. Julie Pham. Often people enter the spaces of race conversation with great trepidation while we should enter with enthusiasm and curiosity. We were renewed, energized, and filled with the desire to move our work forward fearlessly in racial equity and environmental justice."
~ Ruby Love, Principal of Love Resource Development Group, LLC
“At first I thought 2.5 hours was going to be too long to keep our team’s interest. However, the time flew by because the content was very engaging. It wasn’t like other DEI training I’ve participated in, where we focused on key concepts. Instead, we shared stories around race and were encouraged to learn from one another. The surprising bonus was how connected my team felt to one another by the end of the session, which is especially important now that we're working remotely."
~ Elizabeth Scallon, GTM/Operations for Alexa Fund & Startups, Amazon
Explore Success
"Julie led a goal setting workshop for my team. What impressed me was that she anchored the topic in both business rigor and motivation. Her interactive exercises were engaging the team and led to very concrete and applicable results. I also appreciated Julie’s flexibility in dealing with the dynamics of my style as leader of the group – she handled my curve balls with grace."~ Bettina Stix | Director, Global Product and Volunteering Amazon in the Community
7 Forms of Respect
“Julie has created a framework to help one learn about their workmates and where your personal internal dialogue stems from. The CuriosityBased team took our 18-person department through a four-hour session on the 7 Forms of Respect. The breakout sessions with prompts gave us an opportunity to explore our thoughts in a shared space and learn from our workmates. The four hours went by quickly but were filled with internal and external insights. I encourage other teams to share this experience of learning the 7 forms of respect framework. It can help gain that extra layer of connection with themselves and others.”~ Tisha Held, Philanthropy and BECU Foundation Manager
“We were honored to host Dr. Julie Pham at a client’s quarterly Diversity and Inclusion event. Learning about the 7 Forms of Respect and reflecting on what respect means to someone based on their lived experience brought us closer together as a team. Dr. Pham is a compelling speaker, a thought leader, and one who blends insights with actions to foster understanding and collaboration.”
~ Kendra Fuller, Managing Director, SwiftLeadership, Swift HR Solutions
“Working with CuriosityBased gave a group of staff some valuable tools and learnings for them to take to their teams. Julie Pham was a pleasure to work with, giving us guidance on how to structure the workshop given the complexities of our group. Since the initial workshops on the 7 Forms of Respect, we have had Dr. Pham and her team back to present and run workshops with other teams in our large, highly matrixed organization. Each group and team that experiences the Curiosity Based workshops has appreciated the new insight and reframing on Respect. As a DEI professional, I find that the theory Dr. Pham and her team workshop with lends itself to creating a culture of belonging and more quality relationships between colleagues and stakeholders.
~ Leilani Lewis, Director Of Diversity, Equity And Inclusion, UW Advancements
Consulting
“Hiring Julie to help us conduct research and design a pilot program was one of my best decisions ever! Julie combines scholarly rigor with a pragmatic approach and has an eye for creating actionable plans and recommendations. She was able to help us design engaging forums to elicit honest community feedback and convened diverse stakeholders to inform the design of our pilot. Julie is uniquely qualified on cross-sector initiatives because of her deep experience working with grassroots organizations as well as with the business community. I was grateful for her strategic support and sharp analytical skills on the project.”~ Pearl Leung, Community Engagement Leader
“Big kudos to Julie and CuriosityBased. Their work with us was quite transformative. I really loved their intentional facilitation approach which surfaced new and interesting insights for us and the partners we were working with. Nothing but great results!”
~ Michael Brown, Chief Architect, Civic Commons
