How we can help

Herding Together provides support, consultancy and training to community, community organisations, the not for profit sector and government agencies. Our work is aimed at anyone wanting to create connected, strong, safe, vibrant and resilient communities and organisations.

Herding Together approaches both Community Building and Corporate Training from a strengths based position. Our approach is strongly rooted in both Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) and Appreciative Inquiry.

Services Offered:

Workshops and online learning

(Workshops are also now available as online courses at: https://herding-together.teachable.com/)

Community

Creating Communities: Safe Places

  • A workshop designed for residents to create safe neighbourhoods
  • Take some simple steps to reduce crime.
  • Of value to anyone concerned about crime and safety in their neighbourhood.
  • Will assist residents to make their properties more resistant to crime and
  • Provide guidance on how to work with other members of the neighbourhood to build an area that is socially connected and safer.
  • Covers both environmental actions and social actions.
  • Disclaimer: Although the workshop provides strategies and suggestions to create an environment where crime is less likely to occur there is never a guarantee that crime will be eliminated.

“It was a great workshop” previous attendee

Creating Communities: Asset Based Community Development

  • An overview of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).
  • A simple but incredibly powerful approach to building community from the bottom up.
  • The workshop covers the basics of ABCD
  • Provides detail in of the components of the ABCD
  • Offers both opportunities for gaining theoretical knowledge and practice at some of the techniques suggested.
  • Recommended both for experienced and new workers in the field of community development as well as anyone wishing to build strong local community.

Corporate Training and Support

Business Refocus Program

  • A fee for service program
  • Aimed at businesses wanting to review and evaluate their corporate direction and planning.
  • Offers businesses and corporations an opportunity to take stock of where they are heading and ensure they are moving in the most positive direction for their business and operations.
  • The program works with businesses to engage with not only senior managers, but also employees and other important stakeholders to work together to define a direction that best suits the business or organisation.
  • A strengths based approach with its roots in Appreciative Inquiry.
  • The program will work with the managerial team, employees and stakeholders to discover the strengths of the organisation
  • The actions the organisation excels at and make the business a business/employer of choice.
  • The program works from the basis of these strengths to deepen this positive core of the organisation to develop and design innovative strategies and plans.

Top Teams: Talent Quest

  • It takes time and money to recruit staff.
  • Often great staff are hired but their value is not maximised by the organisation.
  • Managers struggle to find how to maximise the strengths of the staff resources they have on hand and often work to fill the gaps.
  • Results in viewing their staff from a deficit perspective.
  • This workshop aims to introduce both managers and teams to a simple but incredibly effective tool to unearth the talents, strengths, skills, interests and passions of the team.
  • Once talents have been identified managers and teams can then work to maximise these talents.
  • Will help in the delegation of tasks, identification of skills required for future recruitment, match skills to position descriptions, partnering staff for different projects and team direction.

Top Teams: Built on the Rock

  • Organisations work hard to recruit and train staff but still there can be something missing.
  • Staff can appear to be underperforming,
  • Not complying with the direction the company is moving in,
  • Competing with each other but not cooperating with each other.
  • Results in time and money wasted on training to encourage staff to perform and conform.
  • The end product is a deficit view and poor appreciation of staff.
  • This team building workshop takes a different approach.
  • Based in Appreciative Inquiry.
  • This approach examines the strengths already available in the organisation and the strengths staff already have and builds strong teams based on these strengths.
  • Working on the strengths will result in a higher performing team and a more successful organisation.
  • Used successfully by a number of large corporations and can work in any organisation.

Introductory Workshop: 2 hours. Further more intensive workshops can be negotiated based on the demands of the organisation

Why SWOT when you can SOAR?

The goto tool for organisations in a designing strategic direction or plan is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). When used appropriately this tool can help form a strategic direction. However, it is often misused and has a number of flaws. An alternative tool is a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results). This tool is based in Appreciative Inquiry and builds on the strengths of the corporation. While not ignoring issues it doesn’t become distracted in perceptions of threat which may be overstated but build on what the organisation is already doing well, on the successes and develops a vision and strategic direction on this basis.

Team Planning Day

  • Commences with the team discussing the organisation’s key planning documents, mission statements and vision statements to assess how they fit into the overall planning strategy of the organisation.
  • The team will work on their own shared vision on how they will meet the aims of the organisation.
  • Followed by a strengths discovery task.
  • The final stage of the workshop will guide the team through a Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results (SOAR) process for the team to develop their own strategic direction or plan.
  • A valuable workshop based in both Asset Based Community Development and Appreciative Inquiry.

Other services offered

  • Workshops – Community Building; Community Development; Community Safety
  • Community Engagement Workshops covering a range of strategies and techniques
  • Design and/or implementation of community engagement strategies
  • Social Policy and Strategic documentation planning
  • Review, Design and Implementation of Community Consultation Strategies and Plans
  • Development and Review of Reconciliation Action Plans
  • Community Consultation
  • Professional mentoring and support of staff involved in community development/community building
  • Grant and other Funding writing
  • Advocacy
  • Community organisation and action
  • Assistance with moving from a top down approach to a Community Led approach