• US Probation Department – Eastern Michigan District
• VHA-Novation-HPPI
• Northwest Regional Education Laboratories

• Spirit-Centered Leaders
• Servant Leaders
• Situational Leaders
• Strategic Leaders

Our activities get to the heart of leadership by helping participants discern their personal mission, purpose and passion for leading others. Using introspective and inter-personal processes, participants look at their own behaviors, attitudes, skills and knowledge as well as the practices that make them effective, value-based role models. Discussions and decisions also center on identifying personal and organizational barriers to effective leadership and the bridges that can help leaders overcome those barriers. Finally, the program provides a venue for leaders to share self-care and service strategies, which enable them to not only take care of themselves, but also be of maximum personal and professional service to others.

Duration: 2 days
Maximum # of participants: 20
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout , Jewel Ware, Sylvia High, Cynthia Henderson, Toby Causby

• Mission-orientation
• Values discernment and integration
• Relationship building
• Motivation and morale enhancement
• Leadership styles
• Internal customer service and promotion of servant leadership
• Accountability factors
• Cultural agreements
• Climate indicators
• Meaningful recognition and rewards
• Self-care and stress management

The program uses interactive and experiential activities, small group dialogues as well as facilitated discussions designed to help leaders assess the intra-personal, inter-personal and organizational dynamics that enable or impede each of the issues listed above. Leaders learn and share key actions and best practices for creating an environment, which builds spirit and community at work.

Duration: 2 days
Maximum # of participants: 20 per facilitator
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout , Jewel Ware, Sylvia High, Toby Causby

• Women Employed, Inc.
• The Donors Forum of Chicago
• Chicago Department of Human Services
• The Corporation for National Service - Illinois Office

Healing and Health: Conflict & Change Management Support

Is there a discontent that is moving through your organization? Its’ symptoms include resentment, tension, disillusionment, high turnover, passive-aggressive behavior or all out anger. Has the speed of change left people confused, tired and feeling abandoned? Do unresolved or negative issues and circumstances of the past still pervade the culture and poison the climate? Then healing is in order, so that your people and the organization can return to good health.

This one day retreat program offers leaders and personnel to come together in an emotionally and vocationally safe environment, created by the facilitator and deal with the issues, feelings, and perceptions that impact the health of the organization and welfare of its members. The program includes:

• Grounding all participants in the values and mission of the organization
• Providing an overview of why and how conflict occurs, how people’s reactions can reduce or promote continued discontent, and what processes can allow people to address their own issues while promoting peace in the organization
• Developing individual and group intentions for the healing process and working environment
• Engaging in an objective historical retrospective of issues, circumstances, practices and feelings
• Addressing the “misses”: challenging misperceptions, clarifying miscommunication, dealing with misunderstanding, and empathizing with misery
• Designing new communication, relationship building, decision-making processes, and clarifying policies and roles/responsibilities of leaders
• Creating new traditions and protocols for colleague, leader and team interactions
• Engaging in a Gestalt, sharing circle enabling each member to give and receive balanced feedback to one another, and to provide insight into and take ownership of, what they consider to be their positive or negative contribution to the conflict, team and the organization.
• Developing personal behavioral and attitudinal commitments
• Creating a process for on-going monitoring and evaluation of conflict and peace processes

The facilitators of this program are trained in group work, therapeutic social work, conflict management and mediation, psychotherapy and organization development. This ensures that the process, though at times intense, will be safe and professionally managed so that underlying issues can be addressed and resolved. Participants in this process will face their own personal and professional issues, address team or departmental issues, and address organizational and leadership-related concerns.

Duration: 1.5 days
Maximum # of participants: 15 per facilitator
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout , Jewel Ware, Sylvia High, Cynthia Henderson

• Group building and trust building
• Engagement in servant leadership principles to guide the process
• Visioning and conceptualizing
• Historical – retrospective assessment
• Identification of themes, issues and challenges
• Focus on core areas of development: people, programs/projects, client/customer-related practices, and more
• Engagement in outcome-based planning identifying short-term and long-term goals, resource input and allocation, timelines and milestones, roles and responsibilities
• Development of evaluation mechanisms for the plan
• Development of communication and decision-making processes
• Development of a leadership advisory team with representatives of all stakeholder groups for monitoring and change management
• Identification of challenges and barriers that may hinder roll-out, and their subsequent solutions using opportunity thinking activities

The program includes fun, interactive planning, team building and leadership development activities every three hours so that in addition to developing a comprehensive plan, participants also learn how to work more effectively together, build relationships, problem solve, and become enthusiastic servant leaders.

Duration: 3 days
Maximum # of participants: 20
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout , Kathleen Osta, Cynthia Henderson

TeamUP: Team Building

It has been said that we can learn more about a person in a day of play than in a week at work. Team building however is more than just fun and games…though those are the BEST learning activities. Team building is a process in which people learn how to work together as a cohesive work group. They are galvanized and energized to work toward common goals to achieve uncommon results, individually and collectively. This fun,
highly interactive program can help a team:

• Form, storm, norm and perform
• Build trust
• Create synergy
• Identify a vision and core values
• Build substantive relationships
• Learn how to problem-solve
• Learn how to develop, and execute, a project plan
• Identify the heart, hands, feet, eyes and mind of the team
• Develop communication and decision making processes
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in abilities, knowledge and skills of members
• Develop character and courage among members encouraging them to take risks
• Learn and appreciate work styles and personality styles
• Identify and resolve conflicts
• Address leadership issues
• Create plans for moving ahead with team/employee development, cross-team development, project management and more
• Learn and share skills so that cross-training occurs
• Become motivated and inspired

There are no bones about it, this is a fun, entertaining and meaningful process. Each of our facilitators is trained in experiential learning methodologies, and the lead facilitator – Bob Schout – is certified in outdoor and high ropes experiential education activities. Fun, challenge, personal growth and organizational impact are guaranteed.

Duration: 2 days
Maximum # of participants: 18 per facilitator
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout , Jewel Ware, Sylvia High, Cynthia Henderson

PowerSkills – working in concert with organizations such as retreat centers, spas, churches, and even vacation destinations – creates opportunities, specialized presentations and retreat programs that nurture the personal and spiritual growth of all people. Our programs can be condensed into short, yet powerful presentations, or extended to include interactive and introspective activities which allow participants to discern the answers and wisdom that they search for, over a short periods of time.

We work with organizations to incorporate into our programs, the principles and practices that are the cornerstones of their philosophy for spiritual, mental, and physical health and wellness.

This program uses inspirational stories, personal reflection and anecdotes, individual discernment and decision making exercises, and lively group discussions to help each participant realize their potential, their gifts and their purpose. The process enables relationships to be healed, goals to be set, habitual challenges to be overcome, and the mind and Spirit to be set free. The program’s components include:

• Learning how to be prosperity focused and developing an orientation of abundance
• Discerning purpose and mission in life
• Investing in integrity, principles and values
• Setting heart-based goals for work and life
• Overcoming pitfalls and set-backs
• Forgiving of self and others: learning, letting go and moving on
• Paying it forward and serving humanity
• Self-care and nurturing the Spirit within

Bob and Janet are personal life coaches who have helped hundreds of people discern their purpose in life, identify and overcome the internal and external obstacles that get in their way, and create the life that they’ve always dreamed about.

Duration: 2 days
Maximum # of participants: 20 per facilitator
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout and Janet Ellis

This exciting program is facilitated by Bob Schout and Hilario Leyba. Bob is a pastoral counselor and spiritual-life coach who as facilitated personal and spiritual growth programs
for thousands of people across the country. Hilario is a physical fitness consultant, and trainer, who has helped people learn and develop customized physical and nutritional programs that build the body, mind and spirit.

• Developing a vision for change and growth, and setting meaningful goals: assessing your current state of physical, mental and spiritual health; assessing what you want to change and why, what approach may be best for you and how to map out a plan that works for you.
• Engaging in healthy eating, taking in what is nutritious for a healthy body, mind, attitude and life. Looking at the actual physical, mental and spiritual food that we ingest, and what it does to our bodies. Assessing what is nutritious and the size and frequency of our spiritual and mental meals. Cutting out the fat and the high sugar foods – like negative self-talk and gossip – that taste good but are not good for you.
• Understanding why stretching and breathing are critical to building muscles physically and spiritually, and learning exercises that help you stretch your body and mind, embrace what has been difficult to embrace, forgive yourself and others, let go of old attitudes and beliefs, and move on to create the body and life that you’ve always dreamed of.
• Learning how to tone your physical and spiritual body through self-care and service. Learning cardio and balancing exercises for building your heart muscle through loving service to others, boundary setting and much more.
• Practicing pressing and building key muscle groups by focusing on one unresolved issue or one aspect of your personal and spiritual life and working it from all angles so that you begin to shape the experience into one that has meaning in your life.
• Preventing injury and getting support by assessing whether or not you are overusing muscles and suffering from compassion fatigue, straining your muscles because of ego and following the crowd, and working out while sustaining tears or fractures due to unresolved issues. Learn how to get the right spot when you’re lifting extra weight, and assess what kind of trainer or coach is right for you.
• Learning conditioning exercises including prayer and meditation that keep your physical and spiritual body lean, relaxed, agile and in shape for a lifetime.

This program is designed to help participants learn physical exercises, engage in mental gymnastics to overcome negative thoughts, and build spiritual muscle. Participants are guaranteed to sweat, learn, and feel alive.

Duration: 2.5 days
Maximum # of participants: 30
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout and Hilario Levba

• Learn to enter the inner sanctum of your soul and rest in the silence
• Understand your oneness with, and relationship to, God, more fully
• Practice the art of centering the self and basking in the Presence
• Learn and practice meditations that help you forgive, let go, grow in wisdom and insight, affirm prosperity, manifest and receive abundance, and engage in healing
  of the mind and body
• Learn deep breathing exercises
• Gain insight and understanding into mediations from various religious traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Sufi, and more
• Understand various faith perspectives and meditate on ancient prayers
• Write your own prayers and meditations

Your facilitator, Bob Schout, is trained in interdenominational pastoral studies, is a prayer chaplain coordinator and a spiritual teacher, and has written at length on the topics of meditation and prayer. Through this process Bob shares with you his simple meditations – G.A.T.E., A.M.E.N., J.O.Y., and many more – so that you can enter the silence, rest in comfort, gain insight and learn to practice the Presence in your daily life.

Duration: 2 days
Maximum # of participants: 20
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout

Happiness and Prosperity: Why some people get it and others don't

This program is an entertaining look at why and how people live in the flow of happiness and receive gifts of prosperity day in and day out…and why others never seem to feel content or are able to harvest abundance in their lives. The program is based on interviews with dozens of people who seem to have a never-ending supply of joy and happiness, and an abundance of opportunities, money, relationships and health in their lives. Anecdotes, stories and lessons are shared with participants. Participants are then provided with opportunities through small group discussion and introspective reflection, to assess their own lives, beliefs, behaviors and attitudes; enabling them to discern the bridges and blocks to their own prosperity and happiness.

Listed below is a sample of lessons related to the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs the HAVE’S (those that have happiness and prosperity) and the HAVE NOT’S (those that never seem to find it or open themselves to receiving abundance). During the retreat each lesson is conveyed in humorous anecdotal form, through story-telling and demonstrations of practical application.

Our facilitators provide group coaching, quiet space, and personal encounters each of which help participants safely and joyously turn within to discover the patterns and possibilities that hinder and help them grow and prosper.

Duration: 1 days
Maximum # of participants: 30 per facilitator
Facilitator(s) may include: Bob Schout, Sylvia High, Janet Ellis, Toby Causby, Jewel Ware