Our Approach
Captains Courageous Adventures take you straight to the heart - the place from which life is led through wisdom, caring, strength and joy. We support and challenge you toward greater freedom, satisfaction and success in all areas of life, and toward demonstrating the power of your heart for yourself and for your world.
How We Facilitate
Our approach is grounded in our trust that each person has within them the inherent wisdom and ability to find their own answers and overcome their own limitations. We do our best work when we simply support each person into greater awareness, so they can make more conscious choices leading to greater effectiveness and happiness - for themselves, their families, their organizations, and their world.
~
We create an atmosphere in which each person is encouraged to explore and express their very best. We provide an environment of safety, challenge and fun. We engage participants in their own learning, both about themselves and about fellow participants. We demonstrate and foster honest heartfelt communication. We facilitate courageously to assist each person to acknowledge what's so and self-correct or self-congratulate as appropriate. We encourage participants to learn from their own behavior and that of others so that they may develop their own patterns of “best practices.”
~
We incorporate the classic adventure learning methodology of “learning plus reflection” whereby (1) participants are introduced to an activity with inherent uncertainty, (2) they engage, (3) they step back to observe their action and draw meaning from it (cause and effect), and (4) they look toward future application and generalization of the learning.
~
We introduce targeted and tested concepts, skills and frameworks as appropriate to the content and outcomes of our programs, both as built into the curricula and also as responses to the experiences and concerns of our participants.
~
We incorporate and model a balanced focus on people, process and product ("3 P's") throughout our events as a strategy for success and satisfaction and as a framework for self-assessment and feedback.
~
We use everything that happens as a source of learning. We find value in the premise that “how you do anything is how you do everything” (e.g., how you steer the boat often reflects how you steer your life). This gives our participants a very rich body of information and experience from which to implement and integrate learning.
~
We use elements of surprise and unfamiliarity to great advantage, both for learning whatever is to be learned, as well as for ingraining a greater sense of resilience, responsiveness and self-confidence in the midst of change. To that end, we are willing to alter our agenda at any time to meet both the immediate and the overall learning needs of our participants.
~
We love our participants, our work, our environment, and ourselves.
Our Basic Tenets
Personal Responsibility
Each person has the innate wisdom and capability to resolve whatever situations they may face.
Success and satisfaction boil down to making choices about how to respond to what is.
Choice is facilitated by observation. Neutral observation is a necessary portal to personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is a necessary portal to personal effectiveness.
The experience of an event is based less on the event itself than on the interpretation of the event.
Simple awareness is often curative.
Small things done consistently in strategic places create major impact -- for better or worse.
Energy follows thought.
Change
Whatever is to be learned, developed or changed is necessarily outside the comfort zone.
Resistance shows up (in many forms) at the boundary of the comfort zone.
Whatever is resisted is strengthened and amplified by the energy of resistance.
Real change requires honest acknowledgement of the resistance to change.
Real change requires alignment of thought, feeling and action.
External circumstances and one's internal environment often mirror each other. Therefore, responding to or effecting change in external circumstances requires internal shifts and alignment.
The greater wisdom lies in the heart, not the head…and both are necessary.
Organizations
In any group or organization, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
An organization is a living entity of diverse yet inter-related and interdependent people. Through their words, attitudes and actions, people impact each other mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Each impact affects the organization as a whole and even beyond.
The law of analogy ("as above, so below; as within, so without") applies to individuals relative to the organizational environment, and to organizations relative to their environments.
Effective organizations meet and master their challenges by calling upon the individual and collective wisdom and capabilities of their people.
The primary job of the leader/facilitator/trainer/consultant is to assist individuals and organizations to tap and express their own individual and collective wisdom and capability to affect positive change.
Working Together
The goal of "win/win" is very possible. Its achievement lies in revising the perception of separateness to the perception of oneness.
Team-generated solutions to a problem are often superior to individual solutions. Team-generated solutions are almost always more quickly and effectively implemented than individual solutions.
Good teamwork makes more of the individuals, not less.
Success and satisfaction in all endeavors requires a balanced focus on "the 3 P's." If any one aspect is out of balance, all three aspects will suffer. The 3 P’s are:
Product (the results or outcome of the endeavor)
Process (appropriate, effective and efficient means for working together)
People (the personal and relational needs of those involved)
Effective collaboration requires the three elements of know-HOW:
Honoring (self, others, the outcome, the process, the organization)
Openness (to & about myself, to and about you, new approaches, changes)
Willingness (to stay engaged, to do what's needed, to be open, & honest)