MILTON, VT / ACCESSWIRE / January 25, 2023 / The power of collaboration is perhaps one of the most crucial prerequisites required to unleash productivity and creativity in an organization. Ensuring effective collaboration in huge and challenging work environments is not an easy task. Since human beings belong to diverse cultural and social backgrounds, their values and perceptions can also vary significantly. In a diverse organizational structure, productive collaborations heavily depend on the nature of social and professional interactions among the members. There needs to be a supportive and inclusive environment for people from different backgrounds to work together toward a common goal. In reality, varying perspectives often cause undesirable delays in decision-making and, most of the time, affect organizational goals adversely. However, research by the NeuroLeadership Institute reveals that diverse groups outperform homogenous groups in terms of productivity and creativity, provided there exists an inclusive work culture acknowledging everyone's perspectives. Fulcrum Connection, a Vermont-based performance improvement, and facilitation platform, seeks to eliminate barriers to working together by providing empowerment skills and group experience in order to flourish creativity.

Fulcrum Connection believes that employees require professional support to deal with conflicts of interest within a group and align their goals with organizational goals. In order to achieve this, the platform provides speaking events, workshops, training facilitation, and podcasts. Professional facilitation, one of the major services offered by the company, is led by its founder and president Valerie Patrick. According to Fulcrum Connection, in a corporate environment, facilitation is all about making it easy and convenient for groups to achieve their goals. The facilitation is aimed at providing professional management of dysfunctional behavior, enabling the project or team leader to participate, enhancing meeting efficiency, increasing ROI or the value of the meeting outcomes relative to total costs, and bringing accountability to the group through high engagement.

Commenting on the importance of a professional facilitator, Valerie Patrick says, "The facilitator is really the person who enables creativity to flourish in a group, which is key to solving problems and coming up with ideas to change things for the better. A professional facilitator guides the group in solving different business problems or implementing required changes to improve the business. Once you get people together in a group, they either intentionally or inadvertently behave in ways that squash the creativity of others. So that's why a facilitator is really important".

Fulcrum Connection is committed to changing the common perception of facilitation and utilizing it for the betterment of collaborative work culture in organizations. Facilitation is not an easy exercise when it comes to the desired outcomes of the process. Making it easy for a group to achieve its goal is hard. According to the platform, people think they can do it themselves until they find out they can't, and they get into trouble. The situation becomes even worse when there exists diversity in the group. However, Valerie Patrick believes that when the group has diversity of thought and perspectives, it becomes powerful in terms of its productivity and creativity. More diverse groups tend to be more creative, which again gets back to the idea of the ability to solve tough challenges and come up with good ideas to improve things for the better. However, Fulcrum Connection's facilitation service ensures an inclusive environment that respects individual differences and opinions in order to develop collaboration among members. Creating such an environment is a challenging task. The platform is achieving it by structuring meetings or events to bring diverse perspectives toward the organization's common goal.

The facilitation provided by the platform is of two different forms. The first one is for professional organizations and the second is for individuals in the organization. In fact, Fulcrum will be offering a new series of courses on LearnDesk in 2023 called ‘How To Empower Yourself To Get Creative'. As the facilitator, Valerie Patrick also provides instructional design and training as a way to impart certain essential empowerment skills. She provides training for professional organizations like the American Chemical Society, Society for Neuroscience, and The American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She has also designed a whole curriculum for leadership training aiming to impart social and professional skills. The platform also focuses on other facilitations like training in sustainability and climate change, innovation, and creativity skills. Apart from this facilitation training, Fulcrum Connection has also developed a course on how to lead a group through strategic planning. This course is based on the specific demands and requirements of different organizations.

Valerie Patrick founded Fulcrum Connection in 2013. She was a chemical engineer by profession. After spending 25 years in the corporate world working in different roles, including entry-level technical positions, research management, and head of sustainability, among others, she founded her own platform. Valerie is a Certified Professional Facilitator (through the International Association of Facilitators), a trained Creative Problem Solving Facilitator (through CPSB), and a member of the Association for Talent Development. She established Fulcrum Connection with the aim of unleashing the power of collaboration by eliminating the barrier to working together. She has developed her own process of facilitation that can be customized as per the specific requirements of different organizations.

"I establish some social norms at the beginning of the session that helps people behave in ways that are supportive of what we are trying to do in the session. And then I provide the participants with level-setting content in order to support the process and to ensure that everyone is at the same level when it comes to knowledge. I also ensure that the session is at least 50% interactive so that the group will be active throughout the session", Valerie concluded.

About Fulcrum Connection

Fulcrum Connection is headquartered in Vermont and was founded by Valerie Patrick. The company specializes in instructional design, training, speaking, facilitation, and consulting to develop skills in leadership, innovation, sustainability, troubleshooting teamwork, and managing technical professionals.

Media Contact:

Valerie Patrick
valerie.patrick@fulcrumconnection.com

SOURCE: Fulcrum Connection