Roger G. James
Roger G. James, EdD is a Managing Director of Gelinas James, Inc. He has more than 40 years of experience as an organizational consultant. Prior to forming Gelinas James, Inc., Roger was the Director of Organization Development for Pacific Gas & Electric Company. In that capacity, he managed a consulting group that received the American Society for Training and Development’s national award for consulting excellence.
Roger has specialized in collaborative approaches to complex, comprehensive change, leadership development, and executive coaching in the not-for-profit, for-profit, education, and government sectors.
Roger received his doctorate in Applied Behavioral Sciences from the University of Massachusetts (1978) and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Advanced Program in Organization Development (1984). He serves on the board of Food for People, Arcata Chamber of Commerce, and Brio Baking.
Mary V. Gelinas
Mary V. Gelinas, EdD is a managing director of Gelinas James, Inc. and an author, consultant, educator, executive coach and an integrative thinker devoted to the art of conscious social change.
She is the author of Talk Matters! Saving the World One Word at a Time (2017). As co-author of Space Is Not Empty with Alan Briskin, she brings decades of experience in organizational change, neuroscience, and embodied leadership that is rooted in the belief that awareness, presence, compassion, and conscious choice can transform even the most complex systems. For 20 years, she co-led the Cascadia Center for Leadership with Roger G. James graduating over 500 leaders from all sectors and Native American Sovereign nations. Her long-term clients include Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, Genentech, and the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District. She is an active member of the Conscious Leadership Guild.
To thrive for generations to come, organizations must balance their attention among customers/clients, employees, and resources: communities need to balance their attention among their institutions, the quality of life for all residents, and their resources. Our job is to help our clients make conscious choices about how to achieve this balance and to consider the short and long-term impacts of their decisions.
When we work with clients, we keep the following values and beliefs in the forefront of our minds.
The future need not be a place we approach aimlessly: it can be a place we have the opportunity to shape through our conversations.
Four forces are undermining our ability to work together to create a desired future: (1) the habitual survival, self-protective instincts of the brain; (2) ineffective or destructive patterns of communicating; (3) archaic and ineffective meeting processes; and (4) not paying attention to the fields of energy and information in which we are interacting. By tapping the behavioral and brain sciences along with what we know about fields, contemplative practices and effective human interaction, we can significantly improve how organizations and communities can create a desired future through how they solve problems, make decisions, and develop policies.
Places of work and communities are two of the primary vehicles through which all of us develop, contribute, and find meaning.
They are also the mediums through which we create and pass on beliefs and values, i.e., our culture. It is critical to make conscious choices about the culture we want to create and leave as a legacy to those who are yet to come.
Power is the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done.
Power can come from one’s position, knowledge, competence, vision, experience, passion, presence and relationships. Although some use power to control or dominate others, we can choose instead to use it as an expanding resource. When power is shared through collaborative change processes, It can become an unlimited force for good.
To solve complex and inter-related issues, we need to engage effectively with people who differ from us.
This includes people who have a stake in the issues at hand and who have different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and points of view. This can be very challenging. That is why designing and conducting collaborative processes informed by social psychology, brain science, and field awareness is essential to effectively creating positive and sustainable change.
The change process itself creates change: make it consistent with desired ends.
Building a collaborative and committed workforce requires inviting employees to participate in creating change in organizations. Developing an engaged community requires enlisting the participation of stakeholders in solving problems and developing public policy.
How we talk matters.
How we communicate with one another at work and in our communities affects our emotions along with the quality of our thinking and our ability to work together. Managing ourselves—not letting the more primitive parts of the brain drive our emotions, thoughts, and expressions—is key to being able to interact effectively with others.
