SERVICES FOR PROFESSIONALS
Training & Consultation
Training
I love workshops. I have offered one-day and three-day workshops as well as workshop series to professionals, groups, and agencies for many years. You may have been to workshops that were full of information but were not presented in a manner that allows you to really get your mind wrapped around the information and make it useful to you. Einstein said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, and that is the maxim that drives my workshops. Your imagination for how to use what you learn will drive your growth. I believe in practice, feedback, and useful materials that you can take home with you.
Workshops are offered to individual professionals at affordable prices and any of them can be purchased or contracted by groups or agencies. If you want to be on my mailing list, please email me at wmeleney2@icloud.com or wmeleney2@earthlink.net and put “training list” in the subject bar. If you wish to contract for a workshop, or discuss sponsorship, please contact me by email or phone whenever you are ready. I am always interested in sponsors or co-sponsors and I will be sending announcements periodically as specific opportunities arise.
Now that I am mostly retired from direct client service, I am returning to offering training groups for new professionals and/or students. These groups will meet weekly for about 3 hours for a few months and are specifically focused on learning, practicing and utilizing the language of therapy or counseling. When I was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I had the good fortune to have worked in just such a group for 2 years. This group was led by John Grinder and Richard Bandler before they went on to write the Structure of Magic and the Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson and before they achieved both fame and notoriety when they created Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). The skills I learned from them have been essential to my success and my ability to never be speechless. I have taught these groups in Tucson and Seattle with excellent response from developing professionals and students.
Clients have often told me how helpful I have been to them and one thing I hear quite frequently is that I am very active, direct, and dynamic and that I do lots of different things with clients to facilitate change. What they are observing or experiencing is what I call “planned eclecticism”. Jay Haley once wrote, “make every session count” and that is advice I have taken to heart. To do so, a clinician must, in my opinion, be diligent and intentional about planning every session, even though the best made plans also have to be adaptable. In my planned eclecticism workshops, then, I draw from both my own experience and that of the participants to create a way for every clinician to use his or her knowledge and experience in a way that facilitates change quickly and effectively by organizing and using what they already know in an intentional and individualized way.
When I teach hypnosis, I do so in small groups either in a once-a-week format, or over a three-day weekend or in a once-a-month series. Each session is devoted to learning a particular skill, which is practiced after I have taught the skill and demonstrated its use. We always have time for Q & A and for additional demonstration and didactic learning. And we always have fun.
Likewise, my workshops in Solution-Focused Interviewing are dynamic and skill-centered. You will get lots of practice after the didactic presentation and the demonstration of the skill. This organized and intentional way of conducting a therapeutic interview has become well-known but not often used by professionals. I have had extensive experience with Steve deShazer and Insoo Kim Berg and have taught this method of facilitating change since the mid-80’s at Prescott College, Antioch University and to hundreds of professionals around the Puget Sound.
Consultation
I have been blessed with terrific experience and training and I am happy to offer my thoughts and ideas for how to improve service delivery to any organization or individuals who thinks it might be helpful. I have supervised or trained some of the best clinicians (in my opinion) in the Puget Sound and in southeastern Arizona. I am a certified supervisor for pre-licensing mental health professionals and am available for individual or small group supervision.