Lonnie S. Weiss
Senior Consultant

Expertise

Lonnie Weiss is a specialist in consensus building and multi-party collaboration. She designs and facilitates meetings and interventions when agreement matters. Lonnie brings masterful facilitation to complex issues. She crafts and leads highly interactive working sessions where people move from conflict to collaboration, exceed their own expectations and achieve their intended goals. Her work is strengths and assets based, incorporating principles of effective group dynamics, strategic planning, adult learning and consensus building.

Clients

Lonnie has supported major policy development task forces, regional planning initiatives and strategic planning processes. Much of her work is on projects addressing issues that span multiple organizations across both the public and private sectors. Her clients include federal agencies (US Departments of Defense, Transportation and Interior), state agencies (New Jersey Departments of Human Services and Transportation), local governments (Mercer County NJ, City of Philadelphia), not-for-profit organizations (National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, National Children’s Alliance, American Bar Association, Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, University of Pennsylvania), and home health care services (Bayada Nurses).

Representative Engagements

• Facilitating From Conflict to Collaboration: Twenty years of fighting had failed to resolve the traffic congestion on a stretch of road in a college community. Animosity and distrust characterized the relationship among neighbors, business owners, the university, and public officials. As part of the Environmental Impact Statement project team, Lonnie introduced meeting methods and facilitation skills that conveyed fairness, de-escalated tense situations, and galvanized the process. She designed and led two innovative synthesis workshops where agreement was found on remaining issues. A final decision was reached with no lawsuits (a significant measure of success) and with a stronger sense of community among former combatants.
• Clinical Leadership Development: Meeting the challenges of unprecedented growth and complexity in the home health care industry requires investment in clinical leadership. Lonnie was part of the Liberty team working closely with clinical leaders to successfully retain clinical staff in a period of deep organization culture change. Creating common language and expectations for the leader population, as well as helping them develop as leaders and clinicians, led to significant savings in the implementation of a new operating model.
• Planning From Strengths: A statewide coalition of victim services organizations was approaching their 30th anniversary and wanted to crystallize their vision for how to truly make the world a safer place. Lonnie designed and led an Appreciative Inquiry strategic planning process. Leaders, members and staff first uncovered existing strengths and the positive core of the organization. Building on their assets, they then envisioned their desired future and framed provocative and ambitious strategic goal areas. They crafted a proactive strategic vision that may serve as a solid foundation for their next 30 years.
• Developing Policy from Common Ground: Three separate professions, all operating with integrity from good intentions, kept colliding in a particular type of legal case in courts across the country. Leaders of the three professions were brought together in a national policy development task force. Lonnie designed and facilitated a process that created a climate of trust where there had been animosity. With a structured method in which to advocate their views, disclose their motivations, engage their intellect and find common ground, these leaders bridged their entrenched differences and published policy and practice recommendations that are being implemented nation-wide today in the three professions.

Professional Background

Lonnie has been affiliated with Liberty Business Strategies since early 2008. Prior to establishing her consulting and facilitation practice in 1994, Lonnie was a total quality management consultant with Joiner Associates. There she consulted to corporate manufacturing managers, trained and supported cadres of internal consultants, and developed and led national seminars on how to use teams to improve quality. Lonnie has extensive experience consulting in the government and not-for-profit sectors. She specializes in bringing together multiple stakeholders to develop workable solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Lonnie co-authored the best-selling The Team Handbook at Joiner Associates, co-authored Building United Judgment: A Handbook for Consensus Decision Making with The Center for Conflict Resolution, and contributed a case to the monograph Deep Lessons on Collaboration: How Collaboration Really Works. She recently presented at two professional conferences on the critical role of design in assuring the success of complex meetings and events.

Education and Training

Lonnie holds an MA in Organizational Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BS in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. She has earned the designation Certified Professional Facilitator and has pursued advanced studies in Appreciative Inquiry, adult learning methods, conflict resolution and continuous quality improvement.

Professional Affiliations

International Association of Facilitators
Appreciative Inquiry Consulting
Philadelphia Appreciative Practitioner Alliance
Philadelphia Region Organization Development Network

Lonnie Weiss can be reached at:  
phone: (610) 649-3800
lonnieweiss@libertystrategies.com