Classes & certificates

Studies are revealing that a large percentage of adults nationwide suffer from abusive childhoods, PTSD, grief from loss and/or other traumatizing events. The ability of individuals to recover from trauma varies widely, and the impacts often carry over into the workplace; affecting performance and reactions to stress. Right now, employees are also dealing with a “quademic” — the combined effects of the pandemic, widening social inequality and injustice, the polarization of political discourse and the rise of global warming. As a result, the prevalence of workers experiencing genuine trauma is surging. This class will focus on what individual managers can do to recognize and respond to members of their team who are struggling. We will navigate through how to be compassionate without running afoul of employment laws or abandoning work standards and job descriptions. Participants will learn how to deal with worker trauma in ways that go beyond simple expressions of empathy while protecting confidentiality. Specific how-to approaches and what to avoid will be explored. Leaders themselves may need to recognize their own trauma and find ways to strengthen their resilience and find resources for support. The two class instructors are an expert in organizational well-being and an employment law attorney. They will be your guides to navigate effectively in this important new area.

Conflict can open us to new possibilities and deepen our relationships. This workshop will help you embrace both-and thinking, transforming conflict into win-win solutions. Discover how to increase your comfort in dealing with conflict and to build more trust and communication in relationships.

Project management protocols don't often account for the changes in attitude and behavior that people will need to make to ensure the successful adoption of change. This workshop will focus on the integration of change management and project management processes and tools.

Advance your project management skills by diving deep into some of the critical components of managing a project. Going beyond the basics of project management creates a culture of learning, accountability, transparency, high performance and successful delivery.

We're seeing more organizations with employees who work from home, live in other states and often live in other countries. "Lead from a distance" by understanding the challenges and best practices. Build trust, navigate conflict, make decisions and conduct engaging meetings with virtual staff.

Gain an understanding of the mechanics of managing a meeting well. Learn to develop an agenda, manage meeting dynamics, deal with disruptive behavior, keep the meeting on track, track assignments and record the decisions and actions of the group. The session includes templates and models.

Gain foundational knowledge and explore best practices in project management to build the personal knowledge, skill and confidence you need to effectively lead projects. Whether you're leading your first project or looking for strategies to ensure project success, you will benefit from this class.

This specially designed class will focus on the how-tos of adopting a coaching style for giving work performance feedback. This is a class for leaders and managers who are ready to learn this approach and who want to understand and practice the key elements to utilize them right away.

Communication across cultures often breaks down due to basic cultural differences that are misunderstood and frequently invisible. We introduce you to tools that enable you to identify and understand cultural differences and lay a foundation for strong cultural competency, domestically and globally.

Identify behaviors, create strategies that help you manage multiple priorities and handle interruptions so you are more effective at work. Cover the myth of multitasking, how daily goals and objectives lead to success, strategies and best practices in putting out fires and doing more than one job.

This class will use the DiSC® assessment instrument to build self-awareness and explore the many facets that shape the way we see our world and function at work. By incorporating neuroscience and the DiSC® framework, we will learn to better understand our perspectives, identify and adapt to the perspectives of others, and to capture insightful synergies. We will discuss how to use tools and strategies to make this process easier so we can discover more options and solutions in our teams and projects.

There are many myths about what managers can and should do to support employee work performance, satisfaction and engagement. Learn what decades of real-world management experience reveal about best practices and tools, plus gain insights into today's diverse and fast-moving environments.

This class will help build foundational knowledge of Scrum and equip you with skills to effectively manage, lead or be a member of a Scrum team. You will learn what kinds of projects call for an Agile Scrum approach.

Examine the core aspects of servant leadership. Topics for the five-day program are: Servant Leadership Foundations, Personal and Organizational Challenges of Servant Leadership, Serving Customers/Clients/Citizens, Servant Leadership at the Team and Organizational Level and Connecting Servant Leadership to Community and the World.

A key challenge for today's leaders is helping employees to understand the need for change. They must help employees discover new ways of working and embracing these new ideas. We explore strategies for communicating the need for change and building employee commitment to that change.

Explore leadership characteristics and ways to strengthen your organization and support others' work. Learn about different leadership styles, public perceptions of leadership by sector and servant-leadership basics. Develop a personal leadership philosophy that contributes to your mission.

This highly interactive class will be held on two mornings separated by a week with some prework. Great workplace teams don't just happen. Leaders build them. A helpful tool for team leaders is Gallup's CliftonStrengths™. This well-researched and established assessment instrument enables individuals and groups to identify and explore 34 themes that describe the diverse talents we all have. Discover the strongest talents within yourself and your team members. Gain important insights and leverage potential that could go untapped. Use knowledge of team member strengths to assign tasks or projects, facilitate collaboration, improve decision-making, and more. Build your strategic awareness so you can leverage your team's talents and lead with authenticity and confidence.

This class is designed for human resources managers, staff supervisors/managers and others who work with employees experiencing various losses. It shares information, strategies, tools and resources to best support employees to heal and grow in the midst of these losses.

Get a deep knowledge and effective tools that mid-level functional and technical managers need to lead within their immediate areas of responsibility and impact the success of their wider organizations. The certificate consists of seven required courses. Take up to three years to complete this certificate.

The purpose of this final step in the Project Management (PM) Certificate is to give learners an opportunity to individually discuss their personal goals for applying best practices and skills of project management, to review important aspects of managing projects, to ask questions to further their learning and to demonstrate that they have achieved at least a basic level of understanding of project management.