Workplace Skills

Date: Tuesday, September 20
Time: 1 to 4 p.m.
Location: In person, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: BlueHelium
Facilitator: Nina Penner

Overview:

The respectful workplace is one in which all employees are treated fairly; diversity, equity and inclusion is valued; interpersonal communications are positive and collaborative, and conflicts are constructively resolved. In this workshop you will learn how to understand and effectively respond to the intentions and actions of others at work. You will explore how to open the doors of communication and build respectful and trusting communities with your coworkers in a virtual, hybrid work or in person environment.

Key benefits:

• Create a psychologically safe work environment
• Strengthen the work culture of a team
• Improve morale and team communication
• Increase productivity
• Strengthen collaboration among team members

Participants will learn:

• To recognize, value, and support a respectful workplace
• To describe respectful vs. disrespectful behaviours
• To understand the difference between intent and impact
• To understand causes and impacts of disrespectful behaviours
• To effectively respond to inappropriate behaviour as a target and as a witness
• To recognize the communication preferences of others and adjust for better connection
• To create a sense of community with coworkers in a virtual, hybrid or in person work environment

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Date: Thursday, September 29
Time: 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Location: In-person, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: Silver Consulting
Facilitator: Dr. Seth Silver

Why are some work partnerships exceptional while most are not? How can we establish and sustain an enhanced level of cohesion, connection, and collaboration in the most important work relationship, the one between a manager and team? What could remedy the high levels of isolation and anxiety so many feel at work these days?

Workplace relationships are the key to success. In particular, the manager-team relationship is vital to group effectiveness and morale. The Workplace Covenant is a process to develop and maintain respectful, trustworthy, aligned and partnership-oriented relationships. This session outlines the need, the process, and then guides participants to develop a Workplace Covenant^tm for their own group.

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Date: Tuesday, October 4
Time: 9 to 11 a.m.
Location: Virtual Synchronous, Zoom
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: The Soft Skills Group
Facilitator: Diana Kawarsky

How do you make a credible first impression? How do you maintain that credibility at work? How can you gain and keep others’ respect? The techniques you need to analyze your network at-work and hone it for your success. You will learn to effectively self-market yourself for others to better understand your potential and interests. Build your brand and how you are resourced by your colleagues.

Learning Outcomes:

• Communication techniques that allow you to send the right message – every time!
• Learn how to market yourself and tune up your interpersonal skills
• Managing upwards and in all directions
• Adopt techniques for building rapport and achieving trust from your colleagues

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Date: Tuesday, October 5
Time: 10 to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Virtual Synchronous, Zoom
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: Virtual Team Builders
Facilitator: Claire Sookman

What does it take to create productive, high-performance teams in the hybrid workplace? Key components for productivity are mindset, time management, and focus. Your mindset as a leader and the mindset of your team members helps determine whether your team is willing and able to explore new strategies, seek help from others and capitalize on setbacks. Productivity also stems from effective time management, such as how well you tackle interruptions and manage email overload. The most productive people don’t just manage their time well, they also manage their focus and attention, through sharing information in a timely manner.

Success in a hybrid environment requires new ways of thinking and the flexibility to respond and change. In this session we explore how to create powerful mindsets, develop effective time management techniques, and increase focus to boost productivity in the hybrid workplace.

During this session, participants will learn how to:

• Examine our productivity mindset.
• Discuss how to shift our mindset for greater productivity.
• Discuss how to manage challenges to productivity work-life balance issues, inadequate reporting, and inefficient task planning.
• Identify strategies that can increase your productivity for yourself and your hybrid team.

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Date: Thursday, October 6
Time: 1 to 4 p.m.
Location: In class, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: BluHelium
Facilitator: Nina Penner

Overview:

Without trust, our work environments can be stressful, and we can feel like we lack connection and collaboration with our coworkers. In this workshop, you will learn the specific behaviours that inspire trust and how to incorporate them into your work. Sometimes trust is broken or becomes eroded, and you will learn how to restore a trust based working relationship. 

Key benefits:

• Enhance collaboration
• Open lines of communication
• Deepen working relationships
• Increase morale and motivation
• Enhance credibility and influence
• Improve performance and results

Participants will learn:

• Why trust is important
• The important elements of trust
• How to build trust with your coworkers, leaders and stakeholders
• What to do when others enter the working relationship lacking trust
• How to rebuild trust once it is eroded or broken

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Date: Tuesday, October 26
Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Location: In person, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: Anita Brisson
Facilitator: Anita Brisson

Purpose or rationale for this subject covers the basic concepts and functions of project management, and their integration into a coherent project management framework. The content focuses for new project managers, team and technical leads, team members and those with no formal PM training. It is also a wonderful refresher for those that need to spouse up their PM skills.

This very intensive, one day, hands-on workshop using actual project allows participants to apply their new skills immediately. The emphasis throughout the course is on making project management easy to understand and apply in the workplace.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Define the problem and establish specific and measurable targets
• Find, analyze and properly plan for project risks and threats
• Quickly breakdown the work/tasks into manageable units
• Create a workable schedule that everyone can understand and use
• Carry out effective project meetings
• Close the project properly and save useful documents

The course will provide students with a basic understanding of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) as a defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Earn 1 PDU for every hour of this session.

Instructor Name: Anita Brisson, PMP, CLSSBB, MBA, BBA

Instructor Bio: Anita Brisson has over 20 years of extensive hands-on experience in project management, administering new business projects, contracts and multi-million dollar progressive programs within telecom, data management, IT, construction, health care and aerospace industries. The same sense of responsibility and project management skills were necessary regardless of the industry. Anita has demonstrated a unique talent for problem solving and had become the “go-to” person for troubleshooting within any program. Her strong leadership skills bring cohesiveness, clarity, and mutual sense of purpose to any multi-discipline team, which is imperative for project success. Because of her dynamic and interactive style, Anita can deliver superior results on-time and within budget.

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Date: Tuesday, November 1
Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Location: In person, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: The Soft Skills Group
Facilitator: Diana Kawarsky

Date: Thursday, November 10
Time: 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Virtual Synchronous, Zoom
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: Silver Consulting
Facilitator: Seth Silver

This session provides participants with the Personal Style Inventory (PSI, a short self-scored version of Myers-Briggs). In the session you will learn your Myers-Briggs style (e.g. ESTJ), the meaning of this, and have a chance to create an action plan around how to best use your styles and how to use the styles of others to get what you need. 

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Date: Thursday, December 1
Time: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location: Virtual Synchronous, Zoom
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: The Soft Skills Group
Facilitator: Diana Kawarsky

More and more minute-taking skills are in demand in today's fast-paced work world. Companies that have individuals with these skills ensure reliable and accurate minutes that outline individual responsibilities and deadlines, provide accountability structures for management follow-up and save time by limiting everyone attending repetitious meetings.

In this workshop you will learn:

• to produce professional minutes quickly
• to prepare for a meeting, conduct yourself as a meeting minute taker and follow-up effectively
• accountability of the minute taker and successful collaboration with the meeting chair person

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Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Time: 1 to 4 p.m.
Location: In person, SHA018
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: BluHelium
Facilitator: Nina Penner

Overview:

For us to realize our full potential and thrive in our careers, we must learn to recognize our preferences, strengths and what inspires us to succeed. We must gain insights into the interpersonal challenges faced by our coworkers and ourselves and develop strategies for addressing them. In this workshop, using the robust insights you will gain from completing a DISC Behavioural Styles assessment, you will learn how to recognize key behaviours and preferences in yourself and others and identify where shifts are required to increase trust and collaboration and create stronger working relationships.

Key benefits:

• Expand capacity to leverage behavioural strengths to achieve results
• Better understand the behaviour of others
• Elevate engagement and foster collaboration
• Increase ability to meet the needs of others
• Cultivate deeper working relationships
• Enrich communication and build trust
• Increase productivity and results

Participants will learn:

• To recognize their DISC behavioural style
• To leverage the strengths of their behavioural style for better creativity, productivity and results
• How to “speed read” the behavioural styles of others
• To appreciate the differences in others
• To better serve and influence others by flexing their behavioural style
• To cultivate trust with others by demonstrating the behaviours that connect with them
• To consider the communication styles of others for improved interactions and decision making

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Date: Thursday, February 2, 2023
Time: 9 a.m. to noon
Location: Virtual Synchronous, Zoom
Target Audience: All faculty and staff
Company: The Soft Skills Group
Facilitator: Diana Kawarsky

Want to Give Feedback? Rather Try Feedforward!

Focusing on solutions, rather than mistakes, on the future, rather than the past, will enhance the self-image of business leaders and employees alike and propel them on the road to success.

This is a high impact 90 mins online Zoom session where you will learn how to transform feedback into feedforward information. Your work relationships will improve when you orient your words to emphasize the future, leverage time effectively and ensure mutual understanding.

Upon successful completion you will be able to learn how to accept and learn from both positive and negative feedback; create clear, concise feedback messages that will be heard and understood; and rephrase blunt wording for improved communication.

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