Continuing Education
Professional Development
Course Listings
Developing Effective Speaking and Leadership Skills
Effectively Handling Uncomfortable Situations and Difficult Employees
Exploring Business Ethics
Managing Conflict in the Workplace
Managing Stress for Better Communication
Open Your I s: Improving Interpersonal Interactions
Optimizing Your Time and Abilities
Polishing Your Documents
Presenting With Pizzazz
Sharpening Your Listening Skills
Uncovering the Winning Style of Management
Understanding Group Dynamics
Walking the Walk, Talking the Talk
Writing That Works
Developing Effective Speaking and Leadership Skills
Poised communication and effective leadership enhance your professional image and increase opportunities toward advancement. Use the classroom as an interactive learning environment to develop confidence and competence in leadership and speaking situations as you:
- Explore different speaking techniques essential to business communication
- Uncover secrets to effective leadership
- Practice new skills in a variety of realistic situations
Peer interaction and coursework tailored to the participants' learning needs make each class unique and practical. Course materials serve as a reminder and reference for putting your skills into practice.
Effectively Handling Uncomfortable Situations and Difficult Employees
Through the ages, the workplace has challenged professionals with awkward situations and problematic employees. Unwanted behaviors and actions disrupt the flow of business and impede productivity. To help you hurdle this obstacle this open forum workshop offers a unique opportunity to discuss offensive and disruptive behaviors and circumstances. Consider the root of behaviors and actions. Troubleshoot ways of properly discussing and quelling the behaviors and actions. Understand possible legalities that protect certain behaviors and actions. Don't miss the chance to remove the distressing and unavoidable roadblock to your professional success.
Exploring Business Ethics
Inevitably we're all faced with ethical dilemmas in the workplace - ones that challenge the integrity of our own company's moral fiber. Because today's workplace is so demanding and busy, professionals may not take time to sift through and sort out their moral questions and predicaments. As it encourages professionals to speak freely about real-life situations, the course will help you to think through common, mind-boggling work quandaries. Examine the options. Choose the course of action that suits your goals and values, while also maintaining the company's ethical standards. Don't miss this chance to empower yourself with clearer thinking and principled resolve.
Managing Conflict in the Workplace
The workplace is full of conflict. Many perceive it as only negative when, in fact, conflict can be pivotal to moving forward with sound decisions. To make quick and comprehensive resolutions, coworkers must communicate with specialized communication skills. The workshop aims to develop skills in handling defensiveness, gaining commitment, strategizing for resolution, and decision-making. An experienced instructor, pragmatic exercises, and useful workbook virtually guarantee future successes in your resolving conflicts at work.
Managing Stress for Better Communication
Many in today's hectic, demanding workforce complain that stress is triggering them to "be short" with others, causing them to make irrational decisions, and "making them sick." Unfortunately, stress is part of everyday life and virtually unavoidable. Let this course help you define stress and how it affects you mentally, physically, and emotionally. Identify the key stressors in your life. Understand and practice methods proven to help reduce stress.
Open Your I s: Improving Interpersonal Interactions
Understanding others and communicating effectively can profoundly improve personal and professional relations while reducing tensions in the workplace. Learn how to:
- Assess your personality style including how you interact with others
- Understand the communication needs, behavioral types, and ways of interacting with your coworkers and clients
- Increase your versatility in appealing to the behavioral styles of your coworkers and clients
This interactive course includes a straightforward, comprehensive assessment of each participant's professional relationships. A constructive, easy-to-follow workbook enables you to refresh skills after the course ends.
Optimizing Your Time and AbilitiesSuccessful professionals use effective planning and organizing to maximize productivity and credibility. A recent article, "The 21st Century CEO," from A View from the Top, reports planning/organizing to be one of the five qualities possessed by top CEOs. Learn how to:
- Set goals according to your role
- Examine useful time management strategies
- Deal with the unexpected
- Make a plan of action
- Understand when and how to delegate
Exercises directly relate to each participant's professional situation, and everyone receives peer and instructor input. Workbooks for future planning and organizing needs are provided.
Polishing Your Documents
Don't let grammatical mistakes and awkward sentences encroach on your professional image. Make sure that your business documents are smooth and error-free. Develop proofreading and editing skills to help you:
- Improve your use of punctuation and grammar
- Quickly and easily find mistakes
- Revise documents with more ease and precision
Practice newly learned skills in a constructive setting, complete with comparative exercises and instructor feedback.
Presenting With Pizzazz
Coworkers and clients often judge your business acumen based on your speaking abilities. Transform the mundane by learning how to:
- Build a smooth presentation
- Properly use a variety of fields
- Understand, appeal to, and interact with your audience
- Effectively use nonverbals like gestures, eye contact, pauses, breathing, and dress.
Your presentation skills improve through interactive instruction and speaking opportunities in a comfortable environment with instructor and peer feedback. A workbook serves as a reminder and future reference for putting your presentation skills into practice.
Sharpening Your Listening SkillsA sure-fire way of gaining power and influence within the workplace is to become a more skillful listener. By listening with enhanced understanding and empathy, you're likely to generate productive conversations, mutual trust, and levelheaded solutions with fellow colleagues. Moreover, you'll be perceived as a "go-to-person" - a leader. Improve your listening skills by learning to:
- Identify key features and benefits of effective listening
- Assess your listening skill level
- Hurdle the common obstacles that hinder effective listening
- Use grammar, sentence structure, and word choice with more precision and style
- Listen nonjudgmentally, focusing on the speaker's intended content and perspective
Don't take your listening skills for granted. This interactive course can help you to cultivate what many experts consider to be the most important communication skill in your business repertoire.
Uncovering the Winning Style of Management
Whether intentionally or not, everyone naturally falls into a style of management. But being an effective manager doesn't come naturally to many. In fact, research indicates that only about 10 percent of middle managers lead successful teams. In other words, effective management is a learned role.
Discover the winning approach of management as you assess your current leadership and communication style. Hone in on and learn about the precise skill that makes for successful managing. You will leave this workshop knowing how to better communicate and interact as a manager. Your newly developed style will help you elicit your team's respect and efforts for a more productive workplace.
Understanding Group Dynamics
More than ever before, teamwork and collaboration are important for success in the workplace. The majority of projects in our increasingly complex and technologically advanced society require the creativity and cooperation of many people to be successful.
"Teams" must work together effectively to solve problems, make decisions, and/or devise winning strategies. Whether you report to a team leader or manage employees, a basic understanding of group dynamics will allow you to contribute more effectively and avoid common pitfalls specific to group dynamics.
This highly interactive workshop is sure to help you improve your group performance. Beyond what you'll discover during an in-class, comprehensive group exercise, you'll also learn:
- The definition of groups: their types, characteristics, and purposes
- The seven characteristics of high performing teams
- The crucial steps for effective group decision-making and problem-solving
- Sure-fire ways to improve your interaction during meetings
- Ways to avoid "groupthink" and other potential problems of group decision-making
Many successful business professionals will admit that it's not what or whom you know, it's how you play the game. Part of "playing the game" is mastering the verbal and nonverbal communication that is unique to the world of business. In this sensible workshop:
Gain a solid foundation of commonly used business terminology and decorum
Interact with other business professionals and an instructor wise in the ways of business protocol
Receive a useful workbook full of exercises and information that can be referenced after the course ends
Build a stronger foundation of business fundamentals. Get into the game and play!
Writing That Works
The ability to compose clear and organized written communication is essential in a business setting. Learn how to:
Develop ideas before writing
Ask the right questions to gather the right information
Organize using different business formats
Use grammar, sentence structure, and word choice with more precision and style
Incorporate e-mail etiquette
Recognize the difference between composing persuasively and informatively
Don't let "writer's cramp" affect your business style. This course, full of practical lessons, discussions, and writing exercises, teaches you how to get ahead and stay ahead by enhancing this crucial skill.