Professional Development Programs
Today's Challenges. Powerful Learning. Targeted Skill-Building.
Energize your professional development and position yourself for increased responsibility and advancement opportunities by attending Kent State's outstanding professional development programs. Facilitated by experts in the content area, each program is highly interactive and designed to provide you with valuable information, tools, skills and strategies that can enhance your organizational performance and personal effectiveness. Join us and take your skills to a new level.
Who should attend?
Kent State Professional Development programs are designed for individuals who wish to enhance their competencies in a particular topic area.
Need more information? Contact us at: 330-672-8698 or YourTrainingPartner@kent.edu. You can also register online, please see the links below.
Advanced Skills for Managing Projects
Facilitator: Bob Jewell
In this follow-up to the one-day Essential Skills for Managing Projects program, you will take a more in-depth look at critical topics in Project Management. The tools and principles taught in this program are based on the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).
- Applying the essential skills
- Resource management
- Time management
- Project leadership
- Change management
- Risk management
- Managing multiple projects
- Monitoring and controlling
Times available:
Crash the Barriers: Build Your Team
Facilitator: Ned Parks
Learn how you REALLY operate within a team and how you set your team up for success or failure. This program is designed to teach you, as a leader how to build teams and group interactions through a totally hands-on experience. Walk away with specific actions to build your current team and integrate new employees into the team.
- Understanding barriers inside your team
- The circle of invitation
- Un-agreed to expectations are resentments waiting to happen
- Plan, problem solve, process and improve
Times available:
Each One Teach One: Engaging Workers in Experiential Learning
Facilitator: Christine Zust
This program builds on what was learned in the course design and development program and takes a deeper look at training and instruction. You will:
- Review the five-step accelerated learning model (Learner Preparation, Connection, Creative Presentation/Discovery, Activation, Integration)
- Understand the three primary adult learner styles (Auditory, Visual, Kinesthetic)
- Know the difference between informing and instructing
- Apply the accelerated learning process to a sample instructional topic
- Organize the design materials for effective learning experiences
Times available:
Effective Decision Making
Facilitator: Bob Jewell
When was the last time your team sat down and evaluated the lessons learned from either a great decision or a bad decision? Teams are constantly making and implementing decisions, but few examine the process and assess the quality of their decisions. In today's business environment, the impact of a poorly made decision can be costly and can appear as a lack of commitment to the team. On the other hand, a great decision can produce results that will move an organization forward. In this program You will focus on applying a proven process for making effective decisions utilizing group exercises, movie clips, real-world examples and a team case study to analyze and improve decision-making skills.
Times available:
- Thurs., May 9, 2013, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $295
Effective Decision Making
Facilitator: Bob Jewell
When was the last time you or your team sat down and evaluated the lessons learned from either a great decision or a bad decision? Managers, employees and teams are constantly making and implementing decisions, but few examine the process and assess the quality of their decisions. In today's business environment, the impact of a poorly made decision can be costly. On the other hand, a great decision can produce results that will move an organization forward. This program focuses on helping you learn and apply a proven process for making effective decisions utilizing group exercises, movie clips, real-world examples and a team case study to analyze and improve decision-making skills.
- Four styles of decision making and when to use them
- Six important elements of an effective decision making process
- The role of intuition in making decisions
- How to better manage participative decision-making processes
- Tools and techniques that facilitate decision making
- Determine the return on a decision
- How to recognize and avoid common pitfalls in decision making
Times available:
Emotionally Intelligent Teams
Facilitator: Kristy Frieden
What makes some teams more successful than others? It is their level of trust and confidence in each other. Often, building trust can be difficult and allusive. Understanding Emotional Intelligence and how it relates to team success is the key to achieving this trust. Learn how the four components of Emotional Intelligence – self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management – are the building blocks to unlock your team's potential and effectiveness. You will discover your own strengths and the value you bring to a team, as well as how to leverage the strengths of others to make a more cohesive and high-performing unit.
Times available:
- Thurs., March 21, 2013, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $295
Enhancing Interpersonal Communication
Facilitator: Deborah Easton
Effective communication skills give you the power to achieve success in your supervisory role, as well as in all of your relationships. Influencing others to accept change, creating rapport among work teams and handling difficult conversations require choosing the most productive strategy for keeping the conversation on track and the personalities involved in sync. This program provides you the opportunity to assess communication strengths and weaknesses and to learn a variety of practical, powerful communication strategies that can be applied immediately on the job, with peers, subordinates and supervisors.
- Develop a communication style that generates trust in the workplace
- Improve listening skills
- Respond more effectively during difficult conversations
- Give clear directions to employees
Times available:
Essential Skills for Managing Projects
Facilitator: Bob Jewell
In this two-day program you will learn basic knowledge on what it takes to carry out projects effectively through the understanding and application of standard project management tools and techniques. It is a nuts-and-bolts program that presents you with "everything you need to know" to manage projects effectively. Examples include:
- Project introduction – stakeholders, triple constraints, project lifecycle
- Project initiation, definition and leadership – deliverables vs. scope, chartering
- Project planning – milestones, budgeting, work plans, scheduling, critical path
- Project execution and control
- Project close out
- The tools and principles taught in this program are based on the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)
Times available:
Facilitation and Problem Solving for Results
Facilitator: John Potkalitsky
High-performing teams produce results. This does not just happen; the team needs guidance and the expertise of a facilitative leader, who adds value by managing the distinction between process and content. With an effectively facilitated process and a focus on content, high-performing teams deliver quicker results, generate more creative, breakthrough solutions and build a higher level of collaboration. Learn key skills in facilitating effective team meetings with a strong focus on results. Through practical case studies, learn team problem solving tools and techniques to clarify the problem, get past symptoms to root cause and develop creative solutions to improve processes.
Times available:
- Thurs., May 16, 2013, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $295
High-Impact Learning – Course Design and Development
Facilitator: Amy Edmonds
Successful course design is a combination of art and science. Today's competitive environment requires training professionals to deliver high quality, high impact training; often with little budget and under severe time constraints.
Following the maxim, "we learn by doing," this workshop provides hands-on activities for exploring ways to develop effective courses. Participants will receive templates and tools for developing courses using lessons learned. After completing this program, participants will be able to:
- Discuss key principles of adult learning and learning stylesPlan small to mid-sized training design and development projects
- Analyze training needs
- Design training programs
- Develop program materials
- Implement new programs
- Evaluate program effectiveness
Times available:
- Wednesday's, April 2 and 9, 2014
8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $590
Manage Accountability and Reduce Conflict in High-Performing Teams
Facilitator: Ned Parks
Each year thousands of dollars are lost in organizations due to unresolved conflict and lack of accountability. Many leaders struggle with understanding how to establish a safe zone for conflict and how to separate accountability from responsibility and authority.
Today’s economic environment puts a premium on teams that can work with minimal conflict and with a greater degree of accountability. Your team leaders, in turn, must have the skills to lead teams who are accountable and manage conflict effectively.
This program provides you with hands-on knowledge and skills to raise awareness and set ground rules for conflict within your team, as well as to use the RA2 model of accountability. You will focus also on facilitation skills and an introduction to mediation, since much conflict can arise during your team meetings.
Times available:
- Tues. April 2, 2013, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $295
Managing Discipline
Facilitator: Scott Tackett
Manage discipline effectively and your organization will observe reduced discord among employees, decreased numbers of grievances and increased productivity. You and your organization will experience increased cooperation among employees and sustained positive employee relations, leading to an enhanced organizational culture where everyone is working together toward the same goals.
- View effective discipline as an indispensable tool for supervisory effectiveness
- Handle discipline fairly and consistently to develop and sustain positive employee relations
- Use discipline to encourage and obtain desired organizational goals
- Exercise discipline to correct performance, not punish wrongdoing
Times available:
Motivating Employees
Facilitator: Scott Tackett
Have you found what works to motivate your employees for improved performance?
- Learn about the many motivational options beyond increased pay
- Find out what types of rewards work in what types of circumstances
- Through practical activities and group interaction, you will review the theories of motivation and apply these theories to real-world applications
- You’ll gain ideas you can use to impact employee performance upon your return to the workplace
Times available:
Project Leadership
Facilitator: Bob Jewell
Optional Program
Organizing and managing the day-to-day activities of a project can be challenging enough. However, you must also have the skills necessary to develop a high-performing team, make and implement effective decisions, and communicate with and influence stakeholders outside your core project team. The difference between management and leadership will forever be debated, but when it comes to projects – you manage the process and lead the people. This program focuses on three skills to effectively lead a project:
- Developing an effective team
- Communicating with and influencing your stakeholders
- Making effective project decisions
Times available:
Turning Conflict into Collaboration
Facilitator: Ned Parks
Conflict is natural within the workplace and a predictable part of working with others. Yet unresolved conflict negatively affects morale, motivation, communication, attitudes and productivity. Handled appropriately your conflict can lead to positive, cooperative situations.
- Maintain your cool in difficult situations
- Learn valuable communication skills for conflict resolution
- Become aware of your conflict style using the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Inventory
- Utilize five strategies for conflict resolution
- Learn How to minimize the negative aspect of difficult situations and turn conflict into a positive outcome
Times available:
What's Preventing Your Team's Success? Overcoming the Critical Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Facilitator: Kristy Frieden
Based on Lencione's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, in this program your focus will switch from you to your team and from building not only a productive team, but a healthy team. Identify strategies to overcome the Five Dysfunctions – absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. Discover more about your roles as team leader and team member.
Times available:
- Tues., March 12, 2013, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Twinsburg - $295
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