Professional Development Offerings

Whether you are new to project management or have many years of experience, there’s always room to improve. Learn how to effectively initiate, plan, execute, control and close out projects.

To achieve good outcomes in the workplace, we need all stakeholders to have open, clear and honest conversations with their team, bosses, peers and customers. Often conversations go wrong through misunderstandings and perceptions of ulterior motives. People are often aware that their conversations are not achieving the results they want but do not have any specific tools to improve them.

This course will provide you with the skills to dig deep into a particular situation and to develop strong countermeasures and resolution plans to improve your operation, product, or system. Root cause analysis leads to elimination of repeat errors, improved efficiencies, enhanced quality products and services, and improved morale.

Many management courses, including our own course: Managing Technical Teams, teach you how to deal with direct and indirect reports. To be successful, however, you also need to manage (or strongly influence) the behavior of those who are at your level or higher. But they may not understand your needs or may be indifferent to them. In this course, you will learn how to make yourself heard when you do not have direct authority, and how to change others’ behavior to make them reliable partners in your programs and projects.

Technical teams present many challenges for engineering managers. Team leaders must often give up some of their technical authority to focus on strategic management, operational planning and human resource management. They also need solid communications skills and know how to represent the team across the organization and at a high level. In this hands-on course, you will learn strategic and operational planning tools to set goals, establish objectives and build defensible budgets from an instructor who has actually “walked the talk” of this course with his own experiences.

Learn how to coach, mentor, evaluate, and continuously improve the skills of potential leaders in your organization using the Situational Leadership II® (SLII®) system. The benefits to your organization are many—you will improve internal communication, help others achieve their goals, coach others to be confident and self-directed, and demonstrate organizational leadership that values and honors differences.

Moving into a management role can be challenging, especially for those who have spent years completing technical work without direct reports or those who are new to the workforce.  In this course, you'll develop the skills and knowledge to succeed as a manager through practical discussions of management and leadership fundamentals and tools that will aid in your transition. Classroom exercises along with a tactical action plan will allow you to immediately make a positive impact.

Build your strategic performance and implementation skills! In this 3-day course you will learn the Hoshin Planning process, understand how to optimize and sustain a strong performance culture, and demonstrate your ability to deliver the people-skill-building modules needed to support continuous improvement within your organization.