Welcome to the event: Microlearning Medley: Holistic Approach to Learning. This event has 20 (and growing) topic sessions or “bursts” from which to choose. The bursts are listed and described below. Select your favorite 5 (1-day event) or 10 (2-day event) topics . These 60-90 minute bursts are standalone opportunities to enhance your professional and personal development.
Are You Too Soft?
Most project managers—most leaders—are not consistently willing to make the tough and unpopular project-related decisions, even though their instincts warn them that they are not taking the most effective action. Witness examples of project manager actions (or inactions) that are indicative of too-soft behavior. Will you recognize familiar behavior? Learn how to overcome being too soft and thereby becoming a more effective leader.
Dealing with Difficult People
We all encounter difficult people in the workplace. We may be that way ourselves from time to time. How effective you are at dealing with difficult people has a direct impact on how successful you become and can affect your job advancement, your relationships, your overall confidence and even your health. This burst defines actions that you can employ to stay in control. Stuff’s going to happen but you don’t have to accept being the victim. You have choices.
Building Your Self-Confidence
Almost everyone suffers from low self-confidence at some time; while many people struggle with self-confidence issues regularly. Low self-confidence will hold you back from achieving your potential. It can cause you to miss out on many opportunities and leave you with a less happy, satisfying and fulfilling life. The good news? Self-confidence can be learned, practiced and become a core part of who you choose to be. This burst will show you how and presents actions that can build your self-confidence.
Creating Client Satisfaction Surveys
Client Satisfaction Surveys are not commonly utilized on most projects and are a missed opportunity. This burst demystifies Client Satisfaction Surveys and shows you how to create and implement surveys. As a project manager, if you do not routinely survey your clients for feedback, then you cannot really know what they think about your performance, the project’s progress and whether or not you are meeting their expectations.
Effective Negotiation Skills
Negotiating is a fundamental skill that you use virtually every day. It plays a critical role both in the success of your career and your life outside of work. With this burst, you learn the most important tips to adopt to become an effective negotiator.
Behaviors to Master When Dealing with Your Leaders
Your leaders want you to know—need you to know—the behaviors they consistently expect from you. Not only will Neal identify what your boss expects from you, he will articulate what you expect from those under your direction. Learn how you can enhance your image, effectiveness and career while making your leaders look good—which makes you look good. Talk about a win-win!
Effective Time Management to Getting More Done Every Day
Success at work and in your life overall is largely not about how much time you have but how you invest the time you have. Would you like to hone your time management skills? Are you looking for that edge that allows you to complete work in less time, get more done each day, waste less time, find more free time, take control of your day, improve your reputation and lower your stress? This burst is loaded with ideas to help you make the best use of your time.
Creating a Successful Mentoring Experience
The best way to learn the application of a profession, to enhance your personal development or to guide your career is with a mentor by your side when needed. There is no better way! This burst guides you through the mentoring dos and don’ts. It focuses on the mentee—the person being mentored—and addresses the most crucial information in achieving a successful mentoring experience. Mentors can dramatically benefit your performance, career and life.
Top Mistakes in Conducting Lessons Learned
There is little debate regarding the benefit of lessons learned. However, most lessons learned and their follow-up actions are not conducted in the most effective manner where the business gains an optimal return on its investment. This burst will highlight the top mistakes that are the most pervasive and the most harmful in the lessons learned wheelhouse.
Achieving the Elusive Work-Life Balance
If you have difficulty in juggling the demands of your job and your non-work life, you’re not alone. Many people feel like their lives are overcommitted and see no relief in sight. Neal’s mission is to present to you meaningful information that can help you not only better understand your work-life balance but to give you ideas that can help you achieve the integration that is most important to you.
What Makes a Team Member Valuable?
If you were building a team and could hand pick its members, what are the key attributes that you would seek? Team members need to know the behaviors and actions expected of them that will help them to perform at their best, as well as help the team to perform at its best. Neal reveals key behaviors and actions that provide a highly important shared vision that you can promote with your team.
No-Nonsense Advice for What’s on Your Mind
This highly interactive burst addresses the “soft” side of project management and personal development issues that you are now facing. Ask Neal any question and he will provide his no-nonsense view on the appropriate action to take. It’s not about being politically correct; it’s about doing what’s best for the business and your career.
Escalate Is Not a Dirty Word
When two parties cannot agree on the resolution of an issue then that issue must be raised to higher levels of leadership to ensure its resolution receives the sense of urgency and importance it deserves. Done right, escalations are a highly effective and important business tool in any organization. This burst will show you when and how to escalate, reveal why escalations are a good business tool, provide handy guidelines to follow in conducting effective escalations and answer frequently asked questions about conducting escalations.
Behaviors that Lead to Exceptional Performance
Success does not just happen—it is made to happen! Success is born of behaviors and choices that lead to exceptional performance. Neal reveals important leading-edge, best-practice, results-oriented behaviors that will promote your professional and personal success.
How to Lead Successful Change Management
The need for change management—also referred to as organizational change management—for businesses to keep up or even survive is unprecedented. This burst was designed to reverse that statistic by describing an effective change management model and revealing critical foundational tenets that support successful change management initiatives.
Top Reasons Why Projects Fail and What You Can Do to Avoid Failure
Project failure is expensive to your organization and to your career. This burst will reveal the most prevalent causes of project failure and will show you what you can do to avoid the reason for failure by going after the root causes. Not surprisingly, the project manager is almost always a major factor for success or failure of a project.
Self-Assessing and Improving Your Performance Maturity
What is your performance maturity? Are you the leader, team member or employee you most want to be? Are you looking for a means to assess your performance maturity and then focus on the improvement areas that can benefit you the most? Then look no further. This burst was created for you!
Introduction to Agile Scrum
This burst answers these questions: What is agile scrum? What are the primary terms that define scrum? What is a scrum master, a product owner? How does a scrum team operate? What are the 12 steps in implementing a successful scrum project?
Disruptive Innovative Thinking and Why It’s Important to You and Your Company
We live in the most disruptive time in human history. Even the best minds are unable to predict the changes just a few years out. But change will happen. Will you choose to be part of the revolution or will you and your career be run over by it? Disruptive innovative thinking is widely viewed to be the most valuable commodity in today’s business world. There is a constant need to upend the norms and implement new, fresh and creative ideas. This burst gives examples of disruptive companies, reveals why many companies suffer harmful disruption, and more.
7 Steps to Successful Conflict Management
Conflict is a natural part of the workplace environment. It is so common that you likely will experience some level of conflict many times a week if you find yourself in constant contact with people. How you deal with conflict has a significant impact on your opportunities, career and destiny. It also is a major factor to an organization’s success or its failure. This course prepares you for successfully resolving conflict by introducing you to the causes and need for conflict; revealing five conflict management strategies; listing the ground rules for negotiating conflict; describing 7 steps to successfully resolve any conflict; identifying actions you can take to change the conflict culture in your organization; and so much more. Conflicts are opportunities to build stronger teams and organizations.