TMP Course Descriptions: Period 4

This course developed from personal experiences transitioning from an engineering/technical role into a team lead and management positions.

At the end of this course, you will be able to accomplish the following:

• Apply appropriate personal assessments for yourself and team
• Develop an intentional connection between your personal story and your professional ethics
• Diagnose team performance successes and failures
• Identify the impact of emotional intelligence on your leadership style

Course Outline

Day 1

Personal Assessments and Teamwork There are so many personal assessments out there it is overwhelming to know which is most appropriate for you to take (for yourself and for your team). We cover the four categories of personal assessments (personality, behavior, strengths, and growth), the value you can gain from each, and the pitfalls of applying those to your improvement plans. You will have new tools to write more effective performance evaluations at the end of this session.

Day 2

Personal Values and Your Story Personal assessments are designed to take your complexity, filter the noise, and provide a lens to view yourself and your team. However, in this session we examine personal identity empirically, through our personal stories. This provides insight to our personal values that provide the foundation for our professional ethos.

Day 3

Team formation and performance We’ve all been on teams where things clicked and everything got done on time, or on teams where there was significant friction and we limped across the finish-line. In this session we discuss methods for diagnosing and measuring team performance to help you intentionally build a team that works well together every time.

Day 4

Diagnosing Challenges and Applying Remedies This session is dedicated to examining the challenges we each face as we transition to a new leadership role, start a new project, work with a new team, or handle turnover in team personnel. This is an open discussion on how to apply the previous three sessions that you are facing in your roles.

Day 5

Emotional Intelligence and Resonant Leadership During this session we talk about leadership styles, and in particular, the Resonant Leadership framework for leadership styles. As we approach different leadership styles, it is helpful to show how emotional intelligence helps us determine the appropriate leadership style and how we can grow our emotional intelligence.

Soft skill development is crucial as a separator between success and failure as your career progresses. Sadly, some skills (such as conflict resolution, hiring/firing, or negotiation) can only be practiced “in the moment”, and unless your job is fraught with these types of situations, you may not advance your skills in these areas as fast as needed.

This course focuses on providing fun, repeatable activities that help improve these “hard to train” skill sets. Each one creates a safe, repeatable situation where each player can try, fail, and learn. Along with the activities, we’ll take a look at the core behavioral patterns for these soft skills and introduce connections between the activities, how the circumstances change, and how this relates to your career and goals.

Along with all the lecture, attendees will walk away with copies of the games so that they can facilitate them with their own teams at work.

Day 1: Intros and The Chaos of Teamwork

The “Too Many Droids” activity helps immerse the team in highly stressful, simulated chaos to accomplish personal activities and help the team accomplish its goals. In this activity players will realize that their strategies for “getting things done” falls apart once the stakes get high enough. As a team they will have to come together, develop a plan for communication, resource sharing, and what to do when things go from bad, to worse.

Day 2: Stress, Triage and Better Teamwork

“Unicorn or Bust!” is an activity that builds resilience against the day-to-day chaos of projects & problems. In this activity players take the role of a new startup company trying to go 52 weeks from startup to IPO. Along the way, the team will have to share resources, agree on strategy, and try to solve problems before they run out of funding... or worse!

Day 3: Communicating with Empathy and Intention

“Ship it!” is an activity that helps develop empathetic communication. In this activity, players will quickly have to realize that their team members don’t share the same mental model about how the game should be played, and will have to take it upon themselves to modify their communication process. Giving the wrong information, worded in the wrong way, could spell disaster!

Day 4: Dealing with Transitions

“Re-org” activity that helps players move through planning their impact- focused work, while dealing with unexpected consequences from an administrative level. Your goal is to become the most valuable engineer at your company, which you do by taking on and completing projects. The problem? Every year a re-org happens, and you’ve got a new manager who changes the company priorities. Learn how to adapt to chaos in the workplace, changing design requirements, and how to build a career that can withstand any re-org.

Day 5: Putting it all Together

Day 5 brings an activity that binds together all of the lessons of the week into a single exercise. “Favortown” is a collaborative card game that focuses on hyper-restricted communication to accomplish a shared goal – The team is tasked with accomplishing a set of large goals, where each team member has a unique skill that’s required to solve the problems. The trick? No talking allowed. Teams will use all the skills from this week to plan, negotiate, deal with problems, empathize and deal with the chaos of day-to-day problems, all in 10 minutes at a time.

This Positive Leadership course is designed to equip participants with essential skills and insights to create a healthy and productive workplace culture. The program explores the intricate balance between personal needs, the needs of team members, and the overarching needs of the business.

Beginning with the foundational concept of "Fueling Your Own Tank," participants delve into strategies for increasing personal vitality and professional engagement, including aligning with values, savoring positive experiences, cultivating gratitude, and understanding the importance of achieving a balance in giving to oneself and to others. The course then expands into the realm of emotional literacy, emphasizing self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills to enhance relationships.

The importance of feedback is highlighted in the context of personal and professional growth, fostering a culture that embraces constructive feedback, a growth mindset, and continuous professional development. The course also delves into the synergy between individual strengths, team dynamics, and organizational success.

Participants engage in practical applications of positive leadership principles through final presentations, demonstrating their ability to integrate personal, interpersonal, and organizational needs for a holistic and positive work environment. By the course's conclusion, participants are poised to apply positive leadership practices that contribute to individual well-being, cohesive team dynamics, and sustained business success.

Upon completing the Positive Leadership course, learners will:

1. Enhance Personal Vitality and Happiness:

• Identify and align personal values, fostering a sense of fulfillment.

• Implement strategies for savoring positive experiences and cultivating gratitude.

• Recognize the importance of balance in self-giving and contributions to others.

2. Elevate Emotional Literacy:

• Develop self-awareness to understand and manage personal emotions effectively.

• Implement enhanced self-regulation strategies

• Cultivate empathy and refine social skills for stronger interpersonal relationships.

3. Foster an Open Feedback Culture:

• Acknowledge the value of constructive feedback for personal and professional growth.

• Embrace a growth mindset that views challenges as opportunities for learning.

• Engage in continuous professional development to adapt to changing workplace demands.

4. Apply Positive Leadership Principles:

• Demonstrate the integration of personal, interpersonal, and organizational needs.

• Showcase practical applications through final presentations.

• Develop a holistic leadership approach contributing to individual well-being, cohesive team dynamics, and sustained business success.

Paul Jan Zdunek shares his lessons learned as he guides you through the philosophies and practices of successfully navigating grey situations with your team and even your friends & family in this post black-and-white world where a zero-sum game approach is no longer effective.

This highly interactive course follows a learn-as-you-do philosophy, presented in the Socratic Method with the goal of getting to the root cause and solution of professional and personal challenges, and is based on the foundational principles of GREY LEADERSHIP® as outlined in Zdunek’s award-winning book Cowboys & Conductors: Conversations in Horseman-Humanship. This approach develops your natural talents to engage others intuitively, as a cowboy does with his horse, or a conductor with her orchestra – within an extraordinarily heightened sense of being – affecting impactful, permanent change.

You should be ready and willing to fully engage physically, mentally, and emotionally as you begin to cultivate your own intuitive GREY LEADERSHIP® skills in service to your organization, yourself, and all of those under your care.

Topics Include:

• Team Dynamics
• Human Drivers
• The Humanship of Change (Management)
• Managing Resistance
• Intuitive Leadership
• Triaging Students’ Real World Challenges

DAY 1

• Instinctual Leadership

• Team Dynamics

• Getting to Know Your PURPOSE

DAY 2

• The Humanship of Change (Management) I o Change Management Data o Awareness of PLACE

DAY 3

• The Humanship of Change (Management) II

• ADKAR approach to Change Management

• PURPOSE & PEOPLE Roadblocks

DAY 4

• Managing Resistance

DAY 5

• Intuitive Leadership in Practice

• Triaging Students’ Real World Challenges

• Lessons Learned & Next Steps