Learning & Development

(eLearning module-1.5 hours) The pressure for speed, productivity, and bottom-line results has never weighed more heavily on organizations than now. Managers must ensure that everyone takes responsibility for performing his or her job as effectively as possible. Employees need training and coaching so they can manage their own performance. When these approaches aren’t enough, managers need to step in and take prompt and decisive action. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Recognize why managers delay correcting poor performance.
• Describe the consequences of delaying action to correct poor performance.
• Identify performance situations in which to take action.
• Explain the benefits of thorough preparation when planning a discussion about poor performance.
• Demonstrate a set of key actions for correcting performance problems.

Conduct focused conversations about poor performance that result in action toward improvement.

(4 hours) No other responsibility distinguishes a managerial role from others more than delegating tasks and projects. Delegation is the linchpin between staff, their managers, and results. When poorly executed, delegation negatively impacts productivity and leaves staff feeling frustrated and set up for failure. On the other hand, when done well, delegation taps in to the full capability of others, building confidence and enhancing relationships. With sound delegation practices in place, managers can focus their attention on value-added activities like removing performance barriers, planning, and continuous improvement. At the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Assess delegation challenges and skills to understand their own delegation style.
• Evaluate what work must be done alone versus what can/should be completed through others.
• Plan tasks to delegate and align the tasks with the appropriate staff.
• Conduct a delegation conversation that results in the employee understanding the task, how it fits into the big picture and expectations.
• List follow-up actions that can be taken to ensure delegation success.

(1 Hour) Family and Medical Leave Training provides the tools to teach participants about the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and their responsibilities under the Act. Participants will benefit from this training, since anyone can be affected by conditions that might require FMLA leave. Understanding the FMLA will help participants know when leave is an option and how to request this leave through our Human Resources department here at NJIT. At the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Understand the purposes of FMLA
• Explain the reasons for which an employee is allowed to take FMLA leave
• Recognize who is an eligible employee
• Define “key employees”
• Explain the FMLA provisions
• Discuss employer and employee responsibilities during the process of providing the need for leave
• Cover the issues of employment and benefits during leave

(3 Hours) Effective supervision is the heart of strong business results. Whether you’re a vice president or a first-line supervisor, you must grapple with strategy, strive for customer satisfaction, and deliver concrete results. In all these tasks, skilled supervision has a profound positive impact on you, your employees, and the business. Making the transition to a new supervisory role can make you feel like you are performing a complex balancing act in a circus. You must focus your attention in many different directions. At one time, organizations simply identified and promoted competent individual contributors. With little or no preparation, these new supervisors learned by trial and error. Now, as more organizations see the central role of effective supervisors, formal preparation is more common. In this session, you will explore and apply three Hallmarks of Supervisory Success to help you assume new responsibilities, improve your ability to supervise the work of others, and maintain the necessary balance in your role. At the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Manage their transition to a supervisory role
• Outline actions required to build credibility
• Identify strategies to tap into the commitment of others
• Create a clear connection between departmental and organizational goals to increase work group commitment
• Plan for conversations with their managers that build constructive relationships and gain their support

(3 Hours) Today, most leaders must achieve their priorities and objectives collaboratively with and through people over whom they have no direct or positional authority. These non-positional leadership situations require that leaders use the only “authority” available to them: influence. In other words, the complex collaboration environment today increasingly means that leaders must forgo the idea that position and reporting relationships give them the authority to get things done and lead with influence. At the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Improve their ability to achieve business priorities using non-positional leadership
• Create a portfolio of strategic influence relationships
• Build clarity and accountability, and limit unproductive conflict with people they rely on to achieve their objectives
• Sustain and enhance their influence relationships
• Improve their personal influence

(2 hours) Managers are responsible for creating and managing processes, practices, and staff in ways that ensure excellent customer service. Learn how to ensure excellent customer service as a manager by:

• Creating a customer service culture
• Having a complete view of customer cycle
• Enhancing and communicating customer service strategy
• Hiring the right people
• Strengthening customer service skills of team
• Making sure employees are engaged
• Improving customer interactions, and
• Giving customers ways to provide feedback
• Describe problem-solving techniques and identify solutions to customer complaints.
• Identify appropriate responses to recurring customer complaints.
• Demonstrate strategies for dealing with difficult customer situations.
• Explain the importance of follow-up in customer service.

(2 hours) This program is designed to assist managers in their understanding and application of key Human resource policies, procedures, and practices that managers need to know to successfully manage staff during their employee “life cycle”, from pre-hire through separation.  The program also discusses a manager’s responsibility for FMLA and HIPPA.  For managers with bargaining unit staff, this program is expanded (2 hours) to include:

• Grievance procedures
• Discipline and discharge
• Time off and leaves
• Performance evaluation
• Employment process and on-boarding
• Seniority and Overtime
• Reorganizations/Layoffs and Bumping Rights
• FLSA, overtime and time tracking requirements

(3 hours) While what actually motivates employees has been the subject of debate for a long time, this program will provide the participants with a common understanding of how rewards and recognitions work to increase employee competence, strengthen relationships, and encourage internal motivation in others, leading to higher levels of productivity. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Offer rewards that foster employee motivation
• Offer spoken and written recognition that supports employee motivation
• Sustain motivation by helping employees identify their own contributions
• Encourage collaborative effort through recognizing team performance

(2 days) This course introduces the concepts, processes and knowledge areas of project management in a 14-hour class that includes individual and team exercises, case studies and discussion. Through this experience, participants will build a foundation for further study in an enjoyable fast-moving environment. At the end of the program, participants will:

• Become more sophisticated in their understanding of project management as a discipline and will gain experience using the skills and tools of the project manager.

(3 hours) Staff needs regular feedback from their manager to know how well they are doing. Providing constructive feedback not only helps solve problems, but also can work to prevent potential performance problems from growing to the point where they have a negative impact on others and the organization. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Define and describe constructive feedback.
• Identify opportunities to provide constructive feedback
• Recognize the challenges and benefits of providing constructive feedback.
• Evaluate their current level of effectiveness at providing constructive feedback.
• Demonstrate a set of key actions for providing constructive feedback to others.
• Conduct constructive feedback conversations that result in action toward improved performance.

(3 hours) When individuals work together, differences in opinions, work styles, and personalities will occur; these difference often lead to conflict. While team conflict can be constructive, left unchecked team conflict can become an obstacle to both individual and team performance. This program is designed to help managers develop the skills to resolve the conflicts within their team that are hindering the performance and ability to produce results. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Identify behaviors that can fragment a team and negatively impact productivity
• Demonstrate a set of key actions for resolving team conflict
• Successfully manage unproductive reactions when dealing with team issues
• Determine when leader-led or team-member led resolutions are most appropriate
• Describe how to support team members in addressing conflict themselves.

Spurred by dramatic increases in global competition, technology, and customer expectations, speed has become a key requirement for business success. The pressure to “be fast or be last” has become a primary concern for leaders as they struggle to accelerate team productivity. So how do you multiply your efforts? What can you do to increase efficiency? Part of the answer may be simpler than you imagine: building team pride and purpose. Today’s leaders are discovering that one of the best ways to drive productivity is to unleash the power of team pride and purpose. When team members feel that they’re doing something valuable and anticipating success, their energy and commitment to delivering results increase, and a new cycle of accelerated productivity takes over. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Accelerate team productivity through building pride within individuals and teams
• Accelerate team productivity through building a sense of purpose within a team
• Communicate team goals in a compelling way to inspire commitment

To maximize the impact of coaching, managers need to help each employee focus on developing those capabilities that will contribute most to both individual and organizational success. This shift in perception and practice has important implications for today’s managers, who may often feel hard-pressed to attend to those few employees who really need help, let alone to an entire team that is often far-flung and diverse. What is required to help managers make the right investment is a clear definition of coaching, as well as some core coaching practices that can be readily applied in today’s time-compressed business environment LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Encourage employee growth and development in everyday work through providing learning opportunities and an environment that promotes learning
• Help employees develop critical decision-making skills and greater self-reliance through being a thinking partner
• Provide feedback in a way that builds employee capability
• Handle challenging coaching situations
• Increase the return on their coaching investment

Skill in giving feedback helps leaders support the internal motivation of employees to grow their knowledge and expertise. Serious performance problems or extreme resistance to development require different leadership skills. Employees gain internal motivation when their work allows them to satisfy their psychological needs, including the need for autonomy, simply defined as making decisions about their own activities. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Plan and facilitate effective feedback conversations, both face-to-face and voice-to-voice
• Support employees’ internal motivation to achieve business results
• Improve performance by helping employees find personal benefits in organizational structure and self-generated solutions
• Receive feedback in ways that promote improved performance and maintain constructive relationships

In today’s organizations the most successful leaders are those who have the ability to authentically influence and connect with others. This ability is often referred to as leadership presence. Leaders with leadership presence are more successful in collaborating across the organization, have more successful teams, and have more career success. Developing Your Leadership Presence is designed to help leaders improve their ability to authentically influence and connect with others. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Explain the relationship between personal presence and ability to influence people and situations
• Recognize how specific behaviors increase or decrease an influential presence
• Take steps to authentically interact with others in a more influential manner

Successful leaders know that clarifying expectations isn’t a once-and-done or even a quarterly activity. Maintaining an open dialogue about how expectations and priorities evolve and shift is critical in today’s business climate. In this module, participants explore a flexible, collaborative approach for setting performance expectations and keeping them current and aligned with organizational priorities. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Identify important opportunities to set and/or adjust performance expectations
• Conduct collaborative expectation-setting conversations with employees
• Maintain ongoing dialogue about what success looks like and the work that’s most important
• Keep expectations current and aligned in response to changing conditions
• Clarify performance expectations in a way that taps into employee motivation and commitment

(3 Hours) An excellent service ethic is essential to the success of any organization. This program gives an overview of customer service philosophies and best practices. It provides skills practice on how to incorporate outstanding service in everyday workplace interactions. At the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Define customer service and its major components.
• Explain NJIT’s service philosophy.
• Identify NJIT’s internal and external customers.
• Demonstrate rapport-building techniques.
• Exhibit customer service communication skills.
• Describe problem-solving techniques and identify solutions to customer complaints.
• Identify appropriate responses to recurring customer complaints.
• Demonstrate strategies for dealing with difficult customer situations.
• Explain the importance of follow-up in customer service.

(2 hours) This program emphasizes the importance for building and maintaining a good relationship with one’s supervisor and outlines the “why” and “how” to accomplish this sometimes challenging task. During this module, participants will review skills which will help them to:

• Confirm current priorities with their manager
• Ask the manager for specific feedback on how things are going
• Find out about supervisor’s current priorities
• Identify possible ways to support supervisor’s priorities

(1 hour) This program is designed to assist hiring managers, those involved in search committees and interviewing, and administrative staff on the hiring process. The program discusses how to post jobs, interviewing techniques, extending offers and the background screening process. The program also discusses how to properly onboard new employees, which strategically integrates new employees into their work environment, which helps them perform better in their roles, sooner. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Have a clear understanding of the steps involved in hiring at NJIT
• Learn interview techniques
• Understand the background screening process
• Understand their role in onboarding new hires

(3 Hours) A complex, volatile global market demands quick decisions that realize tangible results while taking multiple perspectives into account. For that reason, efficient collaboration is essential to business success. Not every decision needs to be collaborative, of course. When it does, even with our good intentions, collaboration can backfire. This module will help you follow a simple process to determine if collaboration is required, assemble an effective decision-making team, apply a range of decision-making tools, and avoid the typical challenges of group decision making. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Identify decisions that require collaboration
• Follow a proven process for making collaborative decisions
• Identify the right people to generate options and select the best option
• Frame the decision to focus thinking and collaboration
• Use practical decision-making tools
• Manage challenging team behaviors to keep decision meetings on track

(3 hours) The more people have to depend on each other to achieve results under pressure, the higher the instance of conflict. Given the complex web of inter-relationships that exists in our work environment today, there is ample opportunity for conflicts, big and small, to arise. Conflicts can show up as minor disagreements or heated debates. However they present themselves, mishandled conflict situations damage work relationships and deplete personal energy and focus causing productivity to decrease. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Work toward reducing the impact that conflict has on productivity and work relationships.
• Get a clear picture of the causes behind a conflict.
• Prepare to address conflict with a resolution mindset.
• Talk through a conflict situation objectively and non-defensively.
• Develop first steps and trial solutions to begin to resolve a conflict.
• Follow through to keep momentum toward a solution.

(3 Hours) Miscommunication is endemic in organizations. People often fail to accurately exchange information and effectively surface great ideas. This often leads to relationship, communication, and decision-making failures. Much of our day-to-day communication happens in conversations with others. Opportunities exist to dramatically improve our understanding of one another’s Messages, as well as to create more ideas and commitment to agreed-upon approaches. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Build clarity and accuracy in communicating
• Test assumptions that underlie communications in order to dismantle incorrect ones
• Use high-gain questions to enhance skillfulness of conversations
• Foster careful listening and speaking in order to ensure full understanding
• Identify their own strengths and areas for further development in skillful conversations

(3 hours) Time management is more than just managing time. It is about controlling the use of the most valuable, and under-valued, resource. This program provides individuals with tools and techniques to identify individual time management goals, explore time management tools and techniques, and develop Individual Action Plans for addressing barriers to time management. At the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Identify barriers to successful time management.
• Articulate and evaluate individual time management goals.
• Evaluate how their time is spent utilizing an Activity Time Log.
• Discuss time management tools and techniques, including prioritization; scheduling; optimum work times.
• Recognize and eliminate time wasters.
• Describe techniques to manage procrastination.
• Identify approaches to managing heavy workloads.
• Develop Individual Action Plans for addressing barriers to time management.

This practice-based program is designed for individual contributors, supervisors, and managers across a range of industries who would benefit from using collaboration as a means to achieve greater results. The Collaboration Skills: Creating Value Through People™ program gives participants the skills and processes for working together effectively. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Identify the skills and processes necessary to collaborate successfully
• Use the skills and processes in a variety of collaborative situations
• Apply these skills and processes to work situations

Every day, leaders shape the future by offering proposals, selling ideas, and encouraging others to take action. Effective leaders know that the best way to influence outcomes is to actively engage and collaborate with others through dialogue. Communicating a clear, concise, compelling message is essential given the ever-expanding volume of information and ever-shrinking human attention span. Laser-like communication focuses on the listener with genuine commitment to two-way dialogue. This module will help participants prepare, deliver, and discuss their ideas, proposals, and requests to support business outcomes. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Describe what influence is and why it’s important
• Frame ideas, proposals, and requests from the listener’s perspective
• Offer choices to encourage responsibility for achieving goals
• Apply a range of strategies to ensure that spoken messages are compelling and easy to understand
• Build support and buy-in by encouraging an exchange of ideas, opinions, and concerns
• Develop collaborative plans to move forward
• Apply influencing skills to one-on-one, group, live, and virtual settings

The business landscape in which we operate is more complex, ambiguous, and at times volatile than ever before, all of which can lead to distraction, stress, anxiety, and disengagement. To be successful in this environment, leaders and the people they lead must be highly adaptable, able to perform at high levels in the midst of this constant change and uncertainty. In this module participants will be introduced to a set of techniques for building their own adaptability. Through lively conversations, videos, and real-life practice, they will begin to build the skills and confidence to enhance their ability to perform more effectively under conditions of continuous change and uncertainty. LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Describe their baseline ability to absorb constant change and uncertainty while maintaining high levels of performance
• Identify the research-based practices that will improve adaptability
• Use a process to immediately manage and reduce the impact disruptions, distractions, stress, and anxiety have on their performance
• Develop an action plan for long-term improvement of their own and their team’s adaptability
• Absorb more change and uncertainty while delivering high levels of performance

(2 hours) Good, effective performance evaluation is a key element in the morale and retention of our best people and a key responsibility for managers. As such, this program is designed to help staff view the performance PSA evaluation process as a tool to help them maximize their performance as employees. The session will also establish clear links between individual performance and the strategy and goals of the University and show how improved communications and feedback between managers and staff improves productivity through open and honest performance related discussions. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Understand and navigate the PSA performance evaluation system
• Promote the objectives and importance of performance management
• Establish goal setting and communicate performance expectations
• Evaluate actual performance against expectations
• Describe the performance management cycle
• Write accomplishment statements
• Describe both manager and staff responsibilities in the process
• Provide on-going performance monitoring and feedback

(2 hours) 2020Vision has renewed our focus and emphasis on measurement and metrics. As a result, all full and part-time staff members are expected to have performance goals and expectations each fiscal year. These goals will serve as the basis for a mutual definition – between you and your manager – of success and will be basis for the end-of-year performance review. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Establish clear links between your performance goals and the strategy and the 2020 Vision strategic plan
• Write SMART performance goals and expectations
• Clearly identify performance measures
• Clearly identify how goals will be achieved
• Write an Individual Development Plan
• Understand the difference between performance and development goals

(2 hours) Good, effective performance evaluation is a key element in the morale and retention of our best people and a key responsibility for managers. As such, this program is designed to help staff view the performance PSA evaluation process as a tool to help them maximize their performance as employees. The session will also establish clear links between individual performance and the strategy and goals of the University and show how improved communications and feedback between managers and staff improves productivity through open and honest performance related discussions. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Understand and navigate the PSA performance evaluation system
• Promote the objectives and importance of performance management
• Establish goal setting and communicate performance expectations
• Evaluate actual performance against expectations
• Describe the performance management cycle
• Write accomplishment statements
• Describe both manager and staff responsibilities in the process
• Provide on-going performance monitoring and feedback

(2 hours) 2020Vision has renewed our focus and emphasis on measurement and metrics. As a result, all full and part-time staff members are expected to have performance goals and expectations each fiscal year. These goals will serve as the basis for a mutual definition – between you and your manager – of success and will be basis for the end-of-year performance review. At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Establish clear links between your performance goals and the strategy and the 2020 Vision strategic plan
• Write SMART performance goals and expectations
• Clearly identify performance measures
• Clearly identify how goals will be achieved
• Write an Individual Development Plan
• Understand the difference between performance and development goals

Click on the links below to access our various guides / documentation NJIT Performance Review Guide