Texas A&M University joins the Association for Talent Development’s Employee Learning Week (ELW) December 3-12, 2024 to highlight the importance of employee learning and development.

ATD is the world’s largest association dedicated to those who develop talent in organizations. Annually, they host a weeklong event in which organizations showcase the learning and development resources that are available for employees.

During this two-week showcase, the Organizational Development department will offer 5 courses multiple times during the week. See the course descriptions, schedule, and registration links below.

Courses

Crucial Conversations for Accountability

Length: 2 days

Any manager who’s struggled to close a significant performance gap or anyone who has ever walked out of an annual review feeling like they’ve just been processed rather than prioritized knows there’s nothing easy about it.

Performance management is about addressing behavior routinely and consistently. It’s about candidly coaching through challenges and fostering a culture of accountability for lapses in behavior. It’s about identifying goals, fast-tracking careers, and in the process, improving the bottom line.

The good news is these accountability skills are replicable and learnable. We’re all just a few crucial skills away from learning how to manage people and performance daily and directly. Crucial Conversations for Accountability is an engaging classroom course rich with group discussion, real-time practice, and group support and coaching.

If you have already completed Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue, please register for the 1-day Crucial Conversations for Accountability Add-On to continue building on your skills.

Learning Objectives

• Master performance discussions
• Manage projects without taking over
• Reach alignment when stakes are high and opinions vary
• Strengthen trust and reliability
• Apply multiple sources of influence
• Get results and improve relationships

Crucial Conversations for Accountability Add-on

Length: 1 day

Crucial Conversations for Accountability Add-on is for those who have completed Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue and takes a deeper dive into the accountability skills for managing performance.   

Performance management is about addressing behavior routinely and consistently. It’s about candidly coaching through challenges and fostering a culture of accountability for lapses in behavior. It’s about identifying goals, fast-tracking careers, and in the process, improving the bottom line.   

The good news is these accountability skills are replicable and learnable. We’re all just a few crucial skills away from learning how to manage people and performance daily and directly. Crucial Conversations for Accountability is an engaging classroom course rich with group discussion, real-time practice, and group support and coaching.  

Note: You must have completed Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue to register for this add-on course.  

• Master performance discussions
• Manage projects without taking over
• Reach alignment when stakes are high and opinions vary  
• Strengthen trust and reliability
• Apply multiple sources of influence
• Get results and improve relationships

Crucial Influence 

Length: 1 day

When facing persistent, resistant challenges, leaders often surrender to poor results or invest in change efforts that waste time and resources. And yet it’s possible to influence behavior with surprisingly predictable success.   

For the past thirty years, we’ve studied leaders with a proven ability to influence rapid, profound and sustainable change. And here’s what we know: human behavior is grounded in six sources of influence. Effective leaders know how to leverage and apply these sources of influence to solve everyday leadership challenges.   

Crucial Influence® teaches leadership skills that are essential to leaders at every level. Drawing on five decades of social science research and work with successful leaders around the world, the Crucial Influence Model reveals why people do what they do and how all leaders—from aspiring leaders to top executives—can influence others for lasting results. Crucial Influence is an engaging classroom course rich with group discussion, real-time practice, and group support and coaching. Delivered in one day, this in-person course offers the best in traditional learning and development.  

Learning Objectives  

• Identify influence challenges keeping you from results  
• Clarify vital behaviors that lead to desired outcomes
• Motivate and enable others with six sources of influence  
• Transform organizational culture and secure results  
• Lead with Influence  

The Power of Habit

Length: 1 day

Habits affect performance more than talent, intelligence, luck, or decision-making. Most know this, yet we struggle to take control of our habits to get the outcomes they want.   

Based on the bestseller by Charles Duhigg and the latest science in habit formation, The Power of Habit teaches how habits work and how to develop effective habits using skill instead of willpower. The course teaches a skillset for mastering any habit. You might call this skillset the habit of all habits. The one to rule them all.   

Learning Objectives  

• Identify the habits holding you back
• Uncover the hidden factors that influence your habits  
• Acquire new skills and learn new behaviors quickly and efficiently  
• Turn self-mastery into a lifelong habit

Mastering Emotional Intelligence Level 1

Length: 1 day

Whether you are aware of them or not, emotions are intertwined in everything you think, do, and say each day on the job, in your career and throughout your life. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is how you handle yourself and others on the job.  

Organizations that embrace EQ development within their workforce experience:  

• Better team collaboration and improved productivity  
• Keen resilience and effective leadership  
• More engagement and increased work satisfaction  
• Improved organizational culture  

TalentSmart’s Mastering EQ® Level 1 will take participants far beyond knowing what EQ is and how they score on their first EQ assessment.  

Learning Objectives

• Discover what EQ is, why it matters in all aspects of life, and how to develop it to be more effective
• Increase awareness of emotions and the fundamental role they play at work and in life  
• Explore the four EQ skills in action: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.  
• Discuss real world examples and experience, what works and what doesn’t work, and what to do moving forward  
• Understand their current level of EQ (strengths and weaknesses) and where to focus their development  
• Complete an EQ Development Plan to include one EQ goal and specific EQ practice strategies that will help achieve that