Workshops

Our public learning and development workshops are designed for individuals that want to invest in their future and for organisations with employees that will benefit from the variety of skill-enhancing workshops that CFCD offers. All workshops can be run in-house and tailored to the needs of the organisation and individual participants.

We focus on building leadership capability, improving performance, and creating career and business resiliency. We integrate actual workplace scenarios whenever possible into all our workshops.

All CFCD facilitators have extensive experience in learning and development, line management, human resources development, and coaching.

• All workshop costs include facilitation, refreshments, and a workbook.
• Lunch is also provided for all full-day workshops.
• The early bird discount expires 3 weeks before a workshop starts.
• Discounts are available for multiple bookings.
• The maximum number of participants per workshop is 15.

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Conducting an Effective Performance Appraisal (1/2 day)

Many managers are concerned about how best to conduct appraisals and link them to development plans and future training. Being responsible for your staff’s performance, you must be ready, willing, and able to set and communicate clear expectations and provide support to achieve them.

This half-day workshop (8:45am - 12:30pm) will cover the fundamentals of conducting an effective performance appraisal. You will learn how to prepare for the performance appraisal, conduct the appraisal meeting, and monitor and follow up on performance.

Who should Attend:

Managers, Team Leaders, and Supervisors who carry out staff appraisals or prepare Individual Development Plans for their staff.

Learning Objectives:

• The importance of planning, preparing, and structuring the performance appraisal
• Employee Preparation for the appraisal – set the right expectations
• Learn how to listen, question and give clear and specific feedback
• Review performance objectives so you can provide specific feedback describing gap between expected and actual performance
• Define areas for development and set clear performance objectives
• Avoid common pitfalls when conducting the appraisal
• Handle performance problems and sensitive issues effectively
• Create Individual Development Plans (IDP) with your staff
• Monitor and review progress of objectives and development plans between review meetings
• Give feedback and motivate staff between appraisal meetings

New dates to be scheduled

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Dealing with Difficult People

At one time or another, everyone has to deal difficult people. They often include the complainers, the know-it-alls, the passives, the dictators, the Yes people, and the No people. Most of the time, we simply avoid the people who create uncomfortable situations, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. It is sometimes possible, and necessary, to work with such persons in order to preserve and improve the working relationship.

This 1-day workshop presents useful techniques that help all employees "keep their cool" in a wide variety of difficult situations. It outlines the successful elements of dealing with difficult situations and difficult people of all types — whether they are customers or colleagues.

Who should attend:

Anyone who feels that their response to working with difficult people could be improved.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish between passive, aggressive, and assertive behaviour and develop specific strategies to manage this behaviour
• Identify personality types and anticipate their reactions
• Pre-empt challenging situations and avoid escalating them further
• Develop communication skills designed to improve your delivery of bad or unpleasant news
• Learn the importance of non-verbal communication
• Handle and deal with “blame”
• Develop assertive skills and behaviours
• Calm angry, upset, and unresponsive individuals
• Use words that make a difference
• Deal with emotions and feelings
• Explore what a team can do with a person who isn't a team player
• Learn how to give and receive criticism and deal with unfair or unwarranted criticism
• Make people you deal with your “partners” in finding a satisfying solution
• Be less of a target with difficult people

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Effective Time Management

• Do you feel stressed out and pressed for time more often than not?
• Are you drowning in unread or unanswered e-mails?
• Do projects frequently take longer than you anticipated?
• Do your high standards make it tough for you to let go of a project?
• Do constant interruptions make it hard for you to get anything done?
• Do you have trouble saying no to requests, even when you don’t have time to do what is being asked of you?

Learning Objectives:

• Identify time wasters and non-essential tasks and learn how to control them instead of being controlled
• Break the "procrastination cycle"
• Identify and set workload priorities including scheduling time for maintenance tasks
• Improve your ability to focus on high priority tasks and understand the difference between "vital" and "urgent"
• Create your personal "time management system"
• Establish short, medium, and long term goals
• Successfully manage telephone and email time
• Keep meetings short and to the point
• Manage interruptions and learn the art of delegation

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Effective Workplace Communication

Effective communication is so important for organisational success not only for managers, but also for their employees. When all members of a team, department, or organisation are able to communicate well with each other and with people outside their group, they are much more likely to perform successfully.

This 1-day workshop will provide you with the tools to become a more confident communicator and build better workplace relationships.

Who should attend:

Any person who wants to maximise their positive impact on others through effective communication and interpersonal skills

Learning Objectives:

• The Importance of communication and interpersonal skills in the workplace
• How perception and image can impact others opinion of you and your job performance
• Increase your self-awareness by managing your own responses to challenging situations
• Roadblocks to effective communication and how to overcome them
• Develop empathic listening and effective questioning skills
• Give positive feedback to improve performance and encourage motivation.
• Receive feedback and use it to improve your performance
• Be assertive without being intimidating

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Essential Skills for Managers (2 days)

If you are a manager or team leader, it’s likely you got that role because you were an excellent individual contributor. Now, as a manager, your role has expanded. Managing your individual process and workload is not enough. Instead success is measured by how well you motivate your team, manage change, deal with difficult people, manage performance, and coach and develop your team.

This 2-day highly interactive hands-on workshop will give you an in-depth learning experience to build the practical management skills necessary for job success. You will gain a deeper understanding of your role within the organisation and learn to adapt your leadership style to meet your team’s needs.

Who should attend:

• New supervisors, new managers, or more experienced managers with little or no formal training in management skills
• Staff looking to progress into a management position
• Entrepreneurs or business owners who want to enhance their management skills

Learning Objectives:

• Define your role and responsibilities as a manager
• Understand yourself better in order to manage your staff more effectively
• Adapt your management and personal style to meet the needs of individual team members
• Help staff to solve problems and make better decision
• Motivate staff to achieve objectives
• Delegate with confidence to increase productivity and motivation
• Assess employee performance and give constructive feedback
• Manage conflict situations with confidence
• Plan and manage multiple priorities
• Use coaching techniques to maximise staff performance

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $1,025.00 + GST; otherwise $1,135.00 + GST

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Get Tough with Stress (1/2 day)

Get Tough with Stress is a half-day workshop (8:45am - 12:30pm) which takes a positive approach to stress management. It shows you how to toughen up with stress and how to see it as an opportunity for personal growth and development and not a threat.

The workshop explains stress and its effects on the mind and body. It gives simple, practical strategies that you can use to cope with personal and workplace stress.

Who should attend:

Anyone who wants to learn effective techniques for managing day to day stress especially in the workplace

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what stress is and the impact on attitude to work
• The physiological consequences of stress
• Identifying stress symptoms
• Stress and the body's immune system
• Change and stress
• Control your attitude to stress
• How to become psychologically assertive
• Stress boomerangs: The stress we transmit comes back to stress us
• Strategies to develop stress toughness
• Increase productivity by better managing stress

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $340.00 + GST; otherwise $390.00 + GST

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Giving Effective Feedback (1/2 day)

One of the most important workplace communication skills is the ability to give feedback effectively. It is also one of the most challenging especially when the focus is on feedback about job performance.

This half-day workshop (8:45am - 12:30pm) helps you to become proficient at presenting goal-oriented, detailed feedback for improved performance.

Who should attend:

Managers, Team Leaders, and Supervisors or any person who needs to improve their skills in giving regular and ongoing feedback.

Learning Objectives:

• Create the right environment to give feedback.
• Identify barriers to giving constructive feedback.
• Time your feedback – know when not to give feedback.
• Confront difficult situations before they get out of hand.
• Learn a simple, powerful model to deliver specific and balanced feedback.
• How to give positive feedback to improve performance and encourage motivation on a regular basis
• Provide feedback to the difficult/marginal/outstanding performer.
• Give upward feedback
• Avoid feedback mistakes.
• Learn to ask for feedback.

New dates to be scheduled

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Influencing for Results

Would you like to influence your manager, colleagues, employees, customers, vendors, or suppliers more effectively? Whether you need to influence them to agree with your ideas, to make and keep commitments, to help you complete a task, or to work in a team, your success depends on your ability to use your persuading and influencing skills.

This 1-day workshop provides the proven techniques for persuading, influencing, and motivating others. Participants learn the use of “power language”, how to exercise influence, and how attention to our verbal patterns helps us alter the balance of power.

Who should attend:

Any person in an organisation or business, at any level, who has to influence managers, other staff, clients, or customers to sharpen their communication and interpersonal skills to influence, generate results, and enhance leadership ability

Learning Objectives:

• Understand influencing styles and the uses of persuasion
• Use influence as a management tool
• Use personal vs. positional power
• Communicate and present information in a more persuasive manner
• Understand others so you can persuade, influence and have an impact
• Manage difficult situations more confidently
• Develop more effective working relationships
• Apply positive influence behaviour to specific work situations

New dates to be scheduled

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Interview & Hire the Best (1/2 day)

Interview & Hire the Best is a half-day interactive workshop (8.45 a.m. - 12.30 p.m.) that teaches you how to develop or improve your interviewing skills.

You will learn practical interview techniques to avoid problems and streamline the process in order to successfully hire the best.

Who should attend:

• Technical and non-technical managerss
• Supervisors
• Team leaders
• Human resource professionals
• Anyone with little or no training in interviewing and selecting employees

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the skills, behaviours and attitudes needed for the position.
• Plan and prepare for the interview
• Develop and ask effective targeted questions to select the best candidate.
• "Hands-on" interviewing practice (role playing) while receiving coaching on interviewing techniques.
• Focus on factors and information necessary to assess the candidate's skills, background, personality and cultural fit.
• Handle challenging candidates.
• Identify and objectively assess candidate flaws.
• Conduct an effective reference check.
• Evaluate and hire the best candidate.

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $340.00 + GST; otherwise $390.00 + GST

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Lead & Manage Your Team Through Change

In order to thrive and survive in today's organisations, leaders must be ready to embrace and manage change. But why do so many organisations struggle with change? The answer is in how they introduce change to their employees and how they carry out the entire change process.

This 1-day hands-on workshop is for managers, supervisors, and team leaders who want to understand the nature of change and learn how to guide their staff through the emotional and intellectual process inherent in organisational change. Participants will also learn to better understand the responses of their staff, develop strategies to manage and lead change, deal with staff resistance, and overcome ambivalence.

Who should attend:

• Managers, team leaders, and supervisors who lead and/or implement various types of changes in their organisation
• Those who want to broaden their current change management skills

Learning Objectives:

• Gain insight into the organisational impact of change and its effect on employee performance
• Understand the cycles of change and the roles different people play in the process
• The importance of effective communication during a change process
• Recognise and adapt to the emotional cycles associated with change
• Establish staff commitment to change objectives
• Assess your preparedness to carry out the role as change agent
• Develop a plan to guide staff through each phase of the change process
• Provide support and encouragement to staff during change
• Encourage employees to take responsibility for and ownership of the change process
• Use techniques to prevent and overcome resistance to change
• Techniques to strengthen resilience in staff during a change process

New dates to be scheduled

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Make Networking Work for You (1/2 day)

Do you wonder why some people seem to get better jobs or promotions or have the ability to get things done successfully with or through other people? Chances are these people have highly developed networking skills.

Building business and personal networks can make or break a business or a career. This half-day workshop (8:45am - 12:30pm) will give you the tools to maximise opportunities to develop and expand your network.

Who should attend:

Decision makers, leaders, managers, sales and marketing personnel or anyone who wants to build better business and working relationships.

Learning Objectives:

• Establish your networking goals
• What are the benefits of building alliances?
• Assess your networking skills.
• Who should be in your network?
• Key ways to approach, develop, organise and maintain your contacts.
• How to be a “broker” and “connector” in your network.
• Overcome barriers to building internal and external networks.
• Be informed about whom you meet: ask the right questions when building a network.
• Educate the people who can network for you.
• Develop an organised method to expand links from people you know to people they know.
• Use effective follow-up techniques.

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $340.00 + GST; otherwise $390.00 + GST

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Manage Your Career Development

Managing a career amidst the change and uncertainty of today's workplace presents a unique set of career development challenges. This 1-day workshop will help participants realistically assess their career situation and acquire the tools necessary to assume greater control over their careers. You will learn the tools to be able to clarify your career strengths, identify transferable skills, explore career options either within your organisation or externally, understand how to effectively market yourself, and develop a career action plan.

Who should attend:

• Any person who wants to better manage their career, change career direction and/or grow their career
• Managers, team leaders, or supervisors who want to better assist staff with their career development

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the forces affecting careers today and their implications for career self-management
• Understand the new organisational realities and their implications for the skills, abilities, and competencies you will need to be effective and ensure employability
• Gain knowledge of the career planning process
• Identify and increase awareness of your personal style, values, skills, and interests and how these impact career planning
• Use the results of self-assessment to better manage and plan your career and take a more pro-active approach to your career development
• Identify development on-the-job vs. off-the-job
• Get and use feedback to enhance your career development
• Develop a professional network to benchmark skills, be aware of opportunities, and increase awareness of recent developments in your field of expertise
• Develop an action plan to achieve your career goals
• Learn how to effectively market yourself

New dates to be scheduled

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Positive Assertiveness

How many times have you wanted to speak up or express yourself more clearly but hesitated due to fear of rejection or being misunderstood? Assertiveness is the art of standing up for your rights or expressing your point of view in a positive, constructive, and open manner, but not at the expense of others.

It is one of the most important skills that you can have in your everyday communications at work especially when delegating, attending meetings, negotiating, motivating your staff, selling, leading, and managing conflict.

In this highly interactive 1-day workshop, you will learn a range of step-by-step techniques to increase your ability to communicate assertively in challenging situations so you will feel better about yourself and your self-control in everyday situations.

Who should attend:

• Managers
• Team leaders
• Supervisors
• People who feel they could achieve greater results if they were more assertive and confident

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the role that positive assertiveness plays in interpersonal communication
• Assess your comfort level of assertiveness
• Understand the principles of assertive behaviour
• Recognise and manage passive, assertive, and aggressive behaviours in others
• Stop letting situations and emotional responses control you
• Manage aggressive behaviour in yourself and others
• Use simple assertive verbal and nonverbal communication techniques and develop assertive body language
• Practice assertive behaviour in different situations
• Identify the feelings that stop you from doing and saying what you really want
• Communicate your needs by asking for what you want without being controlling
• Apply simple assertiveness techniques to problem situations
• Say "No" or express disagreement with confidence
• Give and receive constructive feedback

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Prepare for Leadership: Inspire, Influence, and Achieve Results (2 days)

Many traits combine to make you a leader including understanding the context in which you are leading and knowing your own strengths, weaknesses, emotions, needs, and drives. To be effective, you need a clear vision of the results you want to achieve, the environment you want to create, and the relationships you want to build and sustain.

This interactive 2-day workshop provides a foundation for participants to learn the essentials of effective leadership, focusing on self-awareness, growth, working relationships, influencing skills, and how to inspire the best performance from your staff.

Who will benefit?

• Managers recently promoted to a leadership role
• Upper and mid-level managers responsible for managing others' performance
• Anyone who wants to become a leader or be more effective at leading others

Learning Objectives:

• Move from management to leadership
• Think and act like a leader
• Align your goals to your organisation's key challenges
• Develop an authentic leadership style based on your unique strengths, abilities, and values
• Understand how leadership styles affect team members and how to adjust your style to inspire others to willingly and enthusiastically follow your lead
• Establish a climate of greater collaboration, trust, and honesty within your department
• Build and maintain productive relationships
• Effectively use the leadership skills of decision making, coaching, delegation, and motivation
• Set and monitor goals for your team
• Empower your team to take on more responsibility
• Create successful strategies to manage conflict
• Successfully introduce change
• Create your personalised leadership plan

New dates to be scheduled

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Sharpen Your Business Writing Skills

Would you like to feel more confident preparing written documents? Almost all professionals spend 15-20% of their time writing business correspondence, whether formal or informal, paper, or electronic.

This 1-day workshop will help you convey your ideas and information clearly and precisely in proposals, emails, memos, letters, and reports. You will learn to assess the effectiveness of your writing, pinpoint strengths and areas for improvement, and tailor your writing for audience appeal.

Who should attend:

Business professionals at all levels who want to improve their business writing skills

Learning objectives:

• Identify good writing
• Organise your documents for effectiveness and with your readers’ needs in mind
• Use a writing style that is both professional and clear
• Using clear, concise, and persuasive language
• Edit your writing for clarity and ease of reading
• Make writing tasks easier by approaching them systematically
• Avoid grammatical errors and credibility breakers
• Use the best structure for your content
• Produce effective emails
• Become more confident preparing written documents

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Successfully Coach Your Staff to Higher Levels of Performance

One of the key qualities of being an effective manager or supervisor is the ability to coach effectively. It involves deliberate and specific activities that are designed to help people develop their skills by learning on the job. As an effective manager or supervisor, you need to know when and how to apply these skills.

In this 1-day hands-on interactive workshop you will learn how to successfully coach your staff using various tools and techniques so you can move individuals and teams to higher levels of performance.

Who should attend:

Line Managers, team leaders, and supervisors that want to get the best out of their people

Learning Objectives:

• The role of the manager and why a good manager is a good coach
• Build a climate of trust when coaching
• Learn interpersonal skills required for coaching: empathic listening, questioning, and giving effective feedback
• Identify coaching opportunities with staff
• Appreciate individual learning styles and needs
• Use a simple and effective model when coaching
• Identify and present performance gaps to employees
• Set and communicate appropriate goals and expectations when coaching employees
• Handle difficult situations with confidence
• Provide positive and constructive feedback in a way that motivates and leads to positive change
• Coaching skills practice

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $545.00 + GST; otherwise $645.00 + GST

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Team Development and Team Building using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) Instrument

High-functioning teams exhibit accountability, purpose, cohesiveness, and collaboration and more often than not produce first-rate results. They are created by skilled managers and leaders who know how to motivate, inspire, and guide their people to success.

In this 1-day workshop, you will learn how to apply the MBTI(r) to teamwork and which personalities are most likely to contribute to team success. You will also receive tools to improve communication, manage team conflict, gain an appreciation of differences, and capitalise on team members’ strengths.

The MBTI(r) instrument will be administered online prior to the start of the workshop.

Who should attend:

• Managers, Supervisors, and Team Leaders responsible for leading a team
• Team members who want to develop competencies, tools, and techniques to enhance team performance

Learning Objectives:

• Characteristics and competencies of high functioning teams
• Apply MBTI(r) preferences to team work
• Understand how teams form and how they work together over time
• Effective leadership behaviour at each stage of team development
• Mobilise team participation, build consensus, reduce conflict, and move past stumbling blocks that can prevent a group from reaching peak performance
• Manage team type imbalances
• Help teams solve problems and make decisions
• Capitalise on the individual skills of each team member
• Use type awareness to communicate more effectively

New dates to be scheduled

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The Power of Goal Setting: Be More Productive in 2008! (1/2 day)

Would you like to become more productive in 2008 both personally and professionally?

The key is to have goals that clearly define what you want and take actions to achieve those goals. We are offering this half-day practical workshop
(8:30am - 12:30pm) to help you create individual, team, and departmental goals that you and your staff can support. Using a simple and effective process, you will formulate professional and personal goals.

You will formulate your action list by working through a series of exercises to address values, priorities, goals, and specific objectives. You will learn to identify key obstacles and challenges and examine the rewards and sacrifices of achieving your goals..

Who should attend:

• Managers
• Decision makers in all industries who are responsible for achieving specific business goals
• Employees at all levels who wants to become more results-oriented and balance their workload

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and prioritise professional and personal goals you want to achieve in 2008
• Recognise the key components of effective goal setting
• Clearly define goals based on your organisational role
• Identify key obstacles to achieving individual and team goals
• Create action steps to accomplish individual and team goals
• Motivate yourself and your team to attain your goals

New dates to be scheduled

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Think on Your Feet® (2 days)

Working with ideas means not just 'having' ideas, but also presenting, discussing, and explaining them. Successfully 'getting ideas across' demands clarity, brevity, and impact whether by phone, 1-on-1, group meetings, presentations, email, voicemail, or across language barriers.

Think on Your Feet® is a 2-day workshop which teaches these skills to anyone concerned with effective communications including executives, managers, sales and marketing professionals, technical specialists, financial analysts, public affairs experts, and training professionals.

The Think on Your Feet® approach emphasises structured communication to present ideas in ways that will be easily understood and remembered. Whether you are addressing 1 person or 50 people, Think on Your Feet® provides the techniques to zero-in on issues, organise ideas, and speed up preparation and response time.

Who should attend:

Think on Your Feet® is designed for anyone who wants to improve their impromptu verbal communication skills — including technical specialists, sales and marketing professionals, managers and senior executives, lawyers, accountants, consultants and other professionals.

Learning Objectives:

• Structure ideas simply and persuasively
• Answer questions on-the-spot
• Get ideas across at a meeting
• Explain complex information clearly
• Sell a product or service
• Identify listener interests and concerns
• Organise thoughts while talking
• Use bridging strategies to clarify questions
• Diffuse emotional issues, and buy time
• Deal with tough questions and objections
• Turn nervousness into energy

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $1,080.00 + GST; otherwise $1,280.00 + GST

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Working with Emotional Intelligence

Recent studies indicate that understanding and increasing emotional intelligence (EQ) is essential to workplace effectiveness, leadership potential, and career success.

This valuable workshop provides an understanding of the 5 core competencies of Emotional Intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and interpersonal skills and how to apply them to specific workplace situations.

You will learn how to increase your self awareness, monitor and adapt your emotions at work, and create an atmosphere that fosters emotional intelligence.

The workshop includes a personal Emotional Intelligence Assessment, the BarOn EQ-I, developed by Dr Reuven BarOn and used to test over 85,000 individuals worldwide. Participants will receive a confidential Emotional Intelligence Report.

Scores are provided for the following areas of emotional intelligence:

• Intrapersonal - self awareness and awareness of one's own emotions
• Interpersonal - empathy toward others and how people relate to one another
• Adaptability - flexibility and openness to new ideas
• Stress Management - stress tolerance and impulse control
• General Mood - optimism and happiness

• Human resource professionals
• Leaders
• Managers
• Staff with an interest in developing their own emotional intelligence and who want to better understand and manage their emotions in the workplace

Learning Objectives:

• Understand your own EQ ability and how it affects your performance at work
• Case studies of high and low EQ in the workplace
• Examine your workplace challenges and develop EQ solutions
• Monitor and adapt your emotions and behaviour at work
• Positively influence the emotions and motivations of others
• Develop emotionally intelligent teams
• Use EQ to better manage conflict situations
• Create an EQ development plan

Click the start date below to register online

Early bird rate: $645.00 + GST; otherwise $745.00 + GST

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