TMP Course Descriptions: Period 3

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.

Using a question or making a statement to open a Safe Space for you and your conversational partners to make better decisions. Asking the Right Questions has the following characteristics:

• It gets people to pause and think.
• It often leads to an ‘aha moment.’
• It is focused on getting to an Ideal Final Result.

Asking the Right Questions is very simple. Use a question, make a statement, or use one of the models we’ve defined to open a space for your conversational partners to make better decisions in reaching each ideal final result. By Asking the Right Questions, you not only create a more positive perception of you, team members are more able and willing to implement a joint vision and do it happily. Finally, by asking questions that change the perception that others have of you, you will be more readily able to turn conflict into positive outcomes. Mr. Lam will show you how these life-changing methods actually work and how they can provide a framework for implementing the other skills you learn at TMP. 

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.

As ubiquitous digital transformation technologies (e.g., robotics, generative artificial intelligence tools, large language models, etc.) continue disrupting organizations and industries by redefining the nature of work across job classes, skill levels, and wages, the employee experience of dignity (self-worth, value, and esteem) is threatened. Based on the latest research and industry insights on dignity in the workplace, this course provides a set of practical tools and strategies for how leaders can protect employees from aspects of work that diminish the experience of dignity and proactively cultivate meaningful opportunities to experience dignity at work. You will learn a practical framework for applying targeted leadership practices and tools that enhance multiple aspects of employee dignity, including significance (sense of value and meaning from their work), respect (feelings of workplace respect and inclusion), and engagement (experiencing authentic connections to their colleagues).

Your learning experience in this course emphasizes experiential, skill-based activities, including team experiential exercises, role-plays, simulations, and self-assessment activities. Outlined below, each of the five course sessions offers experiential opportunities to learn practical skills and tools for cultivating multiple aspects of employee dignity, including engaging in emotionally-charged conversations regarding job role changes, job crafting and upskilling strategies, displaying of recognition and appreciation, and cultivating career networks via mentoring relationships.

Day 1: Dignity at Work: Protective and Proactive Strategies for Leaders and Organizations 

The first session will introduce participants to a practical framework for understanding how employee dignity can be protected and cultivated through specific leadership practices. Participants will learn about how multiple aspects of the experience of dignity at work (self-worth, value, and esteem) are threatened by digital transformation initiatives, and the practical steps that leaders can take to cultivate a work environment where significance (sense of value and meaning from their work), respect (feelings of workplace respect and inclusion), and engagement (experiencing authentic connections to their colleagues) are prioritized. Participants will participate in a team experiential exercise that illustrates how large-scale digital transformations present both threats to employee dignity and opportunities for leaders to cultivate employee feelings of significance, respect, and engagement in their work. Participants will engage in a crowd-sourcing exercise that captures their organization’s best practices for leading digital transformation initiatives that prioritize employee dignity.

Day 2: Engaging in Emotionally-Charged Conversations on Job Role Changes (shifting requirements, reduced roles, or eliminated positions)

 The second session will focus on how leaders can thoughtfully engage in emotionally-charged conversations with employees who are experiencing changes to their job roles (shifting duties, evolving skill requirements, reduced or eliminated roles) due to digital transformation initiatives. The participants will be introduced to a practical framework for understanding the emotional experience of employees during the large-scale organizational change, the change curve, and how leaders can deploy different strategies and tactics depending on the range of emotions that employees are experiencing. Participants will learn why employees are likely to resist efforts to transform their roles due to the role of a perceived sense of loss of one’s identity. Via role-play exercises, participants will learn skills for identifying the range of employees emotions and how to engage in thoughtful coaching conversations.

Day 3: Job Crafting & Upskilling/Reskilling Strategies for New Roles 

The third session will focus on how leaders can apply practical strategies and tools for job crafting and upskilling/reskilling for new roles created by digital transformation initiatives. Participants will learn practical skills for how to Identify employee skill gaps amplified by digital transformations, and engage employees in transparent dialogue regarding how evolving roles across the organization are aligned with their unique skills and interests. Participants will practice these skills by engaging in role-play exercises that apply job crafting strategies for reshaping and personalizing employee jobs (e.g., adjusting job tasks, relationships, and responsibilities) to align their unique strengths and interests with digital initiatives.

Day 4: Authentic Displays of Recognition and Appreciation for Engaging in Digital Transformation Efforts 

The fourth session will focus on how leaders can prioritize displays of recognition and appreciation for employees engaged in digital transformation efforts. Participants will learn a practical framework (The Adoption Matrix) for why employees resist digital transformational initiatives, and the practical steps that leaders can take to positively influence employees’ belief in both the strategic value of the digitization initiative to the organization and their personal sense of self-efficacy to thrive in the newly transformed organization. Participants will learn about the importance of displaying authentic acts of appreciation for employees as colleagues, and not only showing appreciation for results. Via a series of role-playing exercises, participants will demonstrate practical skills in recognizing and appreciating employee efforts that produced important learning and insights (regardless of success) and sharing stories of colleagues who overcame barriers to develop their confidence and skills.

Day 5: Cultivating Career Networks, Mentors, and Sponsors 

The final session will focus on how leaders can take practical steps to cultivate mentoring relationships with employees to expand their career networks within and across departmental and organizational boundaries. Participants will learn a practical framework for developing mentoring relationships, both traditional and reverse mentoring, with colleagues that promote feelings of inclusion, respect, and engagement in the organization during digital transformation. Via a series of mentoring simulations, participants will learn practical skills and tools (mentoring meeting agenda and discussion guide) for engaging colleagues in mentoring conversations that entail mutual exchanges of life and professional experiences that have shaped their values and the meaningfulness of their work.