All Development and Alumni Relations - Staff Learning & Development courses

The syllabus covers the key elements of the project management life cycle including; planning and scheduling, communication, stakeholders, reporting and risk management. This is suitable for those who are relatively new to project management or those who require insight into project management processes and techniques. This foundational course will provides a base line understanding onto which participants can build with more advanced courses.

The fourth day will conclude with a one hour multiple choice exam which will lead to a certificate from the Association for Project Management.

It’s no secret that work/life balance has been a struggle for millions of people over the last decade. However since lockdowns were introduced it’s become more acute for the majority. Demands have increased, time has been squeezed, stress has risen. Big parts of our life changed very quickly including how we work and maintain relationships with those we care about.

Understandably we need some time to adjust, to find a routine that allows us to focus, complete the important work and recover. We can’t give what we don’t have. We all need time to recharge effectively to help us feel good and perform well.

Join this one hour session to;

• Learn the importance of fully disconnecting from work to reduce stress and recharge focus - science perspective
• Understand how work bleeds into home life in hidden ways and steps we can take to prevent this
• Create a simple mini routine to help you effectively switch off from work
• Practice a mini mindfulness technique to help manage negative thoughts and get perspective

The session is followed by a three day Nudge Course.

For 48 hours following the session you will have the opportunity to contact Joy, a mental health nurse with over 40 years experience. Joy's role is to 'listen' and signpost onto a recognised next step. Contact details will be provided on the day.

Enhance focus, reduce stress and strengthen resilience. All techniques proven by science.

Successfully managing upwards depends on your confidence, diplomacy and influencing skills.

This workshop will empower you to handle tricky situations with your manager or colleagues:

• Benefits of ‘managing up’, what’s in it for you and them?
• Agreeing priorities and setting realistic expectations and boundaries
• Influencing when you don’t have authority
• Getting clarity on delegated work and appreciating the difficulties colleagues may be facing
• Challenging decisions in a way that is solutions-focussed and enables an open two-way discussion

You will also learn how to adapt to different personal styles in order to build an effective working relationship and understand how different drivers and motivators may affect someone else’s thinking, (why do they do that?).

The joint induction aims to provide a broad introduction and overview to all development and alumni relations staff, providing information about the ins and outs of Collegiate Cambridge, as it relates to our area of work. It is also an opportunity for you to network with other new members of staff across the collegiate community.

The session comprises:

• A welcome and introduction from senior members of the University and Colleges
• An overview of development and alumni relations functions, roles and responsibilities, with an opportunity to ask questions
• An opportunity to network with colleagues across Collegiate Cambridge

This classroom session will cover the following:

• How we use OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams when managing documents at Development & Alumni Relations

• An overview of using OneDrive, SharePoint & Microsoft Teams

• Provide guidance and best practices on how to find, share & manage documents

• Provide guidance and best practices on syncing, using Team Chat, shortcuts and downloading

Many areas of the document management strategy will be covered in the training. However, you may wish to familiarise yourself with the Document management strategy for SharePoint and OneDrive.

This virtual session will cover the following:

• How we use OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams when managing documents at Development & Alumni Relations

• An overview of using OneDrive, SharePoint & Microsoft Teams

• Provide guidance and best practices on how to find, share & manage documents

• Provide guidance and best practices on syncing, using Team Chat, shortcuts and downloading

Many areas of the document management strategy will be covered in the training. However, you may wish to familiarise yourself with the Document management strategy for SharePoint and OneDrive.

We will use MS Teams for the training session. The trainer will send a link for you to access the session nearer the time.

Email is a problem that is hiding in plain sight. We all use email every day. Yet, too often, email fails to be the effective communication tool it deserves to be.

In this intensive, practical session, we’ll show you how to produce effective communications. You will leave the session to:

• easily build a logical structure into emails and letters
• write clearer responses that result in fewer escalations
• get your message across, whatever you’re writing
• match your tone and level of language precisely to each reader

and much more!

The workshop includes a pre-course individual writing analysis to help identify areas for improvement.

Anxiety and depression is high and we're looking for new ways to take back control of our lives. New ways to become resilient and bounce back. Whether you've been dealt a good or bad hand in life, now is the time to take charge and bounce back to get closer to the life you want. Dr Olivia Remes will be sharing tips on achieving wellbeing and becoming resilient, based on research. She will also provide tips to maintain work-life balance.

A special session for previous participants of the Major Gift Learning Series (2019/2020).

• Identifying the Right Donors • Enhancing Donor Engagement • Elevating Your Strategy • Applying Cultivation and Qualification Principles • Action Planning

As we move into a hybrid way of working many of our working routines will change in some way. Some of these changes will make our working lives easier, some may make them harder and this will be the case for us personally and also for members of your teams.

What won’t have changed for many of us is the workload and the need to deliver high quality work, on time. As managers, part of our role will entail helping our team members navigate new and amended work practices. The recipe to do this will be slightly different from team to team, however, there will be some universal methods which help most hybrid teams and some common mistakes to avoid.

This session focuses on getting the basics right and empowering our teams with a firm foundation to build on over the coming months and years ahead.

This one hour session will include;

• Understanding the most influential factors to support hybrid team working
• Acknowledging the pain points for your team
• Optimising communication to strengthen psychological safety and effectiveness
• Planning improvements using a selection of 8 Minimum Effective Dose techniques for hybrid teams

Microsoft Excel is great for storing and organising your data, but it can be time-consuming and frustrating to find the information you need.

This workshop will show you how to use Excel's powerful tools to quickly retrieve, view and summarise information in numerous ways.

We will cover:

• Ensuring accurate data entry with data validation
• Time-saving filters
• Visually explore and analyse data using conditional formatting
• Create interactive filters in PivotTables
• Present your information as a chart
• Dos and don'ts when working with data
• Time-saving tricks and shortcuts

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

Microsoft Excel has lots of underutilised features that can help to save time and improve productivity. The primary objective of this workshop is to show you how to use these features and to demonstrate their effectiveness, challenging you to do things differently.

We will cover:

• Working with Formulas and Functions
• Save time and apply Formulas and Functions to your everyday tasks
• Search for a value in one place and insert it in another using lookup functions
• Avoid the 'pitfalls' of relative cell references
• Test certain conditions and return one of two entries
• Work with named cells to work faster and smarter with your formulas
• Managing large workbooks
• Trace and audit formulas in a worksheet
• Create a simple dashboard
• Produce summary reports from different worksheets
• Merge data from multiple users by linking workbooks

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

Whether we like it or not, email is one of the main ways we communicate in our day-to-day work. However, you may not be using Outlook to its full potential as it has a number of underutilised tools.

Although we know there are probably easier ways to use Outlook, we often don't have the time or energy to sift through and find the hints and tips ourselves. This 90-minute workshop will guide you through some of the more hidden features to increase productivity.

We will cover:

• Top ten diary management tips
• Decluttering your inbox to prevent email overload
• Finding a needle in a haystack
• Email etiquette dos and don’ts
• Customising and getting the most out of Outlook
• Hidden features to improve your efficiency and increase productivity

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

A lively, fast-paced mix of demonstrations - learn how to create professional PowerPoint slides that will keep your audience engaged through the length of your talk - and pick up lots of time-saving tips along the way.

We will cover:

• Adding visual interest to reach your audience
• Understanding and working with SmartArt
• Setting up and reformatting an organisation chart
• Converting existing presentations to create high impact slide shows
• Preventing 'death by PowerPoint'
• Create a "flow" that will hold your audience's attention
• Adding animation effects and timing to slides
• Tailor your presentation to different audiences, using custom slide shows
• Branching to specific slides in a slide show
• Importing an outline document into PowerPoint
• Saving a presentation so that other people can watch the presentation on most computers

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

Microsoft Word is a widely used and powerful word-processing package. The primary objective of this workshop is to broaden your knowledge of Word and to benefit from its overlooked and underused features in order to increase your productivity.

This 90-minute workshop will guide you through the topics and pick up lots of time-saving tips along the way.

We will be cover:

• Maintaining consistency using Styles
• Save time by applying Styles to text
• Modify a Style for the current document
• Protect your document by setting formatting and editing restrictions
• Working with long documents
• Specify different page layouts by inserting Section Breaks
• Refer to text such as headings and numbered lists using cross-references
• Create an index, listing keywords along with the page numbers
• Add visual interest using pictures, charts and SmartArt
• Create a list of cross-references to pictures, charts and SmartArt

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

In this 1 hour session learn;

• Establish a method that works for you to enhance focus for the most important work (Deep Work)
• Reduce distraction and prioritise more effectively
• Establish one daily Protective Pause, to relieve stress, reduce self criticism and strengthen resilience - mini mindfulness
• Create the space to recognise your achievements each day - increase self awareness and confidence

The Benefits:

• Protect yourself from distraction to enhance focus
• Plan effectively to spend more time on Deep Work (the stuff that matters) and less time on Shallow Work (overwhelming admin)
• Protect time for higher cognitive tasks - the challenging stuff
• Create valuable perspective to respond more effectively

Enhance focus, reduce stress and strengthen resilience. All techniques proven by science.

Windows 10 has a wealth of nifty, new features which means you might not be using your computer to its full potential. Although you probably know there are easier ways to use your PC, you simply don't have the time or energy to sift through and find the hints and tips yourself.

This 90-minute workshop will guide you through some of the more hidden features to increase productivity.

We will cover:

• Find a needle in a haystack
• Get organised and declutter
• Dos and don'ts of information management
• Customise Windows and get the most out of your computer
• Discover hidden features to improve your efficiency and increase productivity
• Save time by learning numerous tips and shortcuts

The course includes access to a month's free support on any of the topics covered.

Welcome to our Podcast Group Series!

Each session we will focus on a different episode from a number of different podcast providers, exploring topics to advance our own personal and professional development. Before the session you will listen to the identified podcast and reflect upon individually, in your own time. We will then come together as group for a facilitated discussion and activities to explore the topic in more detail with colleagues and reflect as a group.

For this session we will be looking at: How to Coach Yourself

This episode provided by Squiggly Careers Amazing If podcasts, looks at some of the tools professional coaches use and how we might apply them to ourselves and aid our own development.

https://www.amazingif.com/listen/how-to-coach-yourself/

Please also take a look at the Pod Sheet provided with the episode as we will refer to this in our session.

Psychological Safety – we have heard the term, but what does it mean on a practical level?

In this focused workshop we will bring the term to life – exploring what it means, and most importantly, sharing practical ideas of how we can each promote a culture where we each feel safe to be ourselves, safe to fully contribute and feel valued. We will focus on two key areas – Psychological Safety (feeling safe to put oneself at risk) and Psychological Standing (feeling entitled to speak up and to act).

Pearn Kandola has worked with organisations for nearly 40 years to promote inclusive and high performance cultures. In addition to working with Higher Education, they draw on their experience of working across a range of sectors in the UK and internationally.

This course is about recharging your communication. It will cover:

• Determine what effective communication means. Where do we start?
• How to strengthen the relationships most important to us; work & home
• Defusing difficult conversations; How to respond to difficult behaviour
• The power of Active Listening to understand and communicate meaning more effectively

The Staff Review and Development (SRD) process provides the opportunity for you to engage in a constructive discussion with your line manager about your current and future work and your personal and career development.

Join Bukky for this informal session which will cover an overview of the process, practical advice and useful reminders of good practice to help you to make the most of SRD. The session is a chance to consider how you can prepare for a constructive and meaningful discussion, and ask any questions you may have.

The session will help us all reflect and prepare for the next iteration of our Gallup Q12 survey.

We would explore the role of line managers on the satisfaction and motivation levels their team members, in addition to the office-wide initiatives that we have in place. What is the responsibility of Leadership Team, of Senior Management Group, and of individual managers to help employees feel engaged, satisfied and motivated, and ultimately to positively impact retention.

Have you ever been concerned about a situation and wanted to help, but didn't? Hearing a racist/sexist/homophobic joke in the tea room? Seeing an inappropriate touch of a friend? Watching a colleague wince at being belittled or interrupted in a team meeting? You're not alone, this is more common for many of us than you might think.

Come along to this short session to find out why this happens and what it means to be an active bystander. This includes simple changes and actions you can take to support others around you without confrontation and, over time, support a more inclusive environment for all of us to live and work in.

Want to become Buddy but not sure what is means? worried about having no experience? Worry no more!

In this informal workshop learn about our buddy programme, how to be a great buddy, how to communicate effectively, what to do in difficult scenarios, and a few other top tips!

You can ask any questions and raise any concerns you have about becoming a buddy during the session.

Participants review coaching tools introduced in the Major Gift Officer Learning Series:

• Donor Development Chart
• Priority Grid
• Personality Profiles
• Nine Navigation Points for Strategy
• Process for Locating Philanthropic Passion

Participants plan how they will lead by example to best equip their teams to apply each tool habitually.

Participants step through each of the nine Navigation Points and experienced managers discuss how they have embedded these concepts in their work—what has worked well, and what they would like advice on improving.

Participants discuss their common challenges in coaching team members to greatest advantage and brainstorm how to address these challenges.

Participants create an action plan to commit to supporting their team members regularly, strategically, and intentionally before, during, and after the series.