Researcher Development Programme (RDP) course timetable

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Let’s face it; being a researcher can be stressful! Not only are you managing the ups and downs of life in the lab, but you are probably balancing work and life and also have one eye on the future and what comes after your PhD…

This workshop is designed to help you build emotional resilience. You probably already have some strategies in place so we will reflect on the highs and lows you have already experienced, look at some of the theories of resilience and consider how we can better support your coping and wellbeing.

• Understand what resilience is
• Consider why researchers need to be resilient
• Identify when we have been resilient
• Be aware of the three Cs of stress hardiness
• Start to develop our resilience toolkits

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

While we might assume that creativity is a fixed innate ability – stereotypically leading to the creation of poems and paintings – in the context of our research, the creative thinking process that underpins creativity can be seen as a skill to be developed to solve problems large and small. Indeed, with this creative thinking process at the heart of research, research itself can be viewed as an inherently creative act.

Why this course might make a difference
The overall purpose of this intensive, practical workshop is to help you develop your creative thinking skills to help you solve research problems.

Outcomes:
With this aim in mind, the course outcomes are:

• To give you a systematic creative-thinking process for solving problems.
• The opportunity to apply and develop a creative thinking process, by working in pairs on a challenge.
• To explore your assumptions about your own creativity.

Previous feedback:
“It had so many ideas and mnemonics for having a creative and constructive brainstorm, with outputs!”

“This training event showed me how little time brainstorming actually takes and how it boosts creative process. I literally felt that after some warming up, my brain started to give me more and more pictures-ideas in two minutes each time.”

Are you interested in how you could coach yourself in your own professional development?

This workshop progresses on from Postdocs: Introduction to Coaching and Mentoring to suggest tools and techniques that can enable you to gain greater self-awareness of your blind spots, of the barriers you may be creating for yourself, or of what you could be doing to take the necessary steps for your career. Techniques include how to use writing, sharing, and planning to heighten your motivation to succeed, clarify your thoughts, and activate new ideas, solutions, and possibilities for moving forward. You will be introduced to tools which may help you to prioritise and focus, question yourself, and break down your ideas into real steps toward progress.

It is possible to attend this as an individual workshop, although we would recommend that you attend Postdocs: Introduction to Coaching and Mentoring before signing up for this workshop.

Outcomes:

• Identify your key areas for development.
• Apply tools and techniques to coach yourself in these chosen areas of development.
• Recognise how to clarify and focus on the necessary steps to be taken from here.

Why this course might make a difference
While the first year report is arguably the first step in completing your PhD, the process of taking this first step can be fraught with uncertainty, particularly if you’re still ‘finding your feet’.

Whether you are feeling confused about the first year report – or just want to become a more effective writer – the overall purpose of this course is to help you improve the writing both of your first year report and of your research in general.

Previous Participant Feedback:

“It helped me benchmark my progress against others, understand my specific challenges and get motivated to just write now, perfect later.”

“It really got me started on writing and gave me a better sense of where I was and where I was heading with my first year report and PhD overall.”

“To hear what are the expectations for the first year report, and what it should be included there.”

The first step toward confident leadership is assured and well-balanced self-leadership. Are you really aware of how you lead yourself every day? This workshop aims to inspire you to be a self-leader by developing strategies to extend your awareness and confidence to take action and design the professional outcomes you are looking for. We will encourage you to think about how to recognise patterns of your own behaviour that might hold you back so that you can have the understanding and tools to communicate yourself and your perspective with awareness and confidence. This will create a firm foundation on which to build your leadership of others.

This workshop leads onto Postdocs: Leading Others. We recommend that you do these workshops after having first completed Postdocs: An Initial Guide to Leadership.

Outcomes

• Explore and experience your skills, strengths, abilities and style in detail within your individual context.
• Consider how to extend your own self-leadership on a daily basis through a variety of strategies.
• Apply self-knowledge, awareness and techniques to your repertoire of leadership skills.

Aimed at first-year PhD students, this course is designed to get you thinking and working effectively on writing your end-of-first-year-report. How to start? What is expected? How do you make it work for you? These and many other important questions, hints and tips will be addressed in this half-day session.

Outcomes:

• Understand the standard form and function of the first year report
• Start planning the structure of your report
• Experience the benefits of editing and receiveing feedback on writing

While there might be a simple ‘cure’ for procrastination – just get started on the things you’re putting off – for many of us, this simple ‘cure’ is not necessarily easy.

Why this course might make a difference
The overall purpose of this intensive, practical workshop is to help you manage your procrastination.

Outcomes:
With this aim in mind, specific outcomes of the course include:

Raising our awareness of:

• What procrastination actually is
• Our reasons for procrastinating and our habits when we do so
• Our rationalizations when procrastinating
• Two key steps to overcoming our procrastination
• Practical strategies and tips

Previous feedback:
“It helped me realize some deep reasons that cause me to procrastinate.“

“It made me think of all the ways in which I procrastinate and gave me several tools and ideas to help me improve my focus.”

It’s that time of year: the report is looming on the horizon and the reality of writing is here!

Aimed at first-year PhD students, with little or no academic writing experience. This course focuses on helping you develop good writing habits and become a more efficient writer. It is designed to get you thinking and to get working effectively on your end-of-first-year report / Certificate of Postgraduate Studies.

Please note, this is a beginners course, so if you already have experience in writing for academic purposes, this course might not be for you.

Outcomes:

• Understand the form and function of the first-year report
• Start planning the structure of your report
• Experience the benefits of editing and providing feedback on writing

Giving presentations is an essential skill for a researcher, be it in your deparment, at a major conference, or in your next job interview! You know your subject but sometimes issues of performance and clarity stop you being your best. Perhaps you can't project your voice, perhaps you are terrified of the Q&A, perhaps you feel your slides let you down, or perhaps you just don't know what to do to get better.

This is a highly interactive workshop that requires you to throw yourself into the activities. Everyone will be involved as we apply some of the material from the online Presentation and Performance toolkit and try it out in a safe and supportive environment.

The workshop is especially designed for those who feel less confident with the performance aspects of giving presentations. If you are comfortable standing up and talking in front of others then we recommend starting with the online materials.

Aimed at first-year PhD students, this course is designed to get you thinking and working effectively on writing your end-of-first-year-report. How to start? What is expected? How do you make it work for you? These and many other important questions, hints and tips will be addressed in this half-day session.

Outcomes:

• Understand the standard form and function of the first year report
• Start planning the structure of your report
• Experience the benefits of editing and receiveing feedback on writing

How can you make the most of your postdoc years at Cambridge? What does a strategic postdoc look like? What could you be doing now to be more strategic, intentional and agentive during your time at Cambridge?
This workshop explores how to navigate the research landscape, how to think and act strategically, and how to develop mental and emotional discipline for coping with the demands of the competitive research environment. We will explore the career journeys of former postdocs and see that there’s no one recipe for success, but there are common ingredients. This workshop is for postdoctoral researchers who want to get to and be prepared for the next step in their careers, whether that’s within academia or beyond.

Outcomes:

• Begin to take charge of your own career path
• Understand the many actions you could be taking now to achieve a career within or beyond academia
• Consider the important link between mental and emotional health and career advancement

Feedback:

“It encouraged an overall view of thinking about my career and what I want out of it and what I am good at. It also covered examples of people who stayed in academia as well as those who did not, so that I was able to consider the pros and cons of more than just one route.”

“I'm right at the start of my post-doc and it helped me to think about what I wanted to get out of the next few years in terms of my career.”

It’s that time of year: the report is looming on the horizon and the reality of writing is here!

Aimed at first-year PhD students, with little or no academic writing experience. This course focuses on helping you develop good writing habits and become a more efficient writer. It is designed to get you thinking and to get working effectively on your end-of-first-year report / Certificate of Postgraduate Studies.

Please note, this is a beginners course, so if you already have experience in writing for academic purposes, this course might not be for you.

Outcomes:

• Understand the form and function of the first-year report
• Start planning the structure of your report
• Experience the benefits of editing and providing feedback on writing

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations

Do you get the results you want from your communication with others at work? Are you able to talk with confidence in meetings? Do you gain a high level of impact when speaking in public?

This individually focused and completely confidential one-to-one coaching session will help you in identifying how to further utilise your voice and gain greater awareness of how you present yourself, so that you can develop new approaches to your communication in a wide range of professional situations.

It will focus on your own specific requirements, but could include anything from practical points about elocution, ideas for how to hold the attention of a room, or new confidence in speaking up as an emerging leader in your research field.

Outcomes

• Greater awareness of your voice and body, and how you come across to others
• Practical techniques to help you communicate effectively, with impact
• Improved confidence with public speaking and presentations