RDP Training 2018-19

This course is designed for first-year PhD students to help you increase your effectiveness and meet the challenges of your PhD. We cover several different aspects of personal effectiveness in this one-day workshop, with practical solutions to get you started on your journey.

Outcomes:

• Start planning the first year of your PhD
• Be equipped to manage your relationship with your supervisor
• Understand how to work effectively with others

Ever wonder why you seem to ‘click’ with one person and not another? Ever wonder why you might find some things easier to do than others? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) might shed some light on these questions.

Why this course might make a difference

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator presents a framework to help you understand yourself and others, by exploring differences and preferences in four areas of your personality. As a result of this exploration you may work more effectively and be more understanding in your relationships with others.

Led by a qualified MBTI practitioner, the workshop comprises working through the MBTI questionnaire and self-assessment exercises, so that participants can:

• Understand the concept and theories behind the MBTI types and process to obtain a personal profile
• Explore the differences and preferences within personalities in research-related scenarios

Course feedback:

“I had known about the Myers-Briggs, but I hadn't understood the different dimensions fully, or their interactions at a deeper level. Between explanations and activities, the course really helped me to understand the Myers-Briggs perspective, and to be aware of personal and professional differences between my friends and colleagues.”

“The contents of this training and the design of the teaching were very attractive and interesting. I think this training is very useful and helpful, and will recommend it to my friends and other students in my department in the future.”

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

This course is designed for first-year PhD students to help you increase your effectiveness and meet the challenges of your PhD. We cover several different aspects of personal effectiveness in this one-day workshop, with practical solutions to get you started on your journey.

Outcomes:

• Start planning the first year of your PhD
• Be equipped to manage your relationship with your supervisor
• Understand how to work effectively with others

The Researcher Development Programme (RDP), the Research Strategy Office, and the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) are offering this one-day course for Cambridge postdocs who are interested in enhancing their business awareness. It isn’t just for researchers considering setting up their own business or actively pursuing a career in the private sector. With more and more research funding being directed towards collaborations between academia and the commercial world, it’s vital for researchers to understand how businesses operate and the skills they value.

This fun, one-day, interactive course includes 'The Frame Game' to give you a taste of the commercial world. Delivery is by the Institute of Manufacturing's experienced industrial fellows. So, book a place to:-

* Experience how a business works
* Explore a range of key business issues including working with customers, different business models and working as a team
* Develop skills around developing and communicating your research and project

Are you in a formal leadership role, or have you taken on leadership positions informally?

This workshop will help you to consider the variety of situations and contexts you find yourself leading in and guide you in understanding your leadership skills and abilities so that you can improve them and deploy them thoughtfully. We will look at a variety of meanings and views of leadership, discover the 4 elements of leadership, consider various leadership styles, and reflect on leadership within and out of research environment.

We would encourage you to take this workshop as a brief introduction to leadership before attending more in-depth workshops, including Postdocs: Self-Leadership and Postdocs: Leading Others.

Outcomes

• Recognise own current skills and strengths in relation to developing further as a leader.
• Review a range of definitions of, and styles of, leadership.
• Apply to your own context.

Feedback:

“I found it interesting to define what leadership means and to understand the different styles there are.”

“It was a very interesting and different training which was very good to attend so as to know the skills to develop.”

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

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.”