Difficult colleagues come in many forms. Gain a better understanding of the motivations behind difficult personalities, and learn strategies for how to communicate with and influence different personality types.  This is a multi-modal course, with a blend of webinar content and facilitated group dialogue.

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The arrival of a new year is a time that many choose to make new resolutions – both personal and professional.  Following through on these goals is often challenging, for a variety of reasons that are detailed below.  

To achieve better follow-through on your New Year’s resolutions, try the following:

Instead of new resolutions each January, renew your focus on those things you want to work on. Renewal of these goals will help you tweak them to new realities, and enable you to make new plans to ensure they happen.  Here are five tips to ensure that your annual goals actually happen:

1. Make January a month of goal renewal and not goal generation. January is a built-in time to automatically be reminded to check on your goals because of all the media attention on it.
2. Take advantage of micro plans. Setting an annual goal is great, however, 12 months is a long time where you put things off and procrastinate. It is simply human nature. Why not instead make sub-goals or steps of the main goal for every three months? These are far more digestible.
3. Make a monthly reminder on your calendar to reread all of your goals or plans. I do this and it is incredibly helpful for me to read everything and realize not only all the progress I have made but where I can focus my efforts next. 
4. Monthly review is fantastic, but do you want to know what is even better? Reviewing small portions of your plan each week, to maintain focus on your goals.
5. Ensure that your goals aren’t just big, lofty ambitions, but very specific and quantifiable actions. Metrics are your friends. Saying you’ll be the best of something sounds great, but how will you do that?

Join us Thursday, January 16, from 8:30-11 AM for Spring 2020 Professional Development Day. This event features a panel of community leaders who will discuss topics relevant to the future of HSU and Humboldt County, including economic development, equity, sustainability, emergency preparedness, innovation, and more.  

Participants will also learn about the results of an HSU professional development survey and upcoming professional development opportunities that can help us address challenges and build an even stronger community. 

Register Here

On the Bookshelf

Great at work: how top performers do less, work better, and achieve more

by Morten Hansen

"Why do some people perform better at work than others? This deceptively simple question continues to confound professionals in all sectors of the workforce. Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his "Seven Work Smarter Practices" that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance. Each of Hansen's seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study.

Find the Book at the HSU Library

 We Have to Talk: A Step-By-Step Checklist for Difficult Conversations

There are dozens of books on the topic of difficult, crucial, challenging, fierce, important (you get the idea) conversations. (In fact, I list several excellent resources at the end of this article). Those times when you know you should talk to someone, but you don't. Maybe you've tried and it went badly. Or maybe you fear that talking will only make the situation worse. Still, you feel stuck, and you'd like to free up that stuck energy for more useful purposes.

What you have here is a brief synopsis of best practice strategies: a checklist of action items to think about before going into the conversation; some useful concepts to practice during the conversation; and some tips and suggestions to help you stay focused and flowing in general, including possible conversation openings.
You'll notice one key theme throughout: you have more power than you think.

From an article by Judy Ringer at judyringer.com

Read the Article

This year the California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 778 which was signed by Gov. Newsom on August 30, 2019. The primary changes for mandatory harassment training impacting the CSU’s current offerings are twofold:

“[B]y by January 1, 2020, requires an employer with 5 or more employees to provide at least 2 hours of classroom or other effective interactive training and education regarding sexual harassment to all supervisory employees and at least 1 hour of classroom or other effective interactive training and education regarding sexual harassment to all nonsupervisory employees in California within 6 months of their assumption of a position.” [Emphasis added]

 And:

 The additional requirement that employers “… shall also provide training inclusive of harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation as a component of the training and education…” [Emphasis added]

 The Systemwide Professional Development group in the Chancellor’s Office has completed the task of bringing our current CSULearn Harassment Prevention Mandatory trainings into compliance which is available now. The Chancellor’s Office has also directed campuses to complete the mandatory assignment of the newly updated training before the close of this year.

 What this means for all HSU employees:

All employees, with no exceptions, will be assigned the supervisor or non-supervisor Harassment Prevention Mandatory Training beginning on December 16, 2019 with an expanded timeframe of completion of 90 days.

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