Leadership and Workplace Essentials
Thursday, November 20, 2025
The University of Arkansas - Pulaski Technical College’s Business and Industry Center offers leadership and workplace essential training to individuals, businesses, and local governments. Customized courses or private, company-only courses are also available. Contact Sharon Cantrell at (501) 907-6670 or e-mail [email protected] for pricing and details.
Professional Development Academy
The Professional Development Academy uses well-researched, experience-tested concepts and curricula to develop current and future leaders for business and industry and presents it in a flexible way allowing an organization to customize the academy to best meet their needs. Courses are four hours each.
COMMUNICATING WITH IMPACT: Communicate more effectively
Time: Approx. 4 hours
(PRE-REQUISITE FOR
ALL OTHER ACADEMY COURSES)
This foundational course provides individuals with a powerful set of interaction skills that enables them to communicate more effectively with colleagues and customers and, in the process, build trust, strengthen partnerships, and achieve desired results.
Helps individuals:
- Recognize the impact they can have on their success and the success of others by enhancing interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
- Relate to colleagues and customers in a way that meets their personal needs while also meeting the practical need of accomplishing objectives.
- Use a set of interaction process skills that enable them to conduct more successful discussions that achieve results.
- Use a technique for providing specific, meaningful feedback that helps people improve their performance and increase productivity.
Competencies developed: Building Customer Loyalty, Communication, Influencing
YOUR LEADERSHIP JOURNEY: Transition into a new leader role
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course arms a new or prospective leader with the knowledge and skills they need to confront the challenges they face early in their leader career. The course encourages the learner to think about the transitions that newer leaders face and how to handle those challenges. They are introduced to three leadership differentiators that are most important to building a positive reputation as well as contributing to the organization’s success.
Helps leaders:
- Reduce the stress associated with the shift to leading others.
- Act with authenticity to build trust.
- Bring out the best in others to enhance engagement and capacity.
- Look for and accept feedback with grace.
Competencies developed: Collaborating, Earning Trust
COACHING: MOVE PEOPLE FORWARD: Coach in the moment
Time: Approx. 4 hours
In this course, leaders recognize the benefits of a growth mindset, and the insight tool measures their general orientation to how they view other’s potential to grow. They learn and practice a practical approach to coaching in the moment, in any situation.
Helps leaders:
- Recognize and nurture the potential within others to grow and change.
- Build a coaching relationship based on trust.
- Guide, inspire, support, and empower in the moment.
- Ask questions, connect at a human level, and energize into action.
Competencies developed: Coaching, Coaching & Developing Others
BUILDING AND SUSTAINING TRUST: Build and sustain trusting
relationships
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course introduces Trust Builders, actions leaders can take to build and sustain trusting relationships, as well as common Trust Breakers that can erode or quickly break trust. Applying these skills to build trusting relationships enables people to take risks, identify and solve problems, and collaborate to achieve business results.
Helps leaders:
- Recognize how trust in the workplace affects business results.
- Analyze their role in building and sustaining trust.
- Identify common workplace behaviors that can build, sustain, or break trust.
- Demonstrate behaviors that show they trust others, as well as give people the confidence to trust them.
- Use interaction skills to foster open communication, build and maintain trusting relationships, and repair damaged ones.
Competencies developed: Authenticity, Creating a Culture of Trust, Earning Trust
RESOLVING WORKPLACE CONFLICT: Recognize escalating conflict and take
action
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course teaches leaders how to recognize the signs of escalating conflict and take appropriate action to minimize damage. Leaders are introduced to two resolution tactics—coach and mediate—and practice using the Interaction Essentials as they coach then mediate to resolve a conflict.
Helps leaders:
- Reduce the damaging effects of workplace conflict on individuals, groups, and the organization.
- Effectively address workplace conflict and enhance productivity, efficiency, and morale.
- Help others take responsibility for resolving their own conflicts.
- Promote a culture of trust and mutual respect within their work group.
Competencies developed: Resolving Conflict
ENGAGING AND RETAINING TALENT: Inspire higher levels of engagement &
intent to stay
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course provides leaders with a model to determine what drives each individual’s engagement, as well as methods for proactive engagement and talent retention. Participants learn how to conduct “engagement conversations” and “retention conversations.” They explore ways to offer recognition and create an engaging environment using no-cost “everyday engagers.”
Helps leaders:
- Engage individuals on a daily basis.
- Uncover and address what individuals need to be more satisfied and engaged at work.
- Inspire higher levels of engagement by acknowledging the value people bring to the organization and showing them that they matter.
- Increase the quality of conversations with people about their engagement and intent to stay.
Competencies developed: Inspiring Others
VALUING DIFFERENCES: Explore and leverage unique perspectives
Time: Approx. 4 hours
Valuing Differences gives people effective skills and tools for exploring others’ unique perspectives, understanding and leveraging people’s inherent differences, challenging devaluing behavior, and creating an environment in which people’s differences are respected and utilized.
Helps individuals:
- Contribute their unique styles, abilities, and motivations to ensure the success of their work group and organization.
- Encourage others to contribute their unique styles, abilities, and motivations.
- Work more collaboratively and productively with people who have a variety of styles, abilities, and motivations.
- Leverage the talents of their coworkers to achieve better results.
- Contribute to a climate in which people’s differences are respected and utilized.
Competencies developed: Valuing Differences
SETTING GOALS AND REVIEWING RESULTS: Track & evaluate outcomes with
SMART
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course will show the positive effect of shifting the traditional role of planner and evaluator from the leader, to a shared responsibility between leader and employee. This shift builds employee ownership, and allows the leader to focus on coaching and developing throughout the performance cycle. Leaders will experience how to use effective SMART goals to help them and their employees track progress and fairly evaluate outcomes. A well-written performance plan is also a powerful tool for leaders to use when determining where to focus their development and coaching discussions with their employees.
Helps leaders:
- Ensure direct reports take a more active role in managing their performance.
- Manage performance on an ongoing basis while working within the organization’s time parameters for goal setting and performance reviews.
- Provide the ongoing coaching and feedback your direct reports need to achieve their goals.
- Increase your direct reports’ confidence and commitment to their own success.
Competencies developed: Aligning Performance for Success, Influencing
DELEGATING: ENGAGE AND EMPOWER PEOPLE: Delegate comfortably and
confidently
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course sets out to help leaders shift their mindset about what they can delegate and feel more comfortable and confident doing so. Learners dig into their workload to identify tasks they’d never consider delegating. They use methods for matching people to tasks they’re both motivated and capable of doing. And, they practice the delegation conversation they’ll have to ensure success.
Helps leaders:
- Delegate work that they wouldn’t have before.
- Identify tasks to delegate that engage, empower, and develop the team.
- Match a person’s capabilities and motivations to an appropriate task.
- Share work that extends the right amount of ownership and decision-making authority.
- Establish clear boundaries, support, and follow-up with each delegation.
Competencies developed: Delegation & Empowerment, Sharing Responsibility
DRIVING CHANGE: Accelerate change with teams
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course provides the skills and resources leaders need to accelerate the process of implementing change with their team members and to create an agile work environment where people are more open to change.
Helps leaders:
- Accelerate the process of making change happen.
- Minimize the potential negative effects change can have on productivity, morale, and collaboration.
- Turn resistance into commitment and inspire team members to take ownership of change.
- Clearly communicate the business rationale and benefits of change for the team and the organization.
Competencies developed: Facilitating Change
HIGH-IMPACT FEEDBACK AND LISTENING: Deliver positive and developmental
feedback
Time: Approx. 4 hours
In this course, individual performers learn how to effectively deliver both positive and developmental feedback. They also learn how to be receptive to feedback and to listen to accurately understand the speaker’s intended message. In the workplace, these skills help them to optimize and sustain their own and their coworkers’ performance.
Helps individuals:
- Support colleagues’ job performance, growth, and development.
- Build authentic, trusting relationships with colleagues.
- More wisely choose opportunities to give and seek feedback.
- Handle, reduce, or eliminate defensiveness or negative emotions that can occur in a feedback discussion.
- Help create a culture of teamwork and performance.
Competencies developed: Coaching & Developing Others, Communication, Leveraging Feedback
LEADING TEAMS: ACHIEVE MORE TOGETHER: Boost team performance
Time: Approx. 4 hours
All teams face challenges. Whether an agile leader, project leader, formal or informal leader - the team leader’s role is to identify them and guide the team in addressing them. In this course, learners become aware of teams’ practical and personal needs and are introduced to six factors by which they can evaluate a team’s level of performance. Learners experience an immersive, interactive exercise in which they diagnose problems of several teams in a fictitious organization and recommend steps the teams’ leaders can take to move toward optimal team performance. Learners apply this new understanding to their workplace teams and leave the session with a plan for moving forward toward optimal team performance.
Helps individuals:
- Identify team issues that have an adverse impact on productivity.
- Diagnose team dynamics and the effect on team and business results.
- Recognize their role in building and sustaining a high-performing team culture.
- Apply best practices to help teams overcome challenges.
- Leverage what they learn for use with their own team.
Competencies developed: Guiding Team Success, Leading Teams
MAKING HIGH-QUALITY DECISIONS: Select best course of action
Time: Approx. 4 hours
Using an engaging simulation, this course teaches a logical decision-making process that addresses the critical elements that result in high-quality business decisions. Participants will develop the skills and confidence to generate options and compare them to important decision criteria, and to select the best course of action. Utilizing this process will also help individuals avoid the pitfalls that often undermine high-quality decision making.
Helps individuals:
- Make business decisions more effectively and confidently.
- Avoid obstacles to objective analysis and judgments.
- Involve the right people at the right time in the decision-making process.
- Gain the help and support needed to make high-quality decisions and to implement them.
Competencies developed: Decision Making
STRATEGIES FOR INFLUENCING OTHERS: Package ideas to influence others
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course shows leaders and individual contributors how to package their ideas in a way that will win over even the most skeptical individuals. Participants learn strategies for effectively capturing people’s attention, transforming their perspectives, and gaining their commitment to taking action.
Helps individuals:
- Capture stakeholders’ attention, gain their commitment, and make things happen.
- Leverage their personal power to gain other’s commitment to take action on promising ideas and alternatives that achieve business results.
- Implement new ideas, improvements, and alternatives that will have the greatest impact on organizational objectives.
Competencies developed: Influencing
COMMUNICATION: CONNECT THROUGH CONVERSATIONS: Recognize role of
emotional intelligence in communication
Time: Approx. 4 hours
This course highlights to leaders that engaging the “head”—the business outcome of the conversation—is just as critical as recognizing and addressing the “heart”—people’s feelings such as being respected or appreciated. Leaders will recognize the role of emotional intelligence in success as a leader as they develop foundational leadership skills that apply to the wide range of workplace situations they must handle.
Helps leaders: Conduct conversations that achieve the intended business goals.
- Communicate and respond in ways that meet the unique personal needs of team members and others.
- Recognize and react to emotions (their own and others’) present in work situations.
- Use a technique to provide meaningful, supportive feedback.
Competencies developed: Building Partnerships, Communication, Emotional Intelligence Essentials, Managing Relationships
Featured Programs
Does your organization need customized training?
Find out how UA - Pulaski Tech can develop a customized program exclusively for your organization. UA-PTC assists qualified organizations with grant applications to offset training costs.