The ability to orchestrate strong collaboration in teams is a crucial skill for long term success at work. This module covers the essentials for creating a climate that facilitates strong collaboration: how to overcome barriers to common ground, how to foster clear and open communication, the role of social intelligence, as well as strategies to nurture culture and belonging in teams. Students will learn how avoid the most common pitfalls of teamwork and take away strategies to revive team performance after things go awry.
• Duration: 1H
• Participants: up to 60 students
Participants receive individualized feedback on their interactions with teammates during a real-time (in-person or online) group problem-solving session. The focus is on what interactions communicate implicitly about us and our approach to professional relationships. In the session, we explore how different ways of interacting can interfere with collaborative work. Through detailed analysis of the video-recordings of the interactions with teammates, participants will learn about how they manage the complex and often hidden interpersonal dynamics involved in collaborative work. They will leave the session with a framework to help them map and manage interpersonal complexity for the purpose of improved relationships and team performance.
• Duration: 1H
• Participants: A team (3-5 students)
This module supports participants in refining the communication and interaction skills needed across a range of early-stage career conversations (i.e., networking, job interviews, coffee chats, etc…). Navigating these conversations successfully demands competence on two fronts:
Firstly, the verbal skills associated with creating and maintaining open-ended dialogue, and secondly, the non-verbal skills associated with building rapport, having strong presence, and eliciting real, authentic presence from your co-locutors. Participants will receive feedback on video-based recordings of their actual performance in a simulated professional conversation, and emphasis will be placed on encouraging each participant to witness and compare their own perceptions regarding their interaction skills with the perceptions of their peers.
• Duration: 1.5H
• Participants: up to 30 students
Students get individualized feedback on their performance during a presentation, including body language, tone, eye contact, verbal habits, and overall rapport and connectedness with the audience. They receive precise, timely, individualized feedback guided by a framework that challenges them to consider the impact that everything they say and do in public has on the effectiveness and efficacy of their communication, and the persuasiveness of their presentation. They will leave the session in possession of a communication compass - a set of structured questions that will help them model and understand their intent and purpose in making a presentation, and the degree to which the presentation itself achieves your purpose.
• Material: a video of your team presentation
• Duration: 1H
• Participants: A team (3-5 students)
This session will serve as a culminating experience of the SDL, where participants will have the opportunity to integrate lessons learned from all SDL offerings. By applying these lessons to their own professional contexts, the session aims to help participants take stock of the developmental challenges they face, and strategize future successes in leadership and professional development.
• Duration: 1H
• Participants: up to 30 students
Rotman School of Management,
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6