October
Making Teams Work and Working in and as a Team
Defining the problem (an assignment, an analysis or design problem), decomposing it into sub-problems, figuring out the difficulty of the tasks required to solve each sub-problem, assigning responsibilities and roles to team members on the basis of ability and interest, defining and enforcing a communication protocol, including meetings and group interactions, giving and receiving feedback, building a conversational landscape of effectiveness, authenticity and psychological safety.
Doing Things with Words I
Writing difficult messages that make a positive difference in very specific contexts: tricky emails, memos and pitches.
November
Making Effective Presentations
What is communicative competence? What makes a presentation more or less persuasive, more or less credible, more or less trustworthy? Types of communication (one on one, one on many), purposes of communication (descriptive, prescriptive, normative). Rubrics and metrics for assessing communicative success and presence. Indicative variables and controllable levers.
March
Doing Things with Words II
Thinking and writing for yourself with and around ChatGPT and other LLM’s: how to use them, why to use them, when to use them, how things can go wrong when you use them, how to engineer prompt sequences that help you become a master user.
April
Difficult Conversations
How do interpersonal interactions go wrong, and what can you do to help your interactions improve? The competitive and cooperative uses of inquiry and assertion, the role of interactive belief hierarchies (what I think you think I think…).
Contact
Rotman School of Management,
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
