Soft Skills: Communication & Collaboration

Bringing together individuals who have different skills, contrasting personalities, and different responsibilities is tough. This workshop teaches skills that encourage participants to be more effective, productive, happier, and successful team members in working together with others.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Soft Skills: Stakeholders

In this course, participants learn how to engage more effectively with parents/teachers/team leaders/employers, to enhance trust and cooperation, to establish agreement, to manage expectations, and to adjust their approach to any number of situations that life may throw their way.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Soft Skills: Leadership

Leaders map out the journey to success for others to follow, a concept that is a natural desire in many young adults. Being an effective leader comes with work. Through process guides and leveraging foundation building soft skills, participants will learn to harness a vision, manage the delivery of that vision, and engage with others to gain the win. With this workshop, participants will propel their own personal leadership development journey.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Soft Skills: Planning & Time Management

Late assignments, failure to prepare for an exam, being tardy to work, a project that just went off the rails. One of the largest contributors to the failure of a vision and mission is mis-management of time. Not enough time to make it happen.

Workshop Objective: This workshop exposes participants to the skills, tools, and techniques that put them ahead of the curve. Participants learn to identify, plan for, and manage the time and resources they have (or need) to complete a task or project.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Soft Skills: Team Work/Team Building

Team work makes the dream work, right? So who teaches you HOW to be on a team? Whatever type of team you’re on — whether it’s for school (such as a science fair project), sports, or work — learning how to work together toward a common goal is key.

Workshop Objective: Participants will be exposed to skills that build a more comprehensive understanding of what is expected on any kind of team. Being on a team can be a challenge and is often unknowingly misunderstood by the individual and their team members. For leaders, whether you inherit or build a team, its efficiency and effectiveness is determined by the work you put in. This workshop helps participants learn to navigate their way with teams at school, at home, and at work.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Soft Skills: Team Work/Team Building

Teaching people to dream up a robot (design), breathe life into it (code), and share it with the world (execute) is amazing. Giving them the foundation to be successful is critical.

Workshop Objective: With fun in mind, this workshop teaches project management along with frameworks that ensure their innovations succeed as expected. With a strong focus on software development practices, participants will add key processes and tools to their tool belt for success.

Activities (Descriptions are below)

Training Activities

Ice Breakers: Each workshop and training include a number of fun and energy-building activities to help promote comfort and remove those emotions and thoughts that typically limit or inhibit interactions of a group.

Builder Secret Service: Knowledge Area(s): Teamwork Collaboration/ Leadership/ Conflict/ Communication/ Critical Thinking  

Groups will put on their thinking caps and work together to build a structure out of Lego blocks. Don’t tell, but each team member has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative and building process more challenging.

Birthday Cupcakes: Knowledge Area(s): Scheduling/ Time Management

Can making cupcakes teach participants to focus on relevant information while planning out their time needed for a sweet-treat project? Participants are taught the basics of network diagrams and how they drive logical precedence and NOT scheduling of activities. In short, weed out the unnecessary to focus on the critical path – and try not to leave the kitchen in a mess at the same time.

Builder Business: Knowledge Area(s): Scope Management/ Planning & Time Management/ Stakeholder Management/ Finance Management/ Design/ Collaboration  

A hands-on team exercise that puts participants in the shoes of a team driving a project for profit from initiation through close out. Participants will learn if they were able to make a profit and discuss in detail those impacting factors.

Project Manager Extraordinaire School Dance: Knowledge Area(s): Scope Management/ Planning & Time Management/ Stakeholder Management/ Finance Management/ Critical Thinking 

We’re planning the school dance in this detailed hands-on project-based exercise. Participants will be given the opportunity to work in a wide range of knowledge areas as they face challenges and variables that can only be solved for by utilizing critical soft skills and project management defined processes and techniques.

Marshmallow Tower: Knowledge Area(s): Planning  & Time Management/ Team Work/ Collaboration/ Design

This fun, delicate and sticky exercise gets the mind racing as it challenges participants to explore the design process: thinking, doing, prototyping, and iteration as a TEAM collaborating on a common goal. Try not to eat the marshmallow!