MTSU HR Training

Welcome to the MTSU HR training and professional development website. We are pleased to offer professional development and training opprotunities for both supervisors and staff. To view availability and reserve a seat:

1.  Visit the MTSU Master Calendar.
2.  Click on the Faculty/Staff Meeting filter.
3.  Locate the available training topic of interest on the calendar and click on the event name.
4.  Within the event click on the link next to Register Here and complete the form.

If you need to modify or cancel the reservation or if you have additional questions please contact William Respress at ext 7832 or respress@mtsu.edu. CEU credits available.

How to Manage Difficult Employees: The Beginning is designed to empower supervisors with the wherewithal to extinguish difficult behaviors in the workplace. Many of us work with an employee whose behavior is so disruptive that we expend countless amounts of energy trying to understand it, change it, or maneuver around it. Managing the difficult behavior adds another layer of complexity to an already challenging and complex work environment. The manager not only has to contend frequently with the disruptive behavior, but also s/he must constantly manage his or her own angst to make sure it does not spill over into unfair or inappropriate supervisory practices toward that staff member. The session will be fast paced, highly interactive and will require participants to fully engage every aspect of the experience. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional

A Positive Approach To Discipline is designed to tool supervisors with the means to turn a potential termination into a productive performance relationship. Supervisors will discuss the effects of discipline versus termination, explore alternative methods of dealing with low employee performance, and develop techniques to deliver criticism in a constructive way that causes positive behavior change, not anger or resentment. 2 hours, Role Playing Participation Optional

When It Just Cannot Be Avoided: The Long Journey. Arguably, the redirecting of an employee's career path is one of the most arduous tasks that a supervisor will encounter during his or her career. At times, in spite of a supervisor's best efforts to turn the performance around, to the contrary, an employee will lead the supervisor down the difficult journey toward different career choices. This training will empower supervisors with proven techniques and discipline methods that will support salvaging an employer/employee relationship that has derailed. 2 hours, Role Playing Participation Optional

Performance Evaluations: The ins-and-outs is a hands-on working session that is designed to lay a foundation that will help supervisors conduct an appropriate performance evaluation. Only a marginal number of supervisors actually look forward to the annual performance evaluation period. Why, because many supervisors do not like being put on the spot as judge, jury, and executioner of their employees' fate. As a result, some performance evaluations are done because the system requires them, thus often; the quality of the evaluation truly reflects the effect of that inescapable requirement. 1.5 hours, No Role Playing

Hiring Top Performers: You Deserve The Best! The quality of staff who works for Middle Tennessee State University will perhaps have more impact on the success of the university as a whole or the unit, than any other factor. The intuitive way to create a terrific work force is to hire great staff in the first place. The process of hiring a replacement or the creation of a new job need not be a daunting task if you view it as an opportunity to upgrade the workforce and bring aboard new ideas to your unit. In this training session, supervisors will learn: how to prudently prepare for an interview; how to conduct an interview; what illegal and inappropriate questions to avoid; and how to select the best fit for your business needs. You deserve the best! 2 hours, Role Playing Participation Optional

Firing up the Engine is designed to introduce entry level supervisors to the essential requisites of effective supervision. Participants will explore the importance of relationship dynamics between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow and gain indispensable knowledge of techniques and strategies that maximize employees' full capacity toward achieving the unit's most important goals. Participants will engage topics such as writing effective documentation, how to manage difficult employees, and administering performance counseling. Additionally, participants will also be exposed to specific acts and laws that have a direct impact upon their span of control. The session will be passionate, hard hitting, and require lots of get-up-and-go. Come charged for the experience. 2 hours, Role Playing Participation Optional

Well-organized Documentation For Improved Performance: Participants will discover the many wonderful benefits of documenting to build up performance in the early stages of correcting deficiencies. Participants will discuss and understand the value of consistent application of the progressive discipline process. Participants will learn how to sufficiently and appropriately document performance concerns and deficiencies. We will explore through structured learning activities, discussion, scenario analysis, and role plays the strategies employed to sculpt behavior and performance in the right direction. Participants will expand in their awareness of the importance of preemptive actions in order to provide a targeted employee with the best chance of improving their performance. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Are We On The Same Team? MTSU has employees who have creative capacity to think and to behave in ways that can produce exemplary work results, when employees deeply care about each other (no one excluded) and MTSU!  This training session will empower participants to employ strategies to overcome challenges associated with working within a team context.  Each employee must be the guiding light on his or her team! 1 hour


Was That The Best Decision? In today's business environment, you must have the ability to solve problems quickly, confidently, and effectively. Much of our daily work involves making effective decisions--some big, some less critical. We often rely on tactics that seem to have worked for us in the past, but how do we really know in advance, that we have made the best decision? How does one develop a way of looking at the benefits and risks of decisions before they are made? By applying critical thinking to the tasks and challenges you face in your work, you will begin to experience breakthroughs you never thought possible. Participants will also become skilled at assessing the "big picture"; with its issues and challenges. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Encouraging Staff To Get The Job Done: Whether you are dealing with bosses, colleagues, or staff members the ability to win respect, influence people, and cultivate cooperation is absolutely essential to getting the job done. Throughout this professional development encounter, participants will focus on the key ingredients of influencing others. You will learn how to influence people by building a work climate that is non-threatening by adopting behavior patterns that build credibility and that opens up lines of communication through mastering the key components of encouraging others. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


So…You Want To Become A Supervisor: This seminar is designed for aspiring supervisors. Do you have what it takes to become a supervisor? Do you know how to inspire excellence? Do you know how to see it through to successful completion? Do you know how to uncover problems that demand immediate attention and bring them to a successful conclusion? Are you a born leader? Taking on that first supervisory position is always a challenge - especially if you are assuming supervisory responsibility for former peers. Is it worth it? You must guide, support, and assist your staff to do the very best job they can. You must motivate them, manage conflicts, resolve problems and emergencies, and do your best to meet your performance goals and help your employees to meet their goals. What about you, do you want to become a supervisor? Come and find out! 1 hour, No Role Playing


The Art of Effective Delegation is fundamentally vital to supervision. Executed appropriately, delegation can and should be a mutually beneficial experience. Supervisors also can maximize the amount and quality of work they produce while helping staff make significant contributions to important projects and to develop valuable skills along the way. Additionally, by sharing responsibilities, supervisors can focus on doing a few tasks well, versus doing numerous tasks less effectively. You'll leave knowing what to delegate, what not to delegate, and how to delegate. 1 hour, No Role Playing


The Art of Coaching concerns the motivation and the directing of employees you rely on even when they do not readily understand the big picture. Participants will discover how to get more done by using the appropriate coaching techniques for any situation. When supervisors master the art of coaching, their direct reports will become more loyal to the team and to the university. You will learn a quick two-minute technique that will make coaching almost effortless. You will have fun and learn a lot. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Exemplary Customer Service for Staff:  What is excellence in customer service? Do you have what it takes to deliver a memorable customer service experience? Do you know how to handle customer complaints? Do you want to know how to handle the rude customer and not make matters worse? This workshop will empower you to manage all kinds of customer interactions whether over the telephone or face-to-face. The workshop will be hard hitting and packed with lively structured experiences. 1 hour


Writing S.M.A.R.T. Goals.  Dennis Waitley stated that "Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." Without dispute, those working toward the attainment of a performance goal outperform those who are not working toward the attainment of a performance goal, thus goal-setting has a major impact on productivity! If employees do not know where they are going, how do they know how to get there, and when they have truly arrived? In this training session, participants will become skilled at developing S.M.A.R.T. goals for their employees. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Effective Interpersonal Communication Skills: Do You Have What It Takes? If you were given an interpersonal communication grade by your coworkers, what would be that grade? Seriously, how well do you get along with coworkers and colleagues? Strong interpersonal communication is the fuel that drives the engine of healthy relationships. Participants will learn: how to expand their personal influence, how to identify barriers to effective interpersonal communication, the keys to building strong work relationships, and how to use social amenities to make your message more palatable to the hearer. This training session will be fun yet practical and challenging. If you find people intentionally avoiding you or limiting their exposure to you, it's time for a change! 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Mission, Vision, and Core Values.   What if I gave you $5000.00 for every employee who could tell me the essence of your department's mission, vision, and core values statements? Would you be broke if you had to give me $5000.00 for each employee who could not? Would you be rich rather quickly or bankrupt rather quickly? A very wise person once stated "how can people achieve a mission except that they first know the mission";. What are the core values and beliefs that govern the work? If you want to learn how to develop mission, vision, and core values statements, come and join me for a right to the core training session. Truly, if employees do not know where they are going and why, any road will get them there! 2 hours, No Role Playing


Oh gosh, not another useless meeting! Are you fed up with having meetings in which only you perceive the value of attending? Do employees celebrate not having another one of those meetings? Are you the only one who feels that your meetings are worthwhile? Do you know how to keep the meeting on track? Do you know how to manage emotional outbursts during a meeting? A meeting can go bad or good for many reasons thus participants will learn: how to avoid the trap of meeting just to meet, how to appropriately prepare for a meeting, how to conduct a meeting, and how to end a meeting. If this training session reads like a good session for the "other guy";, sign up yourself and invite the "other guy";. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Time Management is a highly interactive session, which will help supervisors understand where all their time is going, why, and what to do about it. Time management is a set of principles, practices, skills, and tools working together to help you get more value out of your time with the aim of improving personal productivity. Effective time management is something that you need in order to do your work, accomplish your goals, and maximize opportunities that avail themselves. Participants will learn how to eliminate interruptions and delegate low-priority tasks to subordinates. We only get 24 hours in a day, so you will need to use them efficiently. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Motivating Employees: Whose Job Is It? Arguably, the undertaking of enhancing employee performance is one of the most complex tasks of all supervisory tasks. Is there a quick fix? Is there a silver bullet? Are there sure fire practices that clearly lend themselves to enhanced employee motivation? Whose job is it anyway to motivate staff? We will look into answering these questions in this highly charged session! 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Hello…Are You Listening To Me? While engaging people in conversation, we may often find ourselves not listening carefully to the speaker's point of view. Why? We may be overwhelmed with the conversation at hand, anticipating how to respond to the speaker's message, or just not thinking about the present conversation at all. Active listening is the key that unlocks effective communication. We will explore the dynamics of active listening, learn ways to remove barriers to active listening, and engage fun activities that are certain to result in better listening outcomes. Come and join us in the highly interactive training experience. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


We Are Not Getting Along Well: Conflict Resolution:  What's the difference between conflict and disagreement? Do we all have to get along? What should you do when you just cannot take it anymore? Does avoiding conflict truly help resolve the situation? Participants will learn the art of conflict resolution and have lots of fun while learning! 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Effective Supervisory Behaviors: Focusing Your Sight:   We'll chat about how to build employee commitment, how to build work relationships, and how to engage effective supervisory practices. This session is designed for individuals interested in expanding their knowledge of, and proficiency in, effective supervisory practices. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Supportive Vs. Defensive Work Climates:   Principally, this professional development session is designed to help supervisors understand, diagnose, and facilitate the change of an organization's climate in order to enhance its effectiveness. We will explore the effects of both defensive and supportive work climates and how to bring a turn-about on your unit. 1 hour, No Role Playing


The Supervisory & Leadership Beliefs Questionnaire Round Table Discussion:  This session will be highly interactive and will require that each participant come charged for the encounter! We will discuss how to create an atmosphere of interdependence rather than dependence; how to create an atmosphere of approach and problem solving rather than avoidance; and how to model what you expect. Participants will be required to complete a survey prior to attending the session. Seating will be limited, so sign up early! 1 hour No Role Playing


Strategic Leadership Styles: Making It Happen:  Is there a "one"; best leadership style? Does one style, fit all? Did you know that certain leadership styles can in fact, diminish productivity? Would tweaking your practice of leadership a bit, produce better results? You really can change tomorrow by changing today. We'll explore the topic of strategic leadership styles and how to make things happen. 1 hour, No Role Playing


The Five Practices Of Exemplary Leaders (with the inventory) is based on the works of Kouzes and Posner. Leaders know in order to get what they have never had; they must do what they have never done before! We will look at the five practices of exemplary leaders in order to better understand what separates good leaders from exemplary leaders. Which are you, good or exemplary? The inventory will help us to collect a little data about your current leadership practices that you may have a reference point for discussion and future comparison. The inventory results may be most revealing! 2 hours, No Role Playing


Walking The Talk: Ethics and Supervision:  Does credibility matter? Does it have an impact upon employees' behavior, attitude, disposition, and work output? Should leaders be held to a higher standard of ethics? What's the standard of ethics in your workplace? Are people doing the wrong things without consequences? What you say as well as what you do, matters. We will probe into the topic of ethics and surface with strategies for walking the talk. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Exemplary Customer Service for the Supervisor:  What is excellence in customer service? Do you have what it takes to deliver a memorable service experience? What about your employees, can they deliver a memorable service experience? Do they know how to handle customer complaints? Do they know how to handle the rude customer and not make matters worse? In this workshop, the supervisor will develop a customer service creed; a telephone etiquette protocol, and a complaint resolution algorithm. The workshop will be hard hitting and packed with lively structured experiences. 2 hours, Role Playing Participation Optional


Reconciliation Workshop is designed to allow employees to discuss interpersonal challenges and issues at hand in a nonthreatening and nonjudgmental environment. Participants will be guided through the process of reconciliation with aids that will allow them to bury the hatchet and move forward with productive relationships. Moreover, participants will learn effective ways to identify and to eliminate behaviors that infect and destroy relationships. 1 hour, Role Playing Participation Optional


Don't Make Me…Anger Management is an interactive training experience that is geared toward helping you to understand and to control your anger. Most of us have been caught off guard by one of those moments in life when that "something"; got the best of us. Have you ever been there? Well if you have, this session is designed with you in mind. Come join us and bring your ideas! 1 hour, No Role Playing


The ABCs Of Supervising Student Workers training experience will provide you with golden nuggets that will help make supervising students well worth it! And, it should be a rewarding experience for you and the students. We'll chat about: some of the do's and don'ts, how to deal with a difficult student worker, and how to delegate tasks. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Change Tomorrow By Changing Today:  Albert Einstein once related that doing the same thing expecting different results is insanity. I agree, what about you? We will look into the view of changing tomorrow by looking upon the horizon of life and changing today for different results tomorrow. Your thoughts impact your perceptions, your perceptions impact your behavior, and changing your behavior today will change your outcomes tomorrow! 1 hour, No Role Playing


No More Pushing My Buttons will help you to identify the triggers that allow coworkers, customers, and other people to push your buttons. In fact, if they do not know where your buttons are they most certainly cannot push them, so to speak. If you know what your buttons are and do not know how to hide them, this experience is for you. 1 hour, No Role Playing


High Performance Factors Inventory Informational Session concerns the use of a powerful tool that is used to weigh up team effectiveness on 25 bench marked high performance factors from the perspective of those who do the work. The inventory seeks to assess the group's functioning by creating a benchmark and then team members will formulate strategies or agreements to improve. The HPFI is only for those supervisors who truly want a breakthrough in team performance and will do whatever it takes to be the best! 1 hour, No Role Playing


Leadership Is More Than Easy Speech! This session is designed for leaders, aspiring leaders, and simply those who desire to know more about the application of courage as a primary leader behavior. Remember, one can demonstrate leader behaviors without the title. We'll also survey other leader behaviors that make for best leadership practices. Does it take more than easy speech to drive exemplary performance? 1 hour, No Role Playing


Team Performance Inventory (TPI) For Intact Teams Only:  Are you moving in one direction and your team in another? What are you willing to do to move the team's performance to a new level? Now, more than ever before, knowing how to maximize the synergy of a team is extremely important! But first, the challenges are to assess the team's current level of performance and to develop a road map for moving the team forward in a more effective and efficient manner. We'll chat about how to accomplish this through the TPI. 1 hour, No Role Playing


Professionalism and Ethics (non-supervisory) strike at the core of how members of an organization go about conducting the affairs of the organization. We go to work with the hope and belief that those around us will maintain the highest standards of professionalism and ethics though we are sometimes left bewildered and distraught over others' actions and conduct. We will take a brief tour through the portals of experience to learn more about the practice of professionalism and ethics and what each person can do to encourage professionalism! 1 hour, No Role Playing


Situational Leadership: A Different Approach is based upon the watershed work of leadership authorities Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. Principally, the practice of Situational Leadership adheres to the notion that there is no one best way to lead every employee. Simply put, one size style does not fit all. Instead, the effective leader identifies the needs of an employee and adapts his/her leadership behavior to that employee to maximize outcomes. We'll chat about this process of leadership and how to lead employees based upon the "maturity"; of the employee. 1 hour, No Role Playing


I Don't Trust You…Anymore! Once trust has been dashed to pieces, can it be regained? Does trust matter in the workplace? What are the necessary conditions to reestablish trust? Is it worth it? We'll discover the answers together, as we set out to learn about the noble virtue of trust. 1 hour, Role Playing Optional


Please Don't Tell Anyone: The Flaming Tongue! When one hears the words "Please Don't Tell Anyone"; most of us know what may be coming…GOSSIP! This training session is aimed at extinguishing gossip in the workplace. We'll chat about the causes, what to do, what not to do, and how to keep yourself out of the loop. Even if you are not one given to gossip, come and learn how to help others who will not come, but have the "flaming tongue";! 1 hour, Role Playing Optional


I Pay You! That's Enough, Correct? Employee Engagement 101:  Pay is enough for daily compliance but is that truly what you desire? What are you doing to keep staff committed to you and to MTSU? Does employee engagement truly make a difference? Unconditionally, yes! Come and share in this enlightening professional development session that may truly cause you to seriously ponder the question, I Pay You! That's Enough, Correct? 1 hour


Writing A Performance Improvement Plan is one of the most important documents that a supervisor can write that typically pays huge immediate dividends. If you have always wanted to know how to write one, but just did not know how to start, then please join me for this session. 1 hour


Oh Gosh, Here Comes The Change For Supervisors:  Change is a word that makes both supervisors and employees, cringe. Generally speaking, most supervisors do not eagerly volunteer to engage a change initiative, but know that it is a part of the job that must be done. If you desire to learn about some of the ins and outs of the process of change and how to lessen the impact upon staff, then this session would definitely be worth your time. 1 hour


Oh Gosh, Here Comes The Change For Staff. Are you feeling uncertain or even afraid of the impact that a change initiative may have upon you? Do you feel that the change initiative is being done to you versus being done in collaboration with you? If you answered yes and yes, then this session can empower you with information that may help you to work through the process and calm some of your fears. 1 hour


Things Could Be A Whole Lot Better! This session will deal with the subject of a respectful workplace setting and how to make it a whole lot better. We all have a key part to play in helping to create and to sustain an environment that makes MTSU a great place to work. I'll do my part and share the information and you can do your part by attending and practicing what you learn. 1 hour


Managing for Excellence.  This session is designed to introduce participants to powerful truths about leading from a center of core principles that brings out the best in your employees.  Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."  When was the last time, that you overheard one of your employees say, "Wow, what an awesome leader"?  1 hour