The Basics of Planning & Performance Management Using Results-Based Accountability

With Anne McIntyre-Lahner, Evaluation and Impact Consultant, 35-plus years of experience in state and nonprofit leadership, and author of “Stop Spinning Your Wheels: Using Results Based Accountability to Steer Your Agency to Success”

Friday, October 18, 2024
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Building a Data Culture

With Rachel Leventhal-Weiner, Director of Evaluation and Impact, Federal Funding, CT Office of Policy and Management

Friday, December 13, 2024
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Being a data-informed or data-driven agency starts with data culture. The State of Connecticut’s Research and Evaluation team has been knitting together a data culture through capacity-building workshops for state service colleagues. Great stories captivate an audience, convey a crucial message, and move people to action. Great data stories can do these things too, and in this workshop, participants will learn the conventions of telling a great data story. From crafting a narrative to considering your audience to leveling up your data visualization, participants will leave this session with action items they can incorporate into their work right away. Participants should have familiarity with their organization’s existing data reporting, and are encouraged to bring existing documentation or reports to workshop as a group. Participants can expect to learn about strategies for creating learning agendas, auditing their existing data, establishing strong data governance, preparing for data storytelling and strategizing around continuous quality improvement of their data and processes.

Promoting Positive Labor-Management Relations to Build a Resilient and High-Performing Team

With Matt Hart, Executive Director, Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCOG), and David Krayeski, Undersecretary for Labor Relations, CT Office of Policy and Management (OPM)

Friday, March 7, 2025
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

This workshop is full. If you would like to be added to a waitlist, please contact maura.maloney@uconn.edu.

How Leadership Influences Organizational Culture

With Andre Santiago, Vice President & Chief Program Officer at Leadership Greater Hartford (LGH)

Friday, December 1, 2023
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Ethics and Accountability in the Public Sector

With Thomas “TJ” Jones, Adjunct Professor (UConn SPP) and Private Consultant

Friday, February 23, 2024
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Essential Skills for Grant-Writing Success: Research, Writing and Assessment Tools to Get Your Grant Applications to Stand Out

With Alyssa Goduti, UConn SPP adjunct professor and President & CEO of Ädelbrook

Friday, October 21, 2022
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Live virtual session

The success of any nonprofit or government organization is contingent on its mission, vision, governance, ability to run quality programs and most importantly on its ability to raise funds. Organizations with the knowledge, skills and expertise to seek out and successfully win grants are more likely to thrive in this increasingly competitive funding environment. This session will help you better understand how to identify grant opportunities and develop winning proposals. Attendees will have the opportunity to practice grant-writing skills based on practical examples from their organizations or experiences.

What will you learn?

This session will provide vital information about how to approach grant writing in today’s competitive environment. You will gain an understanding of how to research and identify appropriate grant opportunities, develop strategies for approaching the grant writing process, and learn how to develop compelling responses to each component of the proposal. We will use real-life examples to help you practice proposal writing for your organizations so that you will be better prepared to deliver compelling and winning proposals.

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Leadership Development Roundtable: An Introduction

With Jason Fredlund, Racial Justice Educator, Equity Consultant, LDR Facilitator, and Randi McCray, Founder, RM Consulting Services, CT, LDR Facilitator, both from Five Frogs.

Friday, November 18, 2022
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Our Introduction to Leadership Development Roundtable (LDR) is not a workshop, it is an experience. An experience designed to encourage you to reflect, refocus and refuel on your leadership journey. Many times, leaders find themselves operating on autopilot in their work towards equity.

This program is a condensed version of our 10-month program that will provide a meaningful opportunity to explore the breadth and depth potential of your impact. The day includes small group discussions, activities and exploration of leadership and equity concepts. Key topics include:

• Self-awareness
• Adaptive Leadership
• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging (getting to the root)
• Race Equity (micro and macro responsibility)
• How “I” and “We” Lead (spheres of influence and building an impact chain)

Key Themes and Intended Outcomes

• Understanding and practicing adaptive leadership;
• Exploring/identifying how you can lead change;
• Dissecting the importance of race equity and DEIB mindsets; and
• Forging lasting relationships with fellow leaders.

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Equity Based Decision Making

With Kenya Rutland, Principal and Chief Enthusiasm Officer, KJR Consulting

Friday, December 9, 2022
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

This workshop is full. If you would like to be added to a waitlist, please contact maura.maloney@uconn.edu.

Key Elements to Building Successful Alliances and Cross-Sector Partnerships

With David Garvey, Director of Partnership and Compliance of Career Resources Inc.’s WE RISE Together program

WORKSHOP HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Friday, March 10, 2023
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT

Leveraging the Power of Well-Made Surveys

With Jennifer Dineen, Professor, UConn School of Public Policy

Friday, May 19, 2023
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

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Essential Skills for Grant-Writing Success: Research, Writing and Assessment Tools to Get Your Grant Applications to Stand Out

With Alyssa Goduti, UConn SPP adjunct professor and President & CEO of Ädelbrook

Friday, October 8, 2021
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

The success of any nonprofit or government organization is contingent on its mission, vision, governance, ability to run quality programs and most importantly on its ability to raise funds. Organizations with the knowledge, skills and expertise to seek out and successfully win grants are more likely to thrive in this increasingly competitive funding environment. This session will help you better understand how to identify grant opportunities and develop winning proposals. Attendees will have the opportunity to practice grant-writing skills based on practical examples from their organizations or experiences.

What will you learn?

This session will provide vital information about how to approach grant writing in today’s competitive environment. You will gain an understanding of how to research and identify appropriate grant opportunities, develop strategies for approaching the grant writing process, and learn how to develop compelling responses to each component of the proposal. We will use real-life examples to help you practice proposal writing for your organizations so that you will be better prepared to deliver compelling and winning proposals.

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT

Leading in Unclear & Challenging Times

With Anne Yurasek, Principal of Fio Partners

Friday, October 15, 2021
1:00 – 4:00 PM
Live virtual session

A challenging and rapidly-changing environment has become the norm — and with it, the need for resilient leaders and adaptive leadership. Adaptive leadership is a practical and empowering framework to mobilize teams during challenging times. It considers the range of external contexts and conditions that influence an organization and employs principles like emotional intelligence and organizational learning and collaboration to address them. During this interactive seminar, participants will explore the traits and practices of adaptive and resilient leaders, elements of adaptive leadership including distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges, outside-in thinking, engaging stakeholders, and fostering psychological safety and a culture of learning to both innovate and address risk.

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Disrupting Bias & Responding to Microaggressions

With Kenya Rutland, KJR Consulting

Friday, November 5, 2021
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus
Light lunch provided (may change based on public health guidance)

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Launching and Sustaining a Performance Management System

With Lyle D. Wray, PhD, Executive Director, Capitol Region Council of Governments

Friday, December 10, 2021
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Live virtual session

Setting up and sustaining a performance management systems for organizations in the public and nonprofit sectors can be challenging. To help get a successful result, we will consider among other elements suggest a way to look at audiences for performance management information, offer possible shortcuts to getting to a viable launch of a system and carefully consider the use of the information the is to be generated.

This half-day seminar will offer seven main suggestions for launching and maintaining a performance measurement system:

• Situation assessment
• Identify motivations for the performance management system
• Plan a sequence of steps to establish and expand a performance management system
• Use effective program interventions that are strategically organized
• Use or adapt existing performance management system frameworks
• Partner with residents and other stakeholders to the performance management system
• Leverage advanced information technology tools in the performance management system

The approach will be interactive and participants are invited to bring a current or proposed performance management system for an organization along to the discussion.

The presenter has extensive experience in performance management at state and nonprofit levels, has authored books and chapters on the topic, and has taught a graduate course in the field.

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Leading Positive Organizational Culture

With Dr. Doe Hentschel, Leadership Preceptor, and Andre Santiago, Vice President for Programs, Leadership Greater Hartford

Friday, February 4, 2022
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
This has been changed to be a live virtual workshop, not in-person.

Course Overview

The global pandemic has exposed tremendous shortcomings in the workplace while creating new opportunities for positive transformation. New ways to interact and communicate with internal and external constituencies had to be invented. And as the possibility of returning to a pre-pandemic workplace approached, it became obvious that some of the changes we were forced to institute may have had the unintended consequence of enhancing our organizational cultures.  This workshop will provide an understanding of the foundations for a positive organizational culture. Drawing extensively on the award-winning book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, the workshop will focus on “building ownership, providing support, and aligning group energy toward the arduous, error-filled, ultimately fulfilling journey of making something new.”

Who Should Take This Course

Individuals at all levels play a vital role in either creating, sustaining or changing the culture of an organization. If you want to learn more about healthy and vibrant organizational cultures, as well as strategies and best practices to achieve them, this workshop is for you.

What You’ll Get

During this workshop, you will understand:

• The importance of having a healthy organizational culture.
• Definitions and assessments about organizational culture.
• The dimensions of workplace ”safety.”
• Trust-building and its importance in workplace relationships
• Procedures to ensure the continuity and long-term success of an organization’s culture.

What You’ll Do

Drawing on Daniel Coyle’s award-winning book, The Culture Code, the workshop identifies the key elements of successful organizational cultures:

• Build safety; people feel they belong and are valued
• Share vulnerability: shared risk builds trust and drives collaboration
• Establish purpose: embrace shared goals and values

Through interactive and experiential group activities and conversations, self and organizational assessments, participants will expand their understanding of how to influence positive change within their organizations.

REGISTRATION CLOSED

Demystifying Data Management and Security for Non-IT Managers

With Christopher Brechlin, Director of Data and Digital Systems, COMPASS Youth Collaborative

Friday, March 4, 2022
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

Your organization’s data can guide you toward better outcomes for the people you serve or give you a competitive edge in funding applications. It can also be a tempting target for cyber criminals looking to ransom your systems or steal sensitive information. Managers don’t need deep technical backgrounds to be good stewards of their data, but they do need to understand how it’s generated, stored, and best protected.

Data management in the modern organization is no longer an exclusive IT or research function. Front-line staff, marketing and development teams, executives, finance and administrative staff are all essentially managing data on a daily basis and they need to be responsible for its safety and efficacy. The challenge for managers is that the landscape of software and terminology is rapidly evolving, making it difficult for non-technical staff to keep up with the growing list of tools they need to effectively leverage data in their day-to-day jobs. Luckily, the fundamental concepts and technologies used to manage data aren’t complex and don’t require highly specialized training to understand.

This course is for everyone from the accidental data and program managers at small nonprofits, to the department heads at large agencies. This is not a database administration or cyber security course. You will learn how to map data flows in your organization and how data is generated through operational processes, how to communicate with technical staff and consultants by speaking their language, and how to identify potential security risks among your staff. The primary objective is to help maximize the value you extract from your data by introducing aspects of data management that you didn’t know you needed to know.

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Practical Performance Evaluation for Practitioners and Funders

With Anne McIntyre-Lahner, Evaluation and Impact Consultant, 35-plus years of experience in state and nonprofit leadership, and author.

Friday, March 25, 2022
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (with 30 minute break)
Hartford Times Building, UConn Hartford Campus

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Responding to Microaggressions: Strategies for Navigating Instances of Exclusion

With Kenya Rutland, KJR Consulting

Friday, December 18, 2020 ***REGISTRATION CLOSED – CLASS IS FULL***
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

REGISTRATION CLOSED

Managing Unconscious Bias

With Kenya Rutland, KJR Consulting

Friday, March 12, 2021 ***REGISTRATION CLOSED – CLASS IS FULL***
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

REGISTRATION CLOSED

Essential Skills for Grant-Writing Success: Research, Writing and Assessment Tools to Get Your Grant Applications to Stand Out

With Alyssa Goduti, UConn DPP adjunct professor and President & CEO of Ädelbrook

Friday, March 26, 2021
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

The success of any nonprofit or government organization is contingent on its mission, vision, governance, ability to run quality programs and most importantly on its ability to raise funds. Organizations with the knowledge, skills and expertise to seek out and successfully win grants are more likely to thrive in this increasingly competitive funding environment. This session will help you better understand how to identify grant opportunities and develop winning proposals. Attendees will have the opportunity to practice grant-writing skills based on practical examples from their organizations or experiences.

What will you learn?

This session will provide vital information about how to approach grant writing in today’s competitive environment. You will gain an understanding of how to research and identify appropriate grant opportunities, develop strategies for approaching the grant writing process, and learn how to develop compelling responses to each component of the proposal. We will use real-life examples to help you practice proposal writing for your organizations so that you will be better prepared to deliver compelling and winning proposals.

Register for this event

Responding to Microaggressions: Strategies for Navigating Instances of Exclusion

With Kenya Rutland, KJR Consulting

Friday, April 9, 2021
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

Register for this event

Building Effective Management and Leadership Skills: What is Required for the Next Generation of Public and Nonprofit Executives

With Thomas L. Phillips of TL Phillips Consulting Services

Friday, May 14, 2021
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM (with 30 minute break)
Live virtual session

Please Note:
This workshop will require participants to purchase and complete the CliftonStrengths assessment survey prior to the workshop.  The survey fee will be an additional $19.99 (purchased separately). See more information in the following “About the Program” section.

Overview

Connecticut is demographically one of the oldest states in the country.  Many public and nonprofit organizations are facing “brain drain” challenges related to the loss of senior executives, including their knowledge and expertise, as more “baby boomers” continue to retire.  In some cases, these organizations do not have well developed succession plans and are not properly enhancing existing and developing new required management and leadership skills/competencies of their mid-level executives, which would allow them to more effectively transition into senior executive level positions.  In addition, the current pandemic has caused much disruption and uncertainty, requiring many organization’s management teams to both pivot and adapt to their new normal.  It is therefore critical for both sectors to develop these individuals and their skills more proactively and aggressively, to ensure their organizations stay competitive, effectively serve their customers, and achieve long term sustainability.

Description

This half-day workshop includes six essential Learning Modules (LM) that cover a variety of important and timely management and leadership related topics. Each participant will be required to take the Top 5 CliftonStrengths assessment survey in advance of the workshop with the results collectively shared and discussed. This tool allows you to identify and play to your top 5 strengths at work and in your personal life. There is a cost of $19.99 to purchase and take the survey. The assessment tool should be purchased online by participants and completed no later than a week before the workshop, so you have time to review the results. The assessment can be purchased using the following link: https://store.gallup.com/p/en-us/10265/cliftonstrengths-for-students-top-5.

The workshop is also designed to be interactive through group exercises and collective dialogue, as much can also be learned from the participants.

The following are the list of Learning Modules that will be presented:

1. Top 5 CliftonStrengths Assessment Survey Results
2. Developing Critical Leadership Skills
3. Organization/Individual Core Values
4. Importance of Innovation
5. Convener Skills
6. Facilitation Skills

Outcome

Participants will enhance their existing and learn new management and leadership skills through both the LM sessions/ exercises and collective dialogue, which will help prepare them to more effectively assume higher senior executive roles and responsibilities in support of their organization’s mission and brand.

Who Should Attend?

Senior/mid-level managers being identified/cultivated by your organization or those individuals aspiring to higher level executive leadership career positions. Also helpful for current senior executives interested in honing their existing management and leadership skill sets.

Register for this event