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March 31, 2021 By cs

How human skills contribute to professional and personal success

In today’s fast-paced — and often virtual — work environment, advancing your technical skills alone isn’t enough to ensure professional relevancy.

Whole-person development is the key to thriving in your career, whether you’re an experienced professional or a workplace rookie.

Whole-person development, also known as holistic learning or personal skills training, is the development of “human skills”— such as intrapersonal communication, adaptability, and conflict resolution — in addition to more technical skills — things like C++ programming, data set analysis, or process mapping. Developing the whole person, rather than just the skills that directly correlate to tasks or projects, will not only improve your knowledge base but will also allow you to navigate challenges, thrive in your workplace, and produce innovative solutions to drive your organization forward.

Adapt to New and Changing Demands

By investing in a wider variety of personal development, your mind will begin to connect parts of itself that were previously disjointed, naturally strengthening your mental flexibility and resilience. For example, connecting your skills in software engineering with your skills in intrapersonal communication may help you to complete projects more efficiently or weather unexpected challenges more smoothly.

This adaptability and agility will help you to thrive in your career journey and become a leader in your sphere. As challenges come your way, your ability to meet them head-on and produce effective solutions will give you a competitive edge, positioning you to advance more easily in your organization or industry. Being more well-rounded and versatile will also open the door to other transitions, whether it is to new types of positions or even a different industry altogether.

Furthermore, becoming proficient in both technical and human skills will allow you to navigate the multi-faceted demands of hybrid work, a growing trend in the workplace today, which combines multiple disciplines into a single position. Hybrid professionals are expected to bring both technical and soft skills to their positions, and because of this, their jobs are far less likely to be replaced by automation.

Strengthen Company Culture

Personal skills training has also been shown to bridge cross-cultural differences, optimize intrapersonal communication, and increase empathy, creating a more fulfilling work environment. As you grow in your understanding of the way your mind works—where you excel and where you need to improve—you will also grow in your ability to appreciate and relate to this in others as well. This empathy creates an environment in which people feel more comfortable admitting to mistakes or confusion, which allows you and your organization to move forward more efficiently. As a result, the organization thrives, and you and your co-workers enjoy a stronger sense of support and trust at work.

Additionally, whole-person development may also contribute directly to company culture, because the soft skills it teaches include ways to handle problems and ways of achieving and maintaining a positive attitude. When every employee possesses tools to approach or avoid problems, such as time management and conflict resolution, they will not only experience a more rewarding office environment but also will be able to tackle stressful situations more calmly and effectively, knowing that there is room for growth and a network of support.

Produce Growth

Holistic learning, by increasing your adaptability and improving stronger company culture, ultimately helps produce growth for your organization. Creating a habit and culture of continual learning and development opens the door for fresh ideas and innovative solutions. As you invest in soft skills such as adaptability, creativity, and conflict resolution, your ability to think of new ideas will skyrocket. As you encourage your co-workers to do the same, you will help create an environment where these new ideas can come from all levels of the organization, as people are less hesitant to point out problems.

Furthermore, holistic learning helps you and your organization grow in ways beyond profit. By widening your skillset and perspective, your capacity to see beyond technical processes will help you strengthen your work strategy and contribute to your organization more effectively. In fact, a recent study with Fortune 500 CEOs found that 75% of long-term job success depends on people skills, while only 25% on technical knowledge. Your leading the way in the adoption of this mindset for your organization will help it advance overall. Companies that care more about people than profit have been proven to be more successful, enjoying lower staff turnover rates, lower occupational stress, sharper decision making, more effective leadership, better team performance, and higher productivity.

Taking the First Step

The benefits of approaching your professional development from a whole-person perspective are numerous, for you personally and for your organization. If you’re interested in taking steps toward your overall self-improvement, take a look at these upcoming opportunities, all designed to increase your resilience and adaptability, enhance your leadership, and foster your well-being.

  • Organizational Effectiveness Conference, Part 2: Improve (April 30) – Learn how people, structure, and processes play into the success of an organization and how you can optimize all three through continuous learning and improvement.
  • Upcoming courses from our Emotional Intelligence & Resilience certificate – Stress Success and Falling in Love With Life – Strengthen your ability to handle stress and rediscover ways to enjoy life, while also getting a sneak peek into our Emotional Intelligence & Resilience certificate.
  • Cross-Cultural Communication Certificate – Learn how to navigate cultural nuances of English communication as a non-native-speaking professional seeking to meet the leadership and communication demands of today’s world.

Source: https://pe.gatech.edu/blog/working-learning/benefits-of-holistic-learning

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: continuous improvement, continuous learning, holistic, organizational effectiveness, professional education, skills, training

March 5, 2021 By cs

Inclusive leadership in a digital-first workplace

The rapid transition to remote work – especially during a global pandemic – wasn’t easy.

Over the past year, organizations across all industries have shown immense resilience, successfully pivoting their workflows and workforce into a digital-first environment.

While this digital transformation was critical for growth and stability, it also created challenges and opportunities for making remote work more diverse and inclusive.

From embracing new and unfamiliar technologies to balancing job responsibilities while caring for children, elders, or relatives, this new virtual world has impacted generations, genders, and ethnic groups in different – and often inequitable – ways.

While organizations must take the initial step to continue to strengthen their diversity and build inclusive cultures, research has found that a leader’s behavior has a direct link to an employee’s experience of inclusion.

Effective and inclusive leadership in a virtual workplace takes self-awareness, vulnerability, empathy, and often – agility. When these leadership skills and behaviors are applied effectively, inclusive teams routinely make better decisions and more quickly achieve better results.

Here are three ways you can embrace accelerating change and lead your remote team with inclusivity.

Recognize and challenge your implicit biases

When you take on the role and responsibility of leading a team, you’re charged with fostering a culture of collaboration, engagement, and growth while leveraging the differences of your employees. As individuals, we all have implicit biases – influenced by our environments, experiences, and those around us – that lead us to form unconscious judgments about others.

Further, research shows that when we’re stressed, we often default to mental shortcuts and gut instincts, rather than making deliberate and goal-oriented decisions. Thus, potentially perpetuating inequalities in the virtual workplace and reinforcing the phenomenon of homophily, or the tendency to seek out those similar to yourself. If left uncurbed, the effects of unconscious biases can be detrimental to remote teams, causing corrosion of relationships and impacting your capacity as a leader, compelling you to make choices outside of The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mandates, company values, established best practices, or general ethics.

“As a leader, it is vital to routinely assess your team and look for opportunities to transform dynamics,” says Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, executive director at Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting and the host of the Georgia Tech Organizational Effectiveness Conference. “Think about everyone on your team. Do you hear ideas from each of them regularly? When in meetings, are there voices that get overrun? Very often, things that create discord are subtle nuances that can easily be missed.”

Leaders should be intentional about leveraging the varied strengths and talents of all their employees. To combat implicit biases, Harvard Business Review suggests making a list of the current core and extended team members, with their photos, and keep it in front of you while you’re working each day to help you make more conscious decisions about allocating responsibilities and information.

In doing so, inclusive team leaders can create a deliberate space that values differences, ensures all voices are heard, and harnesses the power of diverse perspectives.

Create a strong sense of belonging

When people feel like they belong at work, they are more productive, motivated, and more likely to contribute to their fullest potential, according to research from BetterUp.

Being physically separated from colleagues can impact team communication, and over time, stifle opportunities for engagement, impede diverse perspectives, and perpetuate systemic inequalities. By taking extra steps to make your remote team feel valued, connected, and respected, you are creating psychological safety while improving morale, motivation, productivity, and retention.

An inclusive workplace is one in which employees feel safe, comfortable, and respected. “It’s about establishing those relationships within your organization and establishing that sense of, ‘Yes, I belong there. I matter,'” notes Sonia Garcia, senior director of Access and Inclusions at Texas A&M’s College of Engineering. Without the blanket of inclusivity, there is no opportunity for equity.

On a peer-to-peer level, establishing more opportunities for coworkers to check in with one another will help to make inclusivity tangible and allow teammates to feel seen and connected, regardless of their backgrounds. One easy way to do this is to create a virtual water cooler – such as a group chat on Microsoft Teams – for colleagues to share resources, tips, life hacks, words of encouragement, or non-work-related chatter.

In addition to virtual connections among distributed colleagues, it’s also important as an inclusive leader to develop individual personal relationships to foster a culture of open dialogue and mutual respect. According to a study by Gallup, employees who meet with their managers regularly are three times more likely to be engaged than those who don’t.

To ensure these valuable conversations routinely take place, establish a standing weekly or biweekly check-in and take advantage of audio and visual technology to mimic face-to-face interactions. Leave time at the beginning or end of the meeting to connect socially and listen for any challenges, feelings of isolation, or privacy concerns while proactively sourcing or empowering team members to crowdsource solutions.

Enhance your communication skills and approach

For leaders, communication isn’t just part of the job – it is the job. Studies from McKinsey Global Institute have found that leaders spend about 80% of their workdays communicating, and even more so in a virtual setting.

Take the time to think about the varying viewpoints and backgrounds of your team members, and adapt your communication skills and approach according to their interests and demographic makeup.

For example, using “guys” to address a multi-gendered team could insinuate that men are the preferred gender at the organization. Instead, use gender-inclusive alternatives, such as “team” or “colleagues.”

Additionally, your actions will speak louder than your words. Interactions aren’t just limited to verbal or written communication, your visual behaviors, such as posture, facial expressions, or eye contact, are also an effective component of your communication style.

“Whether listening attentively when another person is voicing their point of view or preventing miscommunication by double-checking tone, inclusive leaders must be skilled at delivering authentic, clear, and supportive messages to build trust and credibility with their remote team,” says Nisha Botchwey, assistant dean of academic programs, Georgia Tech Professional Education.

The future of work requires inclusion

While cultivating and managing an inclusive workforce was already a major challenge across industries, the Covid-19 pandemic elevated systemic racial and economic inequities while disrupting the professional workforce. The uprising for racial justice has amplified the need for organizations to reassess priorities, values, and dynamics – confirming that previous, more passive strategies have not been effective.

To create a workplace where every employee feels included, leaders must embrace these changes and take action now. These approaches will be crucial, not only to help remote teams build new habits and social connections, but also to allow for a more cohesive and inclusive culture better equipped for an equitable society and the future of work.

Source: https://pe.gatech.edu/blog/future-of-work/inclusive-virtual-leadership

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: communication, Georgia Tech, inclusion, pandemic, professional education, remote learning, remote work, telework

March 9, 2020 By cs

Botchwey named associate dean in Professional Education

Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE) has named Nisha Botchwey, associate professor of city and regional planning in the College of Design and an adjunct professor in Emory University’s School of Public Health, its new associate dean of academic programs.
Nisha Botchwey has been named associate dean for Academic Programs in Georgia Tech Professional Education.

Botchwey was selected following a national search and will begin her new role on March 9.

She holds a master’s and Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in public health from the University of Virginia. Throughout her career, Botchwey’s research has focused on health and the built environment, with an emphasis on youth engagement, health equity, and data dashboards for evidence-based planning and practice.

She has earned many distinctions, including an NSF ADVANCE Woman of Excellence Faculty Award, a Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellowship from Georgia Tech, the Georgia Power Professor of Excellence Award, a Rockefeller-Penn Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing, and a Nominated Changemaker by the Obama White House’s Council on Women and Girls.

“GTPE has embarked on a transformational journey to strategically align our academic offerings with the needs of a rapidly changing workforce. Nisha Botchwey’s experience with strategic planning, team management, and community engagement will enhance our growth plan and elevate the quality of offerings for an ever-increasing, diverse population of learners,” said Nelson Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education. “We are thrilled to have such expertise on our team.”

GTPE serves the fastest growing learner population in higher education: working adults aged over 25.

In this new position, Botchwey will support the development of new demand-driven programs, such as additional at-scale online master’s degrees, a new Fintech Academy, and pioneer contemporary educational products including alternative credentials and enhanced career services for adult learners. She will have curricular oversight and management of all new and existing online degrees and professional development programs and foster a learner-centric environment in service to the adult learners across GTPE programs.

Botchwey will maintain a joint appointment in the College of Design, where she will continue her research and teaching, advise students, and remain involved in the intellectual life of the college.

“This is an era of change and adaptation across institutions,” said Botchwey. “I look forward to working with this amazing team of faculty, staff, learners, and industry partners as we continue to create innovative educational pathways and solidify GTPE’s role as the lifelong learning home for Georgia Tech, here and across the globe.”

A search committee consisting of faculty and leadership across the Institute reviewed over 130 applications. Members included Daniel Castro, chair and professor in the School of Building Construction; Lizanne DeStefano, executive director for the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC); Larry Jacobs, associate dean of the College of Engineering; and Sri Narasimhan, professor and business analytics center co-director in the Scheller College of Business.

“The applicant pool was extremely competitive,” said Jacobs. “Alongside her experience and relevant technical skills, it was Botchwey’s enthusiasm, clear preparation, and strong people skills that stood out.”

Georgia Tech has been at the forefront of creating cutting-edge educational offerings that are accessible to career-minded individuals and provide real-world knowledge. As the global campus and lifetime learning arm of the Institute, GTPE serves more than 42,000 working professionals each year through more than 400 professional development courses and boot camps, 50 professional certificates, and 13 industry-specific online degrees.

Source: https://www.news.gatech.edu/2020/03/04/botchwey-named-associate-dean-professional-education

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Georgia Tech, GTPE, professional development, professional education

February 25, 2020 By cs

How much do you want to become a ‘FAR master’?

Whether you are a government contracting official or a government contractor, your success hinges on your mastery of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) — the rules that must be followed in acquiring goods and services.
Don’t miss the opportunity to learn all about the FAR — side-by-side with your peers.
The FAR’s rules are voluminous — 2,000 pages in all, plus hundreds of supplemental rules tailored to individual agencies throughout the federal government.  How can you be expected to find these rules, grasp their meaning and, most importantly, apply them properly?
Fortunately for you, Georgia Tech has the courses that will teach you all you need to know.  And, best of all, our instruction is based on practical application, so you will return to your job equipped with the skills and knowledge to confidently navigate all aspects of contract planning, contract formation, and contract administration.
Our FAR coursework is based on training originally developed by the Defense Acquisition University (DAU).  It’s been enhanced by Georgia Tech to provide the know-how actually needed by acquisition professionals like you.  And, best of all, our comprehensive coursework is broken-up into modules so that you can learn conveniently, based on your priorities and at your own pace.
The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech (The Academy) offers its comprehensive FAR course in four, one-week classes.  Each “module” focuses on a different aspect of the FAR and, best of all, the modules may be taken in any order.  This means you have multiple opportunities throughout the year to complete the entire course without the challenge of being away from your job or home for an entire month.
The Academy’s foundational course focuses on four distinctly different aspects of the FAR:
  • Contracting Overview of the FAR (CON 090-1) introduces the FAR and how to navigate all of the acquisition regulations.  This four-day course answers the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the FAR.  This module is considered the most challenging lesson in the course, as it provide hands-on training on the FAR’s structure, meaning, and proper application.
  • Contract Planning in the FAR (CON 090-2) presents information on the policies and procedures for the acquisition of supplies and services from required or preferred sources. Key topics in this lesson include the use of required sources, use of existing contracts, and required participation by small businesses.
  • Contract Formation in the FAR (CON 090-3) goes deep into different methods of contracting by: 1) comparing and contrasting the solicitation and evaluation of offers in sealed bidding and competitive negotiation, 2) exploring the procedural requirements of making a contract award, and 3) explaining simplified acquisition procedures as well as the policies and procedures for handling bid and size status protests.
  • Contract Administration in the FAR (CON 090-4) covers the basic principles of contract management, including making contract modifications, administration of selected terms and conditions, handling delays, quality assurance procedures, making payments, addressing disputes and appeals, and contract terminations and closeouts.
Students are exposed to realistic case studies and get a chance to work in groups to tackle real-life problem-solving exercises. 
Click on any of the course titles listed above to see course schedules and pricing.  And see our exclusive Student Resources page for a detailed outline of the content covered in each of our four FAR course modules.
Benefits of attendance include expert instruction, a printed Student Guide to be used back on the job, valuable handouts, and exclusive electronic resources.  In addition, a complimentary breakfast is served each morning, along with snacks throughout each day.  Plus, you’ll earn Continuous Education Units from Georgia Tech as well as credit toward Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA)  and Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting Program (FAC-C) training requirements.
All courses are conducted in Georgia Tech’s world-class Global Learning Center, conveniently located in Midtown Atlanta.  Interested in us bringing our coursework to you?  Simply contact us at info@ContractingAcademy.gatech.edu — we will be happy to speak with you about scheduling and quantity discounts.
Georgia Tech is an official equivalency training provider for the Defense Acquisition University and the Federal Acquisition Institute.

Filed Under: Academy News Tagged With: acquisition planning, acquisition workforce, CON 090, contract administration, contract management, contract planning, DAU, FAR, FAR supplements, federal contracting, federal contractors, federal contracts, professional development, professional education

February 24, 2020 By cs

Fiscal 2021 budget seeks to ‘resize’ the bureaucracy

Among other things, the White House wants to rein in “improper end-of-year spending” by agencies.

On the afternoon of Feb. 10th, President Trump sent Congress a $4.8 trillion budget request for fiscal 2021 that seeks to “resize” the federal government by eliminating what the administration views as duplicative and wasteful programs and focusing on core security priorities.

The budget request includes a number of proposals Congress has previously rejected, such as significant cuts to the social safety net, foreign aid and environmental programs, as well as some federal workforce hiring and firing reforms and changes to federal retirement the administration has tried to implement previously with mixed success.

Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Monday that the budget reflects “the core elements of the president’s management agenda” and is a “continuation of what we’ve attempted to do over the last couple of years around the workforce.”  While the administration will continue to press for moving federal employees to a pay-for-performance system and employee training and reskilling, “not surprisingly, in year four of an administration there’s not a lot of net new ideas,” she said.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/02/trumps-fiscal-2021-budget-seeks-resize-bureaucracy/163014/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition training, acquisition workforce, budget, budget requests, category management, end-of-year spending, OMB, professional education

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