CIMA^®, CPWA^®, CIMC^®, and RMA℠ Eligible   Duration: 1 Hour

Part 1: Thursday, April 8^th at 9:00am ET

Part 2: Thursday, April 15^th at 9:00am ET

Pre-work:  There will be a 60-minute pre-recorded webinar to be delivered on-demand.

This session is 1 elective that will be broken up into 2 live discussions.  Each participant must attend both Part 1 and Part 2.

Course Description

Pre-Work: Resilient Leadership

In times of uncertainty and upheaval leadership influence becomes even more significant and leaders of others are called on to demonstrate strategies and perspectives that enable personal and team-based resilience.  In this pre-recorded session, we examine the latest research on resilience in the workplace and discuss two crucial capacities of leaders:  the capacity to mindfully pause, and the capacity to lead from what Tal Ben-Shahar calls, "the genuis of the AND."  Both capacities enable us to choose wisely, diminish unnecessary anxiety and create pathways for creative, productive engagement even in the worst possible moments.  This will be a pre-recorded webinar to be viewed before Part 1.

Part 1: Foundational Resilience Tools:  Constructing a Team-Based Culture of Grounded Optimism

We perform better in states of optimism and positivity.  Three decades of research from the fields of Positive Organizational Development, Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry have demonstrated that our abilities to think creatively, to build positive connection, to navigate distress and conflict and to successfully engage others are significantly enhanced in states of grounded optimism and appreciation. In this live presentation we will discuss the value of a positive mindset for individual wellbeing as well as team wellbeing and performance, and focus on the application of  two crucial skills:  reducing the impact of negative, habituated thoughts and increased attention to positive states and experiences.

Part 2: Foundational Resilience Tools:  Leveraging Connection and Character Strengths

Sustained positive connection is a hallmark of resilience and of positive team development. And this has only become more true while the work/home boundaries shift and blur. Without connection that both calms and inspires us, we become more vulnerable to burnout and find disengagement across teams. Character strengths, those authentic qualities we each possess that are the best of us, provide the pathway for response to moments of distress, conflict and uncertainty that potentiates clarity, growth, optimism, and endurance.  These foundational skills, cultivating positive connection and leveraging strengths, ground us in resilient behavior while inoculating us against downswings of performance and engagement.