SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning that supports you in navigating complex challenges in personal and professional life, helps you to increase your effectiveness, and to improve your relationships. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.
This week's spotlight course is Difficult People: Strategies to Keep Everyone Working Together (31 min).
While it's best to get personally fit for dealing with difficult people – that is, managing your own emotions and using self-management techniques – there are also interpersonal strategies and skills you need when working on a team with difficult people.
In this course, you’ll learn strategies for managing difficult people that involve redirecting their behavior toward your work goals. You’ll discover ways of working together effectively with negative people by giving appropriate feedback when needed. You’ll also learn how to make your collaboration work with difficult people more productive by managing conflicts professionally.
Once logged in, simply type the name of the course in the search bar.
Need Login Assistance? Email hrtraining@umbc.edu to set up your account and to help with login difficulties. UMBC faculty and staff accounts are set up within 1 month of hire.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit our UMBC SkillSoft page for information on UMBC’s curated role and topic-based certificate tracks as well as professional industry certifications that align with SkillSoft courses.
SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.
This week's spotlight course is Handling Team Conflict (30 min)
Successful teams are characterized by having a clear direction, trust among team members, effective communication, and a clear process for managing team conflict. The survival of a team depends on a leader who can quickly recognize team conflict, diagnose its cause, and implement conflict resolution strategies.
In this course, you'll learn about what causes conflict on a team and the important role of healthy communication in handling conflict. You'll discover best practice approaches to dealing with conflict. You’ll also explore the tenets of principled negotiation in managing conflict. Finally, you'll learn guidelines for resolving conflict that address one specific type of conflict: lack of trust.
Using Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, Login to SkillPortusing your FULL UMBC email address for both the username and password boxes.
Once logged in, simply type the name of the course in the search bar.
Need Login Assistance? Email hrtraining@umbc.edu to set up your account and to help with login difficulties. UMBC faculty and staff accounts are set up within 1 month of hire.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit our UMBC SkillSoft page for information on UMBC’s curated role and topic-based certificate tracks as well as professional industry certifications that align with SkillSoft courses.
A guest post by Sarah Hansen, UMBC Wellness Ambassador
In this extended period of challenge and uncertainty, one of the things that brings me solace is my garden. The slow, methodical weeding, the breeze on my face, being close to the ground and seeing all the tiny critters that abide there, focuses my attention and is almost like meditation. Taking a few moments each day truly to notice each stage as plants slowly grow, bud, bloom, and then fade, and all the attendant insects that visit them during each phase, keeps me grounded.
The animals that visit my yard bring me joy (well, except the ravenous deer, but even they are beautiful in their own way) and remind me that even now, when everything is turned upside down, the wildlife world is carrying out its cycles. Spring migration happened. Birds are nesting (and now, fledging). Lightning bugs are flashing. Flowers are blooming. Ferns are unfurling. Milkweed beetles are mating. Caterpillars and praying mantises are growing. Tomatoes are ripening. And there are simple things I can do to make all their lives easier—to help out the small community that calls my yard home.
They may seem like small things—planting a few native flowers, not removing a small brush pile, or avoiding use of harmful pesticides—but imagine if all of us just created a corner of habitat in a yard, on a patio, balcony, or windowsill, or in a local community garden plot. All those pockets add up. Collectively, we can make a world of difference for declining wildlife populations. We have the power to create beauty and at the same time, do good for animals—and in turn, ourselves.
I was skeptical that the critters who needed them would find my small native plant oasis, but after I planted my first batch of native flowers four years ago, I was amazed at the outcome. New species of butterflies and beetles abounded. Birds ate the seeds and berries in the fall. Even hummingbirds, which my partner had never seen since moving into the house in 2006, showed up. Now my motto is, “If you plant it, they will come.”
I do not have an especially green thumb. You can do this, too! And if there are children in your household, even a container or two can provide education, entertainment, and bonding opportunities aplenty.
Creating a native plant garden (or balcony, or windowsill) doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are tons of resources available to help you select appropriate native plants and get started. Please share additional resources in the comments!
Prairie Moon Nursery has been a huge help when considering plants for my garden. They only sell North American natives and you can search their inventory for plants based on light and soil requirements, size, bloom time, and much more.
Local nurseries like Herring Run Nursery (affiliated with Blue Water Baltimore) only sell native plants that are suitable for the mid-Atlantic. This is where I bought all of the plants for my first native plant garden. They also carry plants from Chesapeake Natives.
The Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder is another excellent source for information about plants (native and non-native). I find this site helpful if I already have a plant in mind and want more information.
Many local nature centers and parks organize native plant sales—a farmers market of sorts for plants. I’ve run across these at Robinson Nature Center in Columbia and at Benjamin Banneker Historical Park in Oella, and there are many more. Feel free to add more in the comments!
The University of Maryland Extension also offers resources for attracting wildlife, as does the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) Garden for Wildlife program. Did you know that the UMBC campus is a Certified Wildlife Habitat through NWF, based on our use of native plants and sustainable practices?
The National Audubon Society has a robust Plants for Birds program with lots of additional resources.
Next week, I’ll share some additional benefits of gardening with native plants, a few things to watch out for when purchasing plants, and a few of my favorite plant species that do well in my Catonsville yard. Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime, and please share your own resources. I love this topic, but am definitely still a student when it comes to native plants!
Yours in gardening,
Sarah
Today's talk is Want to be more creative? Go for a walk by Marily Oppezzo. When trying to come up with a new idea, we all have times when we get stuck. But according to research by behavioral and learning scientist Marily Oppezzo, getting up and going for a walk might be all it takes to get your creative juices flowing. In this fun, fast talk, she explains how walking could help you get the most out of your next brainstorm.
SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning that supports you in navigating complex challenges in personal and professional life, helps you to increase your effectiveness, and to improve your relationships. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.
This week's spotlight course is Maximize Your Productivity by Managing Time and Taks (21 min).
The amount of time available to you is constant – you can't buy more and you can't save it for later. However, by managing your time, you can increase your productivity. And the better you understand your own personal productivity, the easier it will be to manage your time effectively.
In this course, you'll learn about how you can use task management to maximize your productivity. You'll discover the benefits of using time management and assessing the value of your tasks. You'll learn about benefits of setting goals and how productivity is tied to your ability to assess time and set priorities. And you'll also learn about the process of "chunking" your time and how to use different types of to-do lists effectively.
Once logged in, simply type the name of the course in the search bar.
Need Login Assistance? Email hrtraining@umbc.edu to set up your account and to help with login difficulties. UMBC faculty and staff accounts are set up within 1 month of hire.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit our UMBC SkillSoft page for information on UMBC’s curated role and topic-based certificate tracks as well as professional industry certifications that align with SkillSoft courses.
SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.
This week's spotlight course is Positive Atmosphere: Establishing and Engaged Workforce (23 min)
An engaged workforce creates a positive work environment that boosts productivity, encourages creativity, and helps you engage and retain talented employees. This in turn will make your organization more profitable and innovative, and will strengthen your employees’ work ethic.
In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of engaging your workforce and of establishing a positive work culture. You'll learn how to recognize common qualities of engaged employees, understand what drives employee motivation, and recognize commitment challenges. You'll also learn how employee engagement links to the bottom line by reducing turnover.
Using Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, Login to SkillPortusing your FULL UMBC email address for both the username and password boxes.
Once logged in, simply type the name of the course in the search bar.
Need Login Assistance? Email hrtraining@umbc.edu to set up your account and to help with login difficulties. UMBC faculty and staff accounts are set up within 1 month of hire.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit our UMBC SkillSoft page for information on UMBC’s curated role and topic-based certificate tracks as well as professional industry certifications that align with SkillSoft courses.