"Attending to you" series
Attending to You
online course
Mentor: Melanie (Mel) Jones
The "Attending to You" series consists of workshops designed to encourage you to think about you with a view to helping you to be as productive, positive and fulfilled as possible. Their focus is the mind-sets, attitudes and behaviours which we all share and which can inhibit or advance personal and professional growth. The intention is to provoke thought and encourage new and more helpful ways of being.
Online Course Program
Module 1 - The C Word: Confidence
Date: May 6th 2021
Time: 9am - 11am (PT time)
Confidence. Sometimes we have it, sometimes we don’t. What is it? Where does it come from? Can we learn to create it within ourselves?
This workshop will look at confidence indicators and those behaviours that reveal a lack of confidence. It will examine three interconnected confidence issues, commonly experienced in academia, which play a major part in our productivity and well-being: imposter phenomenon; procrastination; and perfectionism.
If you ever feel you don’t measure up in comparison to others, put off tasks because you have the ‘too’ disease (I’m too busy/tired etc) and find it almost impossible to stop because you want things to be ‘perfect’, then you need to examine your confidence.
Explore new ways of tackling these issues and start a journey to find more confidence.
Registration closed!
Max of 25 attendees
Selected attendees will be notified by email on May 3rd.
Module 2 - Thinking about Thinking
Date: June 17th 2021
Time: 9am - 11am (PT time)
Do you find yourself catastrophising? Do you fail to notice successes and breakthroughs but obsess over what has not gone so well? Is your internal dialogue serving you well or limiting you?
This session asks you to reflect on your thinking styles and the automatic patterns of thinking that we tend to fall back on and which can seriously impede our happiness, productivity and wellbeing. Are you in control of your thoughts or do your thoughts control you? Can we learn – with practice – to ‘flip’ our thinking so that it works for us not against us?
Drawing on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy techniques this workshop will help you to identify your preferred thinking styles and start the process of taking back control of your thinking. It will also introduce you to the concept of CIC circles so that you can periodically ‘check in’ to assess where your energy is being invested. Is it in the things you can control or the things that are beyond your control?
Control your thoughts, control your life!
Registration closed.
Max of 25 attendees
Selected attendees will be notified by email on June 14th.
Module 3 - You and Your purpose: finding it, maximising it
Date: July 8th 2021
Time: 9am - 11am (PT time)
What is your purpose? What are you ‘for’?
Having a purpose is associated with numerous measures of happiness and productivity. However, most of us don’t give much consideration to our purpose, maybe thinking that it is too big a concept to contemplate. Maybe we even feel that purpose is not realistic or achievable for the likes of us!
But purpose can be found every day, if only we know what it is we are looking for.
This session will help you to identify or rediscover the elements of your professional life that give you purpose and offers tips and techniques to create purpose every day.
A session to reconnect with what motivates, engages and inspires you.
Registration closed.
Max of 25 attendees
Selected attendees will be notified by email on July 2nd.
Module 4 - Communicating with Power and Empathy
Date: October 7th 2021
Time: 9am - 11:30am (PT time)
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” (George Bernard Shaw).
The ultimate goal of communication is to deliver a message that is understood and to prompt appropriate action. But our choice of words has an impact. It can provide clarity, encouragement and confidence or confusion, dejection and fear.
So much of our communication (the giving and receiving) is problematic. We find it impossible to say ‘no’; we avoid ‘difficult’ conversations; we don’t ask for what we need; we make demands that alienate people; we fail to hear the true message; and we are side-tracked by our emotional responses to criticism and judgement.
This workshop will explore how to communicate in a way which is both powerful and compassionate. In other words, in a way which gets the results you seek while enhancing the quality of your relationships.
We will examine our ingrained talking and listening habits and using simple formulas that can be applied to every area of life, seek to ‘reset’ to a healthier way to communicate. We will learn how to:
- Ensure common understanding
- Get beyond conflict
- Establish connection
- Achieve the results you want
- Say ‘no!’
Re-setting to a powerful and empathic communication style will increase confidence, improve relationships and ensure your needs, and those of others, are met.
Registration closed.
Max of 25 attendees
About the course mentor: Melanie S Jones, Leadership and Development Advisor (UK)
Melanie Jones has over 20 years' experience as a communication and facilitation specialist. Melanie joined LJMU in 2008, first as RIS's Communications Manager and then Engagement Lead, designing and delivering individual and group development interventions to LJMU teams and to external organisations. Melanie joined the Research Excellence Team as Researcher Developer Lead in 2016. She co-ordinates the university-wide researcher development offer and has been instrumental in the creation, design and delivery of ACTivator, LJMU's researcher development programme. Melanie Co-Chairs (with Victoria Sheppard) LJMU's Concordat Forum and is a member of the University's Ethics Committee. Before joining LJMU, Melanie was Training Manager at a Further Education College and worked in the charitable sector for over ten years, supporting charities with visioning, strategic planning, team development, impact generation/reporting and funding. She was Chair of Mersey Network for Europe for three years. With a background in psychology and individual and group development, she is a qualified Personal Coach and has extensive experience of managing projects, partnerships and people in the private, public and third sectors.
Bio from Vitae.
This course is funded by the EU H2020 IMpaCT project.
This course is organised in collaboration with the ITQB/iBET Postdoctoral Association (PDA).