Certainly, your organization has changed along with these economic times.

To stay current with this ever-changing world, you must ask questions such as:

How do you approach restructuring strategically so that your current workforce remains positive and productive and focuses on the future?

How do you promote trust with your customers?

How do you build a genuine and open environment in a climate of trust?

SDSU’s College of Extended Studies will help answer these questions – and others – during a "How to Rebuild Trust after Downsizing" training & development exchange Friday, December 11, 8:30-10:30 am , in the SDSU Extended Studies Center .

This workshop will help you create a strategy for (re-)building trust in your organization, as well as help you define important questions you must ask and steps you must take to ensure that employees and customers can have confidence in the organization and where it is headed.

 Key takeaways will include learning how trust is a strategic issue in an organization by:

Analyzing behaviors that impact the workplace and cause lack of trust

Learning how to establish a common language to address issues precipitated by downsizing

Identifying personal strategies and methods to increase trust in your organization

Evaluating how trust impacts customer reactions and ultimately results

Presenters include:

Cynthia Olmstead, the CEO of TrustWorks Group, Inc., who has more than 30 years of organizational development and training experience. She helped develop TrustWorks to assist leaders and teams by teaching them proactive ways to manage conflict, improve communications skills – and ultimately build a culture of trust.

Rose Avila, Ph.D., RMA Consulting, who has more than 20 years of experience and success in helping people become top performers and achieve quality results. Her clients work in all sizes of businesses in a cross section of industries, from start-ups to billion dollar corporations, as well as public and private companies and non-profits and municipalities.

For more information, call (619) 594-1138, email traindeve-CES@sdsu.edu or visit www.neverstoplearning.net/TD

It’s a great way to spend Friday morning!

Carl Winston, director of SDSU’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, says he has seen a dramatic shift in the way college students are now approaching the job market.

“What I’m seeing and hearing is a profound change,” Winston said. “They have lived through the Great Recession of the past 18 months. You are seeing 20 year olds wanting to get their foot in the door. They are looking for job security and working their way up the ladder.”

Winston is among three SDSU career services and recruitment experts who will comprise the panel at the “Generation Y: Key to Your HR Strategic Solution” Training & Development Exchange through SDSU’s Extended Studies on Friday, Nov. 13, 8:30-10:30 am at the Extended Studies Center .

He will be joined by James J. Tarbox, Ph.D., director of SDSU Career Services; and Bryan Lubic, manager of Aztec Business Alliance, SDSU College of Business Administration.

This interactive conversation will delve into issues such as:

Who is Gen Y?

What are their primary motivators?

How do they define success?

What are they looking for in a job?

What’s the forecast for Gen Y in the workplace?

Will they stay? Why and why not?

How do they define success?

How do we define success?

How can we attract and retain?

Tarbox says SDSU has many attendees who are first-generation college students and that they do not all have Baby Boomers for parents, despite such an assumption from the general public. He adds that as millennials, current students have been brought up to compete and be recognized for their accomplishments.

With job opportunities receding over the past 18 months, there are a lot fewer opportunities for students to enter the workforce upon graduating. Even so, there are still a large number of recruiters on campus whenever student job fairs take place.

“The good news is that they are still coming to campus,” Tarbox says of the recruiters. “The bad news is that there are not as many jobs. It’s much more challenging for students. They have to be a lot more proactive.”

Lubic says the Training & Development Exchange will address such questions as whether there really is a Generation Y and if such young adults truly are a generation of entitlement. In addition, the SDSU panel will provide its observations of college students to the HR professionals in attendance.

“We hope to help participants flush out ideas, increase their knowledge, and learn how to help their own divisions be more effective within the workforce,” Lubic says.

For more information, call (619) 594-1138 or visit the Web site.

We all are aware that the world has changed dramatically in the past decade. The world of work has certainly changed with it.

Casual Fridays have taken on a different meaning. Ditto for the incredibly complex global, linked networks we operate with today. From the simple to the complicated, change is the constant.

Don’t expect the rate of change to slow down any time soon. In fact, today is probably the least amount of change you are ever going to face.

Come discover the most significant forces at play in our world of work today when SDSU’s College of Extended Studies presents “More Than a Minute: Being an Effective Leader and Manager in Today’s Changing World,” Friday, October 16 from 8:30-10:30 am .

Key takeaways will include:

-- Determining and defining where your company is going

-- Engaging employees in traveling there with you 

-- Setting expectations and clarifying excellence so you do it right and don’t have to do it over

-- Staying focused on the “right” things so all the noise does not distract you

Presenter Holly Green is the CEO of The Human Factor, Inc. She has more than 20 years of executive level and operations experience in Fortune 100, entrepreneurial, and management consulting organizations. She was previously president of The Ken Blanchard Companies, a global consulting and training organization as well as LumMed, Inc., a biotech start up.

In addition, she has a broad background in strategic planning, leadership, and management assessment and development. She is an author of a top selling book, “More Than A Minute: How To Be An Effective Leader & Manager In Today’s Changing World.”

For more information, call (619) 594-1138, email traindeve-CES@sdsu.edu or visit www.neverstoplearning.net/TD.

Many of the metaphors we use for creative inspiration are used to describe innovation as well – lightning strikes, a light bulb switches on, the muse whispers in an ear tuned to her frequency. In each of these metaphors, innovation happens capriciously at best, and most often to other “creative” people.

If you don’t typically think of yourself as creative, and you don’t have The Muse on speed dial yet, can you still become an innovator?

“Yes,” says Holly Green, definitively.

Green writes about innovation regularly, drawing on over 20 years of executive-level and operations experience in FORTUNE 100, entrepreneurial, and management consulting organizations – as CEO of The Human Factor, Inc., former president of The Ken Blanchard Companies, and a former senior executive of The Coca‑Cola Company. This fall, she’ll be teaching critical leadership skills in the Professional Certificate in Core Leadership & Management program at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies.  

“The brain has an amazing capacity to consider things differently,” she says.

“Our problem today is that we’re running so fast that we never pause to do that. We’d rather do it over than do it right. The key is to learn some of the triggers for your brain, and to use those. Give it five seconds, and you can be innovative. It’s about asking key questions: What if someone else has different data? What if we look at this from a different perspective? What would our competitor do? What do our employees think is the most important thing to change?

“It’s about considering different angles, changing your perspective, and challenging your own assumptions and your own belief structures,” says Green. “These are fairly simple approaches; the problem is that everything in the world around us beats that out of us today. The more successful we are, the more we get stuck doing the same things that helped make us successful.”

Interested in practicing innovation?

Check out Holly Green’s Core Leadership and Management program, which starts Oct. 23. She’ll teach you the techniques of regular innovators, as well as covering a wide range of additional skills critical for leaders and managers today.

For more information, please visit CES online or call Kristen Cacka at (619) 594-0787 and mention priority code BP003. 

If you keep one eye (or two) on environmental news here in the San Diego Region, you might be interested in checking out the Bright Green Future event being held on Oct 23-24 at UCSD’s Price Center.

With panels on a wide range of relevant green topics – from implementing home energy retrofit programs, to smart grids and smart meters, to learning which local San Diego LEED / Sustainable Communities programs are pushing the limits on green building – anyone who’s interested and involved in greening San Diego will find plenty to catch their attention. 

If you’re not an “industry insider” yet, but you’re interested in what all the green fuss is about, check out the Green Jobs for San Diego panel during Friday’s 1 pm session. Wendy Evers, senior director of program development at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies, will join Vicky Krantz of UCSD Extension and Dr. Murtaza Baxamusa of the Center on Policy Initiatives to talk about green jobs and what kind of training can prepare you to enter this fast-growing field.

With $43 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allotted for energy-related projects throughout the United States, this sector is poised for major growth – so it’s a great time to polish up your skills and jump in!

Speaking of shining up those green skills, Green Solutions for the Home, one of the five courses in the Sustainable Practices Professional Certificate at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies, begins online Oct. 5. It’s becoming more and more important to know how to evaluate and improve the energy efficiency of your home, including the healthiness of the spaces and materials in it – whether you’re selling, buying, building, remodeling, or just staying put. Sign up to learn how to positively impact the environment while improving the appearance, comfort, and energy efficiency of your home.

For more information about Green Solutions for the Home, or any of the other great green courses offered at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies, visit their green training website or give them a call at (619) 265-SDSU.

With so many Hispanics seeking to get into the job market or improve their employment status, learning and perfecting the English language serves as a pivotal force for individuals attempting to secure a competitive edge in the workplace.

San Diego State University ’s College of Extended Studies offers extensive “Workplace English” programs than can help these individuals learn to speak English more fluently and enhance their status in the workforce. Specific companies that have benefited from this training recently in San Diego County include Pfizer, Inc. and Sempra Energy.

All course content is custom-designed for businesses, making it the most cost effective solution on the market for those desiring to learn English. These programs are taught by experts from the SDSU College of Extended Studies American Language Institute, which has been teaching English skills on a global scale for 35 years. The programs can be conducted at SDSU or on-site at a specific company.

For more information on the Workplace English programs, please call (619) 594-5907 or visit www.neverstoplearning.net/pdplanguage.html

This is a SDSU Research Foundation program.

“With so many people seeking employment in our current economic times, it is imperative that they receive the necessary training to secure a job, keep their current job,  or increase their options for promotion,” said Joe Shapiro, dean of SDSU’s College of Extended Studies. “This grant enables them to better position themselves for a great career in allied health care.”

Funding for the grant has been made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Its intent is to preserve and create jobs, foster and promote the nation’s economic recovery, and assist those most impacted by the current recession.

The grant for the allied health care education program is available to adults age 18 or older who are unemployed or have been unable to obtain jobs through core services and to those who are employed but need additional training services to reach self-sufficiency. To find out if you are eligible for the grant, you must first visit one of the San Diego County One-Stop Career Centers to gain approval for entrance into the program. For more information on the One-Stop Career Centers, visit the San Diego Workforce Partnership’s web site at www.sandiegoatwork.com. If you are already registered with a career center and are waiting for funding, you can come directly to SDSU to sign up for a health care course.

This Allied Health Care Education and Career Readiness program is a short-term (12- to 24-week) program that prepares eligible adults for careers in four allied health fields: radiography, pharmacy, medical administration, and dental health. Approved courses offered by SDSU’s College of Extended Studies include: EKG Technician, Pharmacy Technician, Medical Billing and Coding, Medical Billing and Coding and Medical Terminology, Medical Transcription and Medical Terminology, Medical Assistant, Dental Assistant, and Administrative Dental Assistant. All approved courses include free parking and course material.

According to the California Economic Development Division, healthcare jobs are one of only two job categories to show year-over-year growth during the current recession. It’s estimated that in the next five years, California will need an additional 206,000 healthcare workers. The majority of this growth is predicted to be in allied health careers, which already comprise more than 60 percent of the health care workforce.

The San Diego region is a great place to be going green this fall season…

First, SDSU’s College of Extended Studies sends its thanks out to everyone who attended their Embracing the Green Future forum! They’re putting great information online now for those of you who weren’t able to attend. Browse what’s already up on their green future web page now, and check back, too – they’ll be uploading video from the forum as soon as it’s ready to go online. 

Also mark your calendars….. the two-day Bright Green Future conference is coming up, which will bring together experts on San Diego's regional energy, natural resources, transportation, green business, job training, sustainable living and building, and more. Sessions focused on government and business issues will run on Friday, Oct. 23, with public and community sessions on Saturday, Oct. 24. On Friday at 1 pm, Wendy Evers, SDSU’s senior director of program development, will be speaking on a panel about green jobs in San Diego, focusing on “How and Where to Train for a Green Job.”

For those of you interested in the growing green energy industry, the College of Extended Studies is offering two new courses you may want to check out. Starting Sept. 21, you can explore whether a green job is for you in Introduction to Renewable Energy, a top-level overview of the emerging renewable energy field. Or come learn the lay of the land in the fast-growing sustainability field – from best practices, to review policies, laws, codes, and standards – in Overview of Sustainability, also kicking off Sept. 21.

In October, they’ll be rolling out two more classes, so head over there to learn cutting-edge Green Solutions for the Home, or build valuable knowledge in Converting to Renewable Energy, a growing source of green jobs nationwide.

For more information, visit these links online, or give them a call at (619) 265-SDSU.

We’ve been navigating an economic crisis over the last few months that has tested the mettle of every company, large and small.    

“Government stimulus programs and the rescue of the biggest and sickest corporations will not alone resolve the problem,” writes Henry Mintzberg in his recent Harvard Business Review article Rebuilding Companies as Communities. “Companies need to reengage their people. The practice of both management and leadership needs to be rethought.”

Mintzberg calls for “leadership that might be called engaged and distributed management,” and suggests “it’s time to rebuild companies not from the top down or even the bottom up but from the middle out—through groups of middle managers who bond together and drive key changes in their organization.”

SDSU’s College of Extended Studies offers three programs for managers and leaders – at all levels of your organizations, and in any stage of your career – who share a commitment to staying current, and recognize the importance of continuing to build your leadership capacities in these times of rapid change and great challenge.

• Foundational Skills for Front Line Managers is designed for early-career managers and those who’ve been promoted to a supervisory role but haven’t yet received systematic training in management skills. Start learning the range of skills you need to be a successful supervisor or manager in today’s rapidly-changing workplaces.

• For those of you with five years of management or supervisory experience, their newest program, Core Leadership & Management, is designed to take your leadership, productivity, and innovation to the next level. 

• And Leading Strategically, which starts Sept. 25, is for experienced managers who want to gain insight around the challenges specific to senior management and prepare for further leadership opportunities.

Stay in touch: Come learn the skills of an effective and current manager and leader. For more information, please visit us online or call Kristen Cacka at (619) 594-0787. 

Terry Mohn, of BAE Systems’ newly formed Smart and Clean Energy group, works in clean and renewable electric generation, and

John Freeman directs communications for Knight & Carver’s Wind Group, working closely with influential industry leaders and government officials.   

They’ll be answering questions about clean and green jobs in the San Diego region – so head over there and ask all those questions you’ve been mulling over about the future of green jobs and how you can get involved in these growing industries.  

Sign up now by visiting their green opportunities web page or calling (619) 265-SDSU.

Businesses look to the Workforce Partnership for skilled employees, expertise in job training and supportive services. Job seekers, both adult and youth, look to Workforce Partnership for referral to and placement in high quality jobs, education, and training programs.

SDSU’s College of Extended Studies will reveal some of the key resources available when it presents San Diego Workforce Partnership Works for You: Low Cost and Free Resources For Your Organization on T hursday, September 24, 8:30-10:30 am , in the SDSU Extended Studies Center 
The goal of this interactive presentation will be to provide the business community with knowledge of the San Diego Workforce Partnership. This seminar will address information about training dollars available to businesses, tax credit resources, talent exchange, and future needs of employers.

Following the presentation, a Q&A session will be conducted with the main focus to include:

-          What do businesses want from their local Workforce Investment Board?

-          If businesses do not utilize the services of the San Diego Workforce Partnership then where do they turn?

-          How does Workforce Partnership provide resources that are meaningful?

There are two presenters:

Chuck Flacks is director of research and policy for the San Diego Workforce Partnership and oversees a team specializing in bringing labor market information and workforce development policy to employers, job seekers, community organizations, career counselors, and decision makers. He has worked with for-profit market research companies, non-profit housing and community development companies, and elected California state officials.

Jessica Mosier is a program specialist for the San Diego Workforce Partnership who has more than nine years experience in case management, oversight of contracts, and administration of state and federal employment and training programs. She is a member of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals and a Certified Global Career Development Facilitator.

For more information, call (619) 594-1138 or visit www.neverstoplearning.net/tde.html     

Hope to see you there!

When the economy’s so hot you need oven mitts to deliver your quarterly results, it’s often possible to ignore poor leadership, or consider it a manageable inconvenience. 

Ineffective leadership in a choppy economy spells disaster, though.

Bypassing simply ineffective leaders, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman zero in on characteristics shared by the absolute worst leaders in their recent Harvard Business Review article Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders.

The worst leaders don’t collaborate, and “as a result, they are set adrift by the very people whose insights and support they need.” They don’t learn from mistakes, and fail to develop others. They lack vision, and “believe their only job is to execute. Like a hiker who sticks close to the trail, they’re fine until they come to a fork.” Or they “accept their own mediocre performance. They overstate the difficulty of reaching targets so that they look good when they achieve them. They live by the mantra ‘underpromise and overdeliver.’”

The flip side? Effective leaders and managers have usually worked hard to develop a complex mix of skills and competencies, but also possess the self-awareness to continue seeking balance, staying current, and growing.   

San Diego State University ’s College of Extended Studies offers three distinct programs designed to help managers and leaders tackle this continual process.

These leadership programs start as soon as Sept. 25. For more information, please visit CES online or call Kristen Cacka at (619) 594-0787.  

So how do you know if a green job will be a good fit for you, and how do you track one of these green jobs down?

Start by researching, and talking to people.

Jacques Chirazi, who works as a Clean Tech program manager at the City of San Diego and teaches in the Sustainable Practices program at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies , says “many green jobs are jobs that never existed before. In the IT market in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s, no one knew that jobs for webmasters would exist. Sometimes technology gets ahead of the skill sets we need.”

That doesn’t mean all green jobs are breaking brand-new ground. In fact, qualifying for a green job may simply mean retrofitting and upgrading skills you’ve already developed. “Many people – from machinists, to construction and water treatment workers, to electricians – have the necessary skill sets already,” says Chirazi, “but need additional knowledge to play a role in the renewable market or waste water treatment, or to work in positions that manage financial instruments directed toward these kinds of projects.”
 

Want to know more about the skill sets you might need to transition into a green job?

Check out the Embracing the Green Future Forum over at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies , from 8-10:30 am on September 11. Learn about fast-growing green careers, enjoy a breakfast with San Diego green industry experts, and network, network, network!

Their green industry panel will feature experts on green jobs in energy, wind, and water:

·       Peter MacLaggan, of Poseidon Resources Corporation, develops large-scale seawater desalination projects,

·       Terry Mohn, of BAE Systems’ newly formed Smart and Clean Energy group, works in clean and renewable electric generation, and

·       John Freeman directs communications for Knight & Carver’s Wind Group, working closely with influential industry leaders and government officials.

They’ll all be answering questions about clean and green jobs in the San Diego region – so head over there and ask all those questions you’ve been mulling over about the future of green jobs and how you can get involved in these growing industries.

To register, or for more information, visit online or call (619) 265-SDSU.

What is a green job? And is one of them a good fit for you?

Green jobs are in the news, on the business pages, and at the forefront of governmental policy. Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has predicted “the development of green jobs will be one of the biggest changes in our economy since the industrial revolution."

Ask five people what a green job actually is, though, and you’ll get seven different answers.

So what is a green job?

>> Read the full article online at the San Diego News Network >>

What’s going on in the event planning world these days? Too much to cover in one blog posting, of course, but a couple of event planning news items have caught my eye recently…  

·        A team building event planner designed corporate scavenger hunts in Bangkok and Frankfurt, using LinkedIn to source top-notch suppliers in each location.

·        A launch event was held for a luxury island retreat off the coast of Abu Dhabi, during which all 400 guests were flown by helicopter to the site. Any results in this tough economy? Oh yeah. 40% of the units sold by the end of the evening and over 450 press articles, with an ad value of more than $1 million, were written in the buzz.

·        A two-day virtual forum about how companies can achieve better energy management practiced what it was preaching, bringing participants together from around the world with (virtually) no carbon footprint at all.

It’s such an interesting time to be working in the event planning industry. It’s true that extravagant events are happening more rarely as many organizations tighten spending in this choppy economy – there are only so many private luxury islands to launch, after all. But many event planners are turning budgetary limitations into opportunities, coming up with and implementing creative solutions that extend both budgets and buzz.

Earning a Certificate in Meeting and Event Planning is a great way to learn the skills you’ll need to enter this exciting field, or enhance your current career in hospitality or public relations.  

The certificate program at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies is hosting an orientation where you can find out more about these courses, meet the program director, and learn about career opportunities in the meeting and event industry.

Meeting and Event Planning Orientation

Wednesday, August 26th, 6-7:30 pm

SDSU Extended Studies Center on Hardy Avenue.

Call (619) 594-2517 or email rbrown2@mail.sdsu.edu to reserve your spot, and they’ll send you easy directions and a permit to park free during the event.