Courses
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Disability Awareness in the Workplace
- This course will increase your awareness of the lives and experiences of people with disabilities. We will also focus on developing skills to create a workplace environment that is respectful and inclusive of persons with disabilities.
Register - Intercultural Communication and Competence
- Cultural Competence has been defined as a set of skills and attitudes that allow individuals to effectively and appropriately communicate with people who are different from themselves. A culturally competent organization effectively and appropriately serves a diverse clientele and meets the varied needs of its diverse staff. This program will explore how individuals and organizations can become more culturally competent. Self and organizational assessment models will be presented and the various components of each stage of competence will be discussed.
Register - Is it Bullying? Awareness and Strategies
- The objectives of this course are to increase awareness and understanding about bullying and other forms of abrasive behaviors in the workplace, become familiar with the policies and resources related to bullying and other forms of abrasive behavior, learn skills for responding to abrasive behaviors in the workplace, examine one’s own behavior (self-reflection) that impacts interaction with colleagues and workplace climate, and explore strategies for empowering ourselves and others in cultivating inclusive work environments. NOTE: Class is subject to a minimum enrollment of 15 to proceed.
Register - LGBTQ+ 101
- This 2 hour-long course serves as a basic overview to the world of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) patients and their families. Topics include terminology, common health disparities facing these communities, and strategies and policies to make clinical environments more LGBTQ inclusive. UC Davis Health-specific interventions will also be covered.
Register - LGBTQIA Inclusion in the Workplace
- Our campus strives for inclusion excellence in our policies and practices that consider the experiences of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA) community members. This course introduces laws and policies that inform our practices promoting inclusion of the LGBTQIA community. Among the course objectives include broadening our understanding of the experiences of LGBTQIA people on our campus by exploring the culture, language and terminology related to sexual orientation and gender identity. Using case studies, participants will gain awareness and knowledge of the issues that impact members of the LGBTQIA community in the workplace, and will engage in developing strategies the work towards creating a welcoming work environment.
Register - Living the Principles of Community (eCourse)
- This on-line course is designed to promote inclusiveness and respect in the work and learning environment at UC Davis, introducing the concepts to new members of the campus community while reinforcing them to existing members. Participants, especially UC Davis staff members and academic appointees, will become familiar with ways to integrate the UC Davis Principles of Community into their own workplaces and classrooms. This highly interactive course includes up-to-date information on discrimination, sexual harassment, affirmative action and diversity along with the University’s policies governing these issues. Through realistically subtle and complex scenarios, learners discover that there is more than one “right” way of preventing, managing and resolving conflicts related to these topics. This course will inform and equip participants with essential knowledge and skills, ultimately resulting in fewer such conflicts, improved morale, decreased institutional liability, and a more respectful and inclusive campus environment. Approximately 60 minutes in length.
Launch eCourse - Making the Unconscious Conscious: Understanding and Mitigating Bias
- Bias, in its most simplistic definition, is having a preference for one thing over another. Also, biases come into play in our impressions and judgment of people, especially those whose identities and experiences are different from our own. This session will explore how we make snap judgments about people by understanding our socialization that informs our biases. Participants will be introduced to theory and language in understanding implicit and explicit bias. Using personal reflection, experiential exercises and case studies, participants will gain greater awareness when they engage in bias and gain essential knowledge and skills (tools) in how they recognize and mitigate biases in both personal and professional domains. This session includes an exploration of how the pandemic has impacted this area of DEI.
Register - Microaggressions: Towards Greater Awareness and Understanding
- As cultural beings, we are products of our socialization. Our socialization includes conditioning in how we understand differences and our identities and how those identities are understood and experienced at the individual and structural levels. Using the work of Derald Wing Sue, this session explores the phenomenon of microaggressions in everyday life by increasing awareness of common occurrences; understanding its impact on those who experience them; and exploring strategies on how to mitigate and respond to them. NOTE: Class is subject to a minimum enrollment of 15 to proceed. If the course for your campus does not work for your schedule then you may enroll in the offering for the other campus.
Register - Understanding Diversity and Social Justice
- Through personal sharing, group exercises, and dialogue, the ever persistent and ever changing dynamics of personal and societal structures which support inequality will be examined. Participants will also engage in learning skills to become allies for social equity. NOTE: Class is subject to a minimum enrollment of 15 to proceed. If the course for your campus does not work for your schedule then you may enroll in the offering for the other campus.
Register - Understanding Generational Differences
- There is a growing awareness of the "generational diversity" that exists in the workplace. Older, middle-aged and younger staff members may share common work tasks, but their values, approaches to work, communication styles and perceptions of each other may differ greatly. NOTE: Class is subject to a minimum enrollment of 15 to proceed. If the course for your campus does not work for your schedule then you may enroll in the offering for the other campus.
Register - Understanding Religious Differences in the Workplace
- Our campus community includes a rich diversity of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. This provides us with both opportunities and challenges as we strive to create environments that respect our various values and observances. This course will share information about various religious and spiritual traditions and offer strategies for honoring religious and spiritual differences in the workplace.
Register - Unpacking Oppression
- Participants will explore the cultural barriers that perpetuate oppression at the institutional level. In addition to oppression theory, the course provides an opportunity to increase awareness regarding power and privilege with the goal of fostering a more inclusive and equitable campus environment. NOTE: Class is subject to a minimum enrollment of 15 to proceed. If the course for your campus does not work for your schedule then you may enroll in the offering for the other campus.
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Conflict Competence (Ombuds)
- Conflict Competence: Constructive Feedback for Positive Change
- Critical feedback is not often something we look forward to giving or receiving, and yet, it is essential to learning, growth and development. If feedback is delivered well, it can foster stronger collaborations and better outcomes. In this interactive workshop, you will learn best practices for effectively giving feedback and considerations for receiving it.
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- Conflict Competence: Creative Problem Solving in the Workplace
- Drawing from negotiation and conflict management best practices, this interactive webinar will provide a road map designed to help you discover solutions that meet your needs in complex and challenging situations.
Register - Conflict Competence for Managers and Supervisors
- Conflict has the power to lower morale, reduce productivity, and cause a toxic team climate. However, if managed well, conflict can strengthen relationships, foster creativity, and contribute to a high functioning, successful team. This highly interactive course provides tools, techniques and skills to effectively prevent and resolve conflicts within your team. You will learn how to recognize conflict before it escalates, navigate interpersonal dynamics from a position of higher power, identify core employee needs, build trust on your team, and navigate emotionally charged conversations. At the end of this course, you will develop a personalized plan to address your specific conflict management needs. Please note that this course has significant overlap with “Conflict Competence for Staff” but includes an additional focus on managing conflict from a leadership position.
Register - Conflict Competence for Staff
- Conflict has the power to lower morale, reduce productivity, and cause a toxic team climate. However, if managed well, conflict can strengthen relationships, foster creativity, and contribute to a high functioning, successful team. This highly interactive course provides tools, techniques and skills to effectively prevent and resolve conflicts within your team. You will learn how to recognize conflict before it escalates, navigate interpersonal dynamics from a position of higher power, identify core employee needs, build trust on your team, and navigate emotionally charged conversations. At the end of this course, you will develop a personalized plan to address your specific conflict management needs. Please note that this course has significant overlap with “Conflict Competence for Staff” but includes an additional focus on managing conflict from a leadership position.
Register - Conflict Competence: Getting to the Root of Group Conflict
- Group conflict can be difficult to manage and have costly consequences. It can significantly impact productivity and work quality and even destroy teams. While conflict is often attributed to interpersonal dynamics or "people problems," conflicts are common symptoms of other solvable issues. In this course for leaders of groups or teams, you’ll learn a structured approach to identify and address the root causes of group conflict. Discover how to apply the Goals, Roles, Processes, and Interpersonal Relationships (GRPI) team development model to reveal hidden sources of conflict and valuable opportunities to prevent and manage conflict effectively.
Register - Conflict Competence in Uncertain Times
- Difficult or unexpected changes can feel disruptive and can drive conflict at work. In this webinar, we will explore ways of communicating effectively and engaging constructively during periods of uncertainty. Participants will learn how bridging communication styles, demonstrating compassion, and facing difficult moments with courage and clarity can lead to better navigating challenges.
Register - Conflict Competence: Listening to be Heard
- Do you feel like your ideas and perspectives are not being heard? Have you ever felt stuck in a dynamic of defensive and attacking behaviors that break down communication and cause significant stress? One way to help people listen to us and restore communication channels is by first making them feel heard. When both people feel heard and understood, the chances of reaching a lasting resolution dramatically increase, relationships improve, and you can ultimately find greater success at work. This highly interactive course provides techniques to identify and overcome listening barriers, listen for what is not being said, make another person feel heard, and lower defensiveness around tense topics.
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- Developing Resilient Research Collaborations - Conflict Competence Workshop for Academic Personnel
- Successful research often relies on collaborations – with students and trainees, with colleagues in your own and other departments, and with external partners. This workshop, taught by the UC Davis Ombuds office, offers tools for faculty, postdocs, and other academic personnel to manage collaborative relationships on research projects. The material will use examples from the biomedical, clinical, and social sciences but should be relevant for other disciplines as well. Learn to proactively establish and maintain collaborative relationships as well as employ strategies for creative problem solving when conflicts emerge.
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- Managing Difficult Situations in Clinical Settings - Conflict Competence Workshop for Academic Personnel
- This workshop, taught by the UC Davis Ombuds office, offers tools for managing conflict and other tense situations on multidisciplinary clinical teams. The material will focus on hospital and outpatient examples from medical and veterinary settings. Learn tools to invite others into collaborative problem-solving to address difficult situations or conflicts, as well as tips for managing defensiveness in yourself and others.
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- Promoting Respectful Collaboration in Clinical Settings - Conflict Competence Workshop for Academic Personnel
- This workshop, taught by the UC Davis Ombuds office, offers tools for supporting respectful working relationships on multidisciplinary clinical teams. The material will focus on hospital and outpatient examples from medical and veterinary settings. Learn options for distracting, directly engaging, and delegating to others when experiencing difficult behaviors. Explore ways to establish respectful boundaries and communicate effectively across cultural and other differences.
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Interpersonal Skills
- Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue
- This is a two part, two day course. Must attend both classes to get credit. Crucial Conversations is a course that teaches skills for creating alignment and agreement by fostering opening dialogue around high-stakes, emotional, or risky topics – at all levels of the organization. By learning how to speak and be heard (and encouraging others to do the same), you’ll surface the best ideas, make the highest-quality decisions, and then act on your decisions with unity and commitment. Based on the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny.
Learning Objectives:
Speak persuasively, not abrasively
Foster teamwork and better decision-making
Build acceptance rather than resistance
Resolve individual and group disagreements respectfully
Register - Working with Emotional Intelligence
- The concept of emotional intelligence refers to sets of personal competencies (self awareness, self regulation, motivation) and social competencies (empathy and social skills) that are critical to workplace success in the long term. It is clearly documented by now that once the technical skills are mastered in any career area, it is these sets of skills that predict success. While this approach is still developing, it does offer some specific ways to understand and develop these competencies. This class includes a discussion of emotional intelligence and its relevance at work, assessment exercises to practice applying the concept, and also an opportunity to plan ways to further explore and apply the emotional intelligence approach.
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Healthcare
- Crisis Prevention Institute Nonviolent Crisis Intervention® Training
Provides staff with an effective framework for preventing, de-escalating, and safely responding to crisis behavior. The program will focus on what’s happening from two perspectives: the person in distress and the staff person. Participants will gain a broad range of tools to help them manage their own emotional responses and identify escalating behaviors in others. They’ll also discover how having a plan before behavior escalates helps manage their fear and cultivate consistent practices. NCI training complies with all current legislation and is evidence-based.
Training includes:
- Prevention & verbal de-escalation skills
- Disengagement safety techniques
- Trauma-informed approach
- Risk assessment framework
- Physical intervention techniques
Additional resources can be found on the Workplace Violence Prevention website.Register for Initial Certification
Register for Initial Certification (Verbal De-Escalation Only)
Register for Re-Certification- Communication with Angry Patients through De-escalation (eCourse)
- Patients in the health care setting sometimes experience anxiety for a variety of reasons. A newly diagnosed illness, separation from loved ones, threat associated with diagnostic tests or surgical procedures, and expectations of life changes are just a few factors that cause anxiety. How successfully a patient copes with anxiety depends, in part, on previous experiences, the presence of other stressors, the significance of the event causing anxiety, and the availability of supportive resources. The nurse can be a support to the patient. The nurse helps to decrease anxiety through effective communication. Communication methods reviewed in this skill will assist the nurse in helping an anxious patient to clarify factors causing anxiety and to cope more effectively. There are four stages of anxiety with corresponding behavioral manifestations: mild, moderate, severe, and panic.
Launch eCourse - Communication with Depressed Patients (eCourse)
- Depression is a feeling state that is more than just sadness. It is a common psychiatric condition that affects a person's ability to function in day-to-day activities. There are many symptoms of depression, the most common being apathy, feelings of sadness, fatigue, guilt, poor concentration, sleep disturbances, and suicidal thoughts. Depression results in both subjective and objective behaviors (Box 1). Subjective behaviors include report of feelings of sadness, tearfulness, report of no energy, and increase in physical complaints. Some patients report feeling anxious when depressed. Objective signs include decrease in performance of activities of daily living and decreased time spent in social activities (altered social interaction).
Launch eCourse - Communication with Anxious Patients (eCourse)
- Patients in the health care setting sometimes experience anxiety for a variety of reasons. A newly diagnosed illness, separation from loved ones, threat associated with diagnostic tests or surgical procedures, and expectations of life changes are just a few factors that cause anxiety. How successfully a patient copes with anxiety depends, in part, on previous experiences, the presence of other stressors, the significance of the event causing anxiety, and the availability of supportive resources. The nurse can be a support to the patient. The nurse helps to decrease anxiety through effective communication. Communication methods reviewed in this skill will assist the nurse in helping an anxious patient to clarify factors causing anxiety and to cope more effectively. There are four stages of anxiety with corresponding behavioral manifestations: mild, moderate, severe, and panic.
Launch eCourse - Hand-Off Communication: ISBAR and I-PASS (Perioperative) (eCourse)
- One of the National Patient Safety Goals of The Joint Commission is to improve communication among caregivers.8 (Level VII: Authority opinion or expert committee reports) In the perioperative setting, SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) communication can guide hand-off information exchange of patient information.10 SBAR communication was initially developed by Kaiser Permanente, and it gives clinicians a structure to provide thorough information on a patient's current health condition.3 The SBAR technique provides a framework for communication among members of the health care team about a patient's condition. SBAR communication promotes an easy and focused method for specific information that is communicated among members of the team, which is essential for developing teamwork and fostering a culture of patient safety.
Launch eCourse
Marketing and Communications
- Effective Stakeholder Communications for Technology Professionals (eCourse)
- To earn the support and trust of stakeholders, you need to continuously and effectively communicate how your role in providing technology resources helps your stakeholders realize their own objectives. In this course, you will learn how to identify your stakeholders, how to choose the right channels with which to communicate with your stakeholders, how to hone your stakeholder message, how to establish trust with your stakeholders through difficult communications, and how to engage your stakeholders through storytelling.
Launch eCourse - Gen Z: New Strategies for a Post-Digital Generation
- Generation Z, unlike Millennials, is the first generation of students to have grown up in an entirely “post-digital” era. They make up the vast majority of our student body. Gen Z has never known a world without Google and smartphones. Beyond technology, they are socially aware like never before and value authenticity over trends, and 75% of Gen Z even say that college isn’t the only way to get a good education. The same old tactics aren’t likely to persuade them to engage with or listen to you. This session takes a look into who Gen Z is and offers new ideas and best practices to reach and connect with this new generation. Please note, you don’t need marketing or communications in your job title to attend this session. It is for anyone who interacts, communicates or works with Gen Z.
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Public Speaking
- Dynamic Public Speaking: Crafting and Delivering Engaging Virtual and In-Person Presentations
- Want to learn how to be a dynamic public speaker in person and virtually? Look no further! Gain practical skills to conduct engaging, informative, and interactive presentations to audiences large and small, in person or online. This workshop will help attendees discover tips to improve oral and nonverbal communication styles, overcome fear of public speaking, review best practices in virtual tools and engagement, incorporate humor and storytelling, integrate experiential learning techniques and exercises, facilitate an effective Q&A session, handle distractions, inspire and motivate participants, and establish credibility. Participants will have the opportunity to work in a supportive setting with other attendees to develop and practice content, receive spotlight speaker coaching, and quality feedback. Whether conducting lectures, training, orientations, tours, staff meetings, interviews, pitches, or one-on-one discussions, this workshop will help attendees gain confidence and connect with others. Get ready to have fun while learning how to be a dynamic speaker!
NOTE: This workshop is interactive and designed to offer participants content and a chance to practice. However, please keep in mind that practice time may fluctuate or be limited based on size of overall class registration/attendance. Every effort will be made to accommodate attendees’ requests to practice within time and class size parameters.
Register - Writing and Preparing an Effective Speech (eCourse)
- Not everybody is a natural public speaker. Public speaking is a skill , one that requires significant planning and preparation. It involves developing written communication skills and learning how to deliver your writing in public. In this course, you'll learn how to write a speech by setting the aim of your speech and considering your audience and theme. You'll also be introduced to best practices for planning and researching a speech. And you'll learn how to check your written speech and ensure the grammar is correct.
Launch eCourse
Written Communication
- Audience and Purpose in Business Writing (eCourse)
- Have you ever read a piece of business writing and found the message unclear? Writing well, like other communication skills, can be cultivated and improved. To write an effective business message, you need to first know and understand your audience and your purpose for choosing written communication to convey it. In this course, you'll discover how improving your written communication aids in creating messages that convey the appropriate tone for different readers throughout the organizational hierarchy. You'll also explore how better writing can effectively fulfil its three most common purposes: to inform, respond, or persuade.
Launch eCourse - Editing and Proofreading Business Documents (eCourse)
- All of us can think of a piece of business writing that's lacking a key point or contains an embarrassing typo or spelling error. From that point on, it becomes difficult to take it seriously, whatever it's topic or content. In business, solid, professional written communication is essential to the clarity and credibility of your message. In this course, you'll learn how improving your communication skills through better writing will help you produce more focused, polished, and effective business documents. It offers guidance on how to edit and proofread effectively, covering key areas, such as tone, structure, clarity, and accuracy, as well as common grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes to watch out for.
Launch eCourse - Writing with a Professional Mindset (eCourse)
- In an era where written communication is pervasive, a professional mindset can set you apart and make you a valued asset in your organization. Writing professionally, clearly, lucidly, and concisely will help you align your written communication with the goals of your organization and demonstrate your competence and commitment to clear and effective communication. In this course, you'll learn the essential aspects of effective professional communication and strategies to craft effective and professional written communication. You'll also learn how various channels of communication can be optimized for impactful professional writing, and explore best practices for improving your professional writing skills.
Launch eCourse