PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Personal effectiveness is about utilizing your skills, talent, and motivation to reach the goals which you have set for yourself.  Whether your goals focus on career progression, ensuring an optimal work-life balance, or improving business skills, these courses provide insight into how to draw upon one’s strengths to increase our effectiveness and to achieve important life goals.

To View these Webinars: visit MyPLN at achieve.lausd.net/mypln. Select the search button and search for a course using a keyword from the course title.

Asserting Yourself in the Workplace Asserting yourself at work means more than pursuing a personal agenda. Often, it serves to benefit project teams and the organization at large. This Challenge scenario explores the fine line between assertiveness, aggression, and passive-aggression. 15 minutes
Beating Procrastination by Boosting Your Creativity and Drive All professionals need to be able to come up with original ideas and think outside the box at some point. But sometimes the pressure to think creatively is the very thing that blocks the flow of fresh ideas and results in the type of procrastination that is an obstacle to efficient time management. This course focuses on the relationship between procrastinating and creativity. Participants will learn about how the optimal amount of procrastination actually boosts creativity and efficiency. They will also learn how to use creativity boosters to help get past those times when one procrastinates a little too much. 19 minutes
Becoming an Accountable Professional Everyone who works must also answer to an inner boss, a personal, internal voice that provides guidance on whether a job is worth doing and whether it is done well. Accepting personal accountability for your work means your inner boss sets demanding standards and that you're willing to commit to meeting those standards and answer for the results of your work. In this course, you'll learn how to listen to your own inner boss, how to identify your internal standards, how to create a plan to meet those standards, and how to apply your inner boss's guidance to gain more control over your work, your goals, and your future. 30 minutes
Blame Backfires--Conquer Negative Thinking Many employees find accepting criticism difficult. This Business Impact details how to handle workplace criticism professionally and effectively. 6 minutes
Building Your Professional Network When you're serious about advancing your career, you need to build strong professional relationships and maintain an effective network of contacts. Whether it's for executive networking or general business networking, this course covers the essential communication and professional networking skills needed to establish a solid network. It includes strategies for building rapport with new contacts during networking opportunities and covers best practices for maintaining a network so that business contacts can help you achieve your career goals. 23 minutes
Conquering Career Stagnation Many employees experience career stagnation. This impact examines strategies to overcome it. 6 minutes
Criticism in Context Receiving criticism is rarely a pleasant experience. Yet, it can provide considerable opportunity for personal growth. This Business Impact explores some possible strategies for processing feedback in a useful manner. 6 minutes
Developing a Personal Accountability Framework Building accountability is a process of showing that one is reliable, organized, and a dedicated person, and further, ensuring accountability means taking ownership of one's responsibilities. In this course participants will learn how to show leadership accountability, implement strategies for setting goals, develop an action plan, and see all those competing tasks through to completion. 24 minutes
Developing a Plan to Further Your Career The whole notion of what a career is has changed. You are now responsible for managing your career. And the straightest path toward your goal is not always clear. In this course, you'll learn how to take an inventory of your values, interests, skills, and lifestyle aspirations in order to develop your career management skills. You'll also learn strategies for identifying your strengths and dealing with weaknesses. Then you'll learn how to pull it all together and develop a career plan based on your attributes and what you want to achieve. This course also provides tips on how to deal with any weaknesses that are holding you back. 28 minutes
Developing Your Career Career development requires foresight and proactive management. This Challenge explores methods of planning and executing an effective career development path. 15 minutes
Gaining a Positive Perspective on Feedback Though it's invaluable, getting feedback can sometimes be a difficult process. Adopting a positive mindset can make all the difference. This course will teach you how receiving feedback differs from getting simple praise or criticism. You'll discover how listening to constructive feedback with a positive mindset can help you to manage your reactions and responses. You'll also learn how applying feedback can help your professional growth and self-development. 30 minutes
Getting Your Career on the Right Track Are you happy in your job? Or drifting along without a career plan? Either way, being proactive about where your career is heading is a good start. Exploring your career options is an important part of managing your career. In this course, you'll learn how to develop your career management skills and give your career a boost. You'll get tips on improving career prospects and moving within your current company. You'll learn how to use a promotion plan and explore the best ways to ask for assignments that will move your career forward. And you'll find out how to make a break and move on. 29 minutes
Keeping Your Skillset Current in the Digital Economy The digital economy is revolutionizing the world of work. To stay relevant, individuals across all industries need to be open to continuous learning and developing talent. Through organizational learning, you can start developing employees by ensuring they are learning the necessary skills. In this course, you'll learn some of the key ways in which the world of work is changing and the skills that are in high demand. You'll also explore ways to choose what to learn in order to keep your skillset current, as well as develop people and encourage self-development. And you’ll also explore strategies to help advance your career in the digital economy. 18 minutes
Making Yourself Approachable The groundwork for mutual understanding is laid when you reach out to others and make yourself approachable. This Business Impact explores the benefits of approachability and how to attain them. 6 minutes
Managing Pressure and Stress to Optimize Your Performance People react to high pressure differently. Learning to cope with pressure and handling stress are very important, because you don’t want pressure to have a negative impact on your performance. In this course, you'll learn about managing stress and pressure, situations that trigger pressure, and how pressure can become stress. You'll also look at how stress affects you emotionally and physically, and how to respond to it. And you'll also learn strategies for managing stress by ensuring you have the right attitude, taking control under pressure, and using performance management to cultivate a "success mentality." You can then optimize your own performance, and prepare to cope with stressed colleagues. 18 minutes
Perseverance: Flexibility in Action To be successful at achieving your goals, you need to persevere. But not blindly. Creating an inspiring goal gives you a framework for your efforts. And anticipating potential obstacles helps you prepare to deal with them. But overcoming obstacles as they arise requires flexibility, and a willingness to adjust goals, while keeping the ultimate aim intact. This Business Impact explores how, when you come across an obstacle, you can reevaluate and adjust your goals, without giving up on them. 6 minutes
Planning for Interruptions Helps with Procrastination Wasting time at work is a common problem. This Business Impact examines strategies employees can use to minimize their procrastination. 6 minutes
Planning Your Career You have the power to advance your career. So how can you do this? This challenge explores the ways you can be proactive in advancing your career and successful in achieving your career goals. The learner takes the role of an IT professional working in the Information Services group of a pharmaceutical company. 15 minutes
Prioritizing Personal and Professional Responsibilities In today's business world, employees face significant performance pressures. This Business Impact focuses on the challenges business professionals face when balancing the demands of home and office in today's global economy. 6 minutes
Reaching Goals Using Perseverance and Resilience You will have a hard time persevering without incorporating the benefits of trust and resilience into your efforts. Trusting yourself, trusting others, and having others trust you helps you build confidence, stay open-minded, and remove obstacles. Being resilient and able to get back up when you are knocked down helps you take the next step, continue on the planned course, and do so without harm to yourself or others. In this course, you will learn about earning trust and assessing your circle of trusted people, as well as developing resilience, and what to do to regain trust and rebuild resilience. 27 minutes
Redefining Yourself after Organizational Change Organizational change is inevitable, so you need to be resilient and adapt to the new opportunities it presents. It's important to not just survive organizational change. With resilience, flexibility, and perseverance, you can thrive in it and propel your career forward. In this course, you will learn the importance of adapting to organizational change, as well as the essential skills needed to handle it. The course details the best practices of building self-motivation and introduces the idea of reframing as a coping method. You'll learn to turn resistance to change into acceptance. Finally, this course covers the importance of capitalizing on the career opportunities presented by organizational change. 29 minutes
Self-improvement for Lifelong Success No matter how much experience you may have, there's always room for improvement. Self-improvement is a lifelong journey of learning that can have lasting positive impacts on your personal and professional life. By encouraging organizational learning with both established and developing employees, you can foster an environment of self-development. In this course, you'll learn about the key principles for committing to self-improvement and continuous learning. You'll also learn how to create a plan to organize self-improvement activities and start developing talent. You’ll find out how to develop an effective self-improvement mentoring relationship when developing people. And you’ll explore what common obstacles you may encounter in your self-improvement efforts. 24 minutes
The Art of Staying Focused Even if you know what's important to do, losing focus can stop your progress. No matter who you are or what job you do, focusing at work can be hard. Even with great schedule management and organizing skills, it's easy to get off track if you're not careful. In this course, you'll learn how to stay focused and stay on top of your schedule. You'll learn strategies for dealing with focus challenges and distractions at work. You’ll also find out how to beat fatigue, manage your time, and decline work-related requests. And you’ll explore how to adjust your focus to deal with change, and how to regain focus when you've lost it. 30 minutes
The Essentials for Anger Management Anger is a normal – and even healthy – emotion, rooted in the instinct for self-preservation. However, if not managed properly, our feelings and emotions can be very destructive. It's important to find healthy ways of owning and expressing your anger. This requires emotional intelligence (EI) and a good emotional quotient (EQ), or emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ). In this course, you’ll explore how to manage your anger and your anger response. You’ll also explore the nature of anger, including its root causes and ways to use it positively in the workplace. And you’ll learn how to develop empathy for colleagues who may be causing your anger. 18 minutes
Uncovering and Utilizing Your Talents and Skills We all have individual talents and skills that make us unique in some way, but you may not be aware of your own skills, or how to use those skills to improve many areas of your life. In this course, you'll learn what is meant by talent and skill, and why it's important to understand what talents you possess. This course also covers techniques for identifying your unique capabilities, and outlines what you should include in a talent action plan to fully utilize and develop your key talents and skills. 19 minutes