Managing at UF: The Supervisory Challenge
Discover the tools you need to be an effective manager at the University of Florida.
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About the Program
Managing at UF: The Supervisory Challenge equips University of Florida leaders with essential knowledge and skills to excel in our unique university environment. The program aligns with the University of Florida’s Leadership Competency Model.
This certification includes a range of workshops designed specifically for UF. Workshops are free and open to all faculty and staff interested in becoming effective managers.
To earn the “Managing at UF” certification, complete ten required workshops and two electives, totaling 12 workshops. Participants can complete workshops at their own pace, with no time limit for completion. Some workshops from the earlier “Supervisory Challenge” certification also count toward the new certification.
Required Courses
Available as an on-demand online course through myTraining
This course provides a practical introduction and guide to fair and legal employment practices at UF. This course is ideal for individuals interested in human resources, serving in supervisory positions, or interested in becoming a supervisor. This course folds in the most pertinent laws and policies involving basic human resource practices and impacting our employees.
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Instructor: Irma Alvarez
Communication is consistently identified as one of the most important tasks of a manager. In this session, we will identify key issues, challenges and strategies to help managers communicate effectively with team members. Topics covered will include:
- Focal points of communication and communication breakdown for managers
- Tools for influencing and knowing when to use them
- Making communication adjustments based on an employee’s preferences
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Instructor: Courtney Moon
This workshop combines group discussion, case study reviews and other activities to introduce ideas and techniques that can help you become a more effective coaching manager. This is a great core course for supervisors who want to learn the basics of leadership skills in order to encourage and guide their employees toward accomplishing goals in the work environment.
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Instructor: Gwynn Cadwallader
Participants will define “accountability” as a leadership competency and explore ways to incorporate accountability in their interactions with employees. The overall objective of the workshop is to identify ways to positively impact performance and work culture to get great results.
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Instructor: Courtney Moon
Providing clear, timely, meaningful feedback improves employee performance. In this course, participants will learn how to deliver feedback about job performance and work-related behavior. We will also discuss how to summarize feedback quarterly through UF Engaged.
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Instructor: Rebecca Younglove
In this course, participants will define “Emotional Intelligence” (EI) as a leadership and management competency, building upon a model for emotional and social competency. At the end of this session, participants will be able to identify how emotional intelligence affects leadership and will have generated ideas and “next steps” to leverage their emotional intelligence in the workplace for heightened leadership success.
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Instructor: John Sun
Using group participation, interactive exercises and a video presentation, “The Right Person for the Right Job” will show you how to take the guesswork out of hiring so that you can hire not just “an” employee, but “the right” employee. Get tips on screening and interviewing plus ways to make a good job/person match.
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Instructor: Rebecca Younglove
“Thinking Strategically: Using Vision, Purpose and Goals to Get Results” is a workshop for managers who want to learn ways to think more strategically in order to achieve team goals. During this session, participants will learn about the importance of having and articulating a clear vision and purpose for the team. Additionally, participants will learn a goal setting strategy that can help ensure the team identifies and works on the right goals that align with team and organizational vision and purpose.
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Instructor: Bob Parks and Rebecca Younglove
The focus of this workshop is on the role of the leader in setting a personal example. Emphasis will be on the leadership competencies of “role model,” “integrity,” and “humility.” At the end of this session, participants will be able to identify the key aspects of integrity and humility and have generated ideas and action items to cultivate these aspects of effective leadership.
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Instructor: Courtney Moon
Attend this session and learn the basic ways to use your time wisely, the difference between importance and urgency and the benefits of delegation.
Electives
Available as an on-demand online course through myTraining
This workshop is designed to increase institutional awareness so that employees at the University of Florida may be more effective in their jobs as they navigate the complexities of our large university and serve as resources for others. This workshop reviews UF’s overall organizational structure, its managerial structure (deans, directors, department chairs, etc.), and other relevant university relationships, including the University Board of Trustees and Board of Governors. Other key resources and facts about the university also are introduced.
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Instructor: Rebecca Younglove
Being a new manager has its challenges—whether it’s a result of being new to a work unit, shifting from peer to supervisor, or just being new to management in general. Attend this workshop to learn how to manage that transition successfully. The workshop also will provide a useful framework for establishing your role as a UF manager, including tips on how to avoid common mistakes.
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Instructor: Ronda Mitchell
Would you like to substantially increase your ability to communicate with other people? Can you imagine the ways this might benefit you in your career, your day-to-day dealings with people, and in your personal relationships? “Relationship Strategies” assembles a number of simple tools that can be easily applied to improve both business and interpersonal relationships. This workshop offers guidelines for understanding and adjusting to the differences in people, through observation of their behavior. The tools presented here will enable you to see yourself and your world through someone else’s eyes — and that can go a long way toward increasing communication effectiveness!
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Instructor: Shannon Powell
Things change rapidly and continually at work which requires us to address unanticipated, uncertain, time-pressured and complex problems and decisions. In this session we will consider how critical thinking, along with self-awareness and understanding of the mental shortcuts we often, and unknowingly, take can be integrated into a process to help cultivate good judgment.
This class qualifies for CPE Credit for Florida CPAs
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Instructor: Gwynn Cadwallader
Effective managers create and cultivate collaboration and teamwork in order for their unit to reach its full potential. In this session, we will discuss tactics managers can use to build a collaborative team. Specifically, we will look at team development from a manager perspective and how to facilitate decisions that everyone can commit to by building consensus.
Instructor: Nicole Harris
How many meetings have you attended or conducted that just seemed like wasted time? Well, no more! Attend this workshop to learn techniques for planning and facilitating effective meetings.
- This workshop counts as an elective in the Supervisory Challenge certificate program.
- This class qualifies for CPE Credit for Florida CPAs. Click here for details about CPE.
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Instructor: Tricia Bachus
Most of us work with well-intentioned people. However, difficult issues surface and require our attention, whether it is about scarce resources, misaligned goals, unpredictable policies, differences in opinions, or unprofessional behavior. These skills are the best way to guard against groupthink and invite multiple perspectives and build trust. In this course you will learn how to prepare for, initiate and conduct difficult conversations that can yield positive outcomes.
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Instructor: Courtney Moon
Participants will discuss why change is difficult, what they can and should expect when implementing change, and how they–as leaders or “change agents”–can make changes more effectively by taking employee response into account. By focusing on normal responses to change, along with the impact of resistance to change and employee resilience, this workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to reflect upon their roles as “change agents” so that they may more effectively implement change or guide their work unit during times of change. Practical and interactive, this workshop will provide essential skills useful in navigating the complexities of change management in today’s workplace.
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Instructor: Robert Cancellieri and David Fox
Difficult employees take up a lot of their supervisors’ time and can create serious morale problems within departments. Supervisors who need to analyze and manage problem employees will learn how to get the workplace back on track to productivity.
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Instructor: Angie Brown
Why should leaders care about mindfulness? We’ll explore what research on leadership effectiveness tells us about the ways the mind shapes our behavior and ripples out to affect the teams we lead and our organization’s overall effectiveness. By cultivating self-awareness, we can become more conscious of our automatic reactions, assumptions and actions, which can help us make more skillful choices. You’ll gain practical knowledge and tools to help you manage everyday stress and lead with authenticity and compassion.
Instructor: Nicole Stedman
No matter where someone’s role lies in an organizational chart, every person has the capacity to influence others around them. Every person can wield the power of influence to make change if they understand how influence works. In this course, you will learn what influence is along with what it is not, which builds into an understanding of how to apply your influence in many different settings. In other words, you will be able to use concepts of influence to create positive change in your environment.