Understanding Self and Others
This learning series is designed to deepend your self-awareness to help you relate to others and discover a personal connection with your work. Courses support employees in developing skills that allow them to know, articulate, and manage themselves and to curiously and respectfully explore how to work with others. Learning outcomes support several of UVic's competencies and strategic plan priorities.
Download the Employee Learning Program Series overview
Understanding Self & Others Series Snapshot (5 core courses):
Discover Personality Using Lumina: Increase self-awareness by discovering your personality preferences and improve your communication, teamwork, and leadership.
Build Personal Resilience: Cultivate proactive practices to maintain wellness during times of adversity.
Adapt to Change: Become more aware of, and develop your ability to, adapt to change in the workplace.
Cultural Intelligence in the Workplace: Explore cultural values and develop your ability to relate to others and interact effectively across cultures.
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Become more aware of your own and other's emotions so you can directly influence how you react to stressful situations and improve interpersonal relationships.
Two Electives: Select two elective courses (3.5 hours of learning each) from the list or submit an alternative for consideration.
Learning Themes
- Cultivating self-awareness and self-management in various emotional and relational contexts
- Identifying expressions and sources of stress and building resilience and agility in response
- Communicating across difference and valuing alternative ways of being
- Shifting from judgement to using empathy and curiosity
- Consciously choosing how to focus attention and manage energy
Intended Audience
All UVic employees are welcome to participate in this learning series. Those with personal and professional development goals pertaining to self-awareness, personal growth, emotional intelligence, and mental health at work, may have a particular interest.
Detailed Course Descriptions
Discover Personality Using Lumina Spark: Increase self-awareness by discovering your personality preferences and improve your communication, teamwork, and leadership.
This workshop involves using the Lumina Spark Personality Portrait and a facilitative process to highlight individual diversity, indicate key strengths and address potential blind spots to ensure action-based learning that enhances interpersonal skills.
The Lumina Spark Portrait is a personalized psychometric assessment provided through Lumina Learning which helps individuals explore their own personality, increase self-awareness and adapt behaviours to improve business relationships and teamwork. Unique to each participant, this Portrait provides a colourful and personalized framework for better self-understanding and improving working relationships with others.
Learning Objectives
- Apply increased levels of self-awareness to more thoroughly understand your relationship with others
- Build rapport with others through attentively reading and responding to their needs
- Communicate effectively with a range of individuals by acknowledging and valuing the diversity of personality styles and approaches
Build Personal Resilience: Cultivating proactive practices to maintain wellness during times of adversity.
Personal resilience is not a matter of talent or personality, or an excuse to perpetuate suffering, but is about the intentional practices that enhance our ability to bounce back from adversity. This course, developed by clinical counsellors, will walk participants through a working model of resilience grounded in the latest research and theories from mental health, leadership development, and organizational wellness pedagogy. The content includes a detailed breakdown of the practical steps and resources you can use to continue building resilience in your own life. Participants can explore what resilience is and isn’t, why it matters for work and life, and the practical and meaningful steps they can commit to in order to build both individual and collective resilience.
Learning Objectives
- Develop a theoretically grounded definition of resilience
- Identify practical and research supported ways to further develop resilience
- Reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of existing strategies for coping with adversity
- Understand the differences between individual and collective resilience
- Enhance your sense of agency in dealing with difficult circumstances
Adapt to Change: Become more aware of, and develop your ability to, adapt to change in the workplace.
Change is inevitable and individuals respond to change in their own ways. By understanding what you need when undergoing change, you can take care of yourself, maintain an appropriate level of engagement in the workplace and communicate more effectively with others.
In this course you will learn about the mindset needed to navigate change effectively personally in the workplace and how to support others in adapting to change.
Learning Objectives
- Describe several personal emotions of change and what experiencing change looks like for you
- Acknowledge the range of impact that change may have on you and others in the workplace
- Use basic tools and strategies for embracing change in the workplace and remaining resilient
Cultural Intelligence in the Workplace: Explore cultural values and develop your ability to relate to others and interact effectively across cultures.
Cultural Intelligence, or CQ, is one’s ability to work and relate effectively in diverse cultural settings. It is a globally recognized way of assessing and improving effectiveness for culturally diverse situations. This session will develop your understanding of cultural intelligence, how it complements emotional intelligence, and how you can develop your own capability for success in diverse cultural contexts, be it in your workplace or your classroom.
This session includes a CQ Pro Assessment, which measures an individual’s capability for working and relating across cultures. A personalized feedback report that compares your CQ scores with the worldwide norms and includes a personalized development plan will be generated following completion of your CQTM assessment.
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Become more aware of your own and other's emotions, so you can directly influence how you react to stressful situations and improve interpersonal relationships.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a large part in how we interact with others in both personal and professional contexts and in how we respond to stress and change. While the concept of change at work is not new, the rate of change is accelerating, meaning that EI has never been more important.
EI is the ability to use the information provided by emotions alongside logical thought to respond in an effective way. Becoming aware of and practicing EI increases our knowledge of our own strengths and challenges and helps us manage our responses to emotion more effectively. Understanding and noticing emotions increases our opportunity to be more effective at work and at home.
In this workshop, you will learn how to identify and respond effectively to emotions, explore various theories of EI, discover the value of enhanced emotional intelligence for the workplace, and practice techniques for developing your own EI skills.
Learning Objectives
- Define Emotional Intelligence
- Identify the skills (competencies) of Emotional Intelligence
- Familiarize yourself with common theories of Emotional Intelligence
- Identify emotions and understand their individual value and limitations
- Apply tools to express empathy, practice presence and to set boundaries
Understanding Self & Others Series Electives
Choose two electives (3.5 hours of learning each) from the list or submit an alternative for consideration.
Suggested Electives
- Any EQHR course
- Thrive In Your Team
- Indigenous Cultural Acumen Training (ICAT)
- Interpersonal Communication
- Towards a Shared Understanding of Respect
- Mental Health for Students / Employees