From Scientist to CSO: Leadership & Management Development for Careers in Business and Industry

Class Summaries

October 9, 2012

Session 1: Introduction to Industry Careers

In this session students will learn about the different kinds of companies that hire PhD level scientists, and the significant breadth of job types that are available. Students will also learn the prejudices and pre-conceived notions that industry has for academic scientists, and what they can do to counter those prejudices. Students will also learn about 24 core business and social competencies that are valued by industry for entry level positions, and using an online self-assessment instrument, determine their own abilities in each of these areas and how to identify the specific combinations of skills necessary for specific kinds of jobs. Based on the results of the self-assessment, students will learn how to relate their own scientific and life experiences to those critical competencies and turn perceived liabilities into a competitive advantage by expressing those experiences in appropriate business language. At the end of this session, students should be able to identify the top three objectives they want to achieve by the end of the course.

October 13, 2012

Session 2: Successful Communications as a Scientist

Successfully working in industry requires a much higher communication skill level with an orientation beyond content and focused on building relationships with diverse functional groups (e.g. marketing, finance, legal), style groups (e.g. Introvert, Extrovert, Judging, Intuitive) and socially identifiable groups (e.g. green, capitalist, academic, shareholders). Students will learn how to communicate science in ways that are both personal and global, advocate and non-advocate, content and relationship-oriented. They will also be able to present finding for technical, public, online, and critical audiences.

October 16, 2012

Session 3: Leadership

In industry, there are generally six leadership styles that drive culture, management and leadership that are not common to academic settings. The quicker the new professional can "read the culture", the quicker they are valued for their technical competency AND their social integration with the TEAM. In this 3 hour experience, participant behavior will learn to identify leadership behaviors that relate to one or more of the 6 primary leadership types, rank the capacity of the participant to integrate with each of the 6 leadership types, and demonstrate behaviors that the participant could perform that would align with the preferred leadership style of an institution

October 23, 2012

Session 4: Developing People

New professionals in industry must be prepared to both drive their own continued professional development AND drive the continued development of all people who they manage, supervise or lead, or with whom they share work goals. This session will focus on helping the participant learn and implement one of the most accepted and utilized performance management methods used to develop people in industry. The Situational Leadership Theory (SLT) of Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard will serve as a practical model to learn and apply methods to help other people succeed. In this 3 hour experience, participant behavior will accomplish the following: (1) experience the 4 stages of developing oneself to a performance level, (2) evaluate an unnamed coworkers' performance using the SLT model, (3) design and implement a development plan for a coworker to move them to the next stage of the SLT model and present the results of that plan during the First Line Supervision Class on Nov 17, and (4) provide an experiential example for use on a resume that would demonstrate the ability to enable others to succeed in a work environment.

October 30, 2012

Session 5: Negotiations

Negotiation is often referred to as an art form, but there is also a science to negotiating that can be mastered with a basic understanding of how people influence one another. This class introduces a systematic framework for negotiating that will help you achieve better outcomes in personal and professional dealings. This interactive seminar will include both theory and case studies and will be geared towards the specific challenges that scientists face in and out of the lab.

November 6, 2012

Session 6: Practical Project Management for Scientists

Students will learn the three cornerstones of project management: "time", "cost" and "objectives", and how to manage those three critical entities using combinations of the 24 core competencies introduced in the first session. Students will learn the importance of tactical planning, communications, negotiation, and control in being an effective project manager. Students will become familiar with the tools and language of project management so that they can more effectively fit into cross-matrixed teams, and in some cases even assume the role of project manager. Examples drawn from familiar scientific experiences will be used to demonstrate the various aspects of effective project management, the benefits of it being used properly, and the consequences when it is not

November 17, 2012

Session 7: First Line Supervision

The new PhD graduate entering the industrial workforce can accelerate their career by demonstrating their ability as an attentive team member AND by demonstrating their capacity to LEAD a small team. Previous academic experience with teams (if any) will be the starting point to launch this set of six (6) additional front line tools to help make team performance more efficient and effective. Successfully working in industry requires flexible and adaptive behaviors that can pull from a variety of proven performance management tools. Based on the participant's previous experiences with teamwork, six (6) new team management tools will be integrated into the natural leadership style of the participant that will enable the participant to both play a more comprehensive team member role as well as take responsibility as a team leader of a small group. These same six (6) tools can be applied to an academic/research environment. In this 6 hour experience, participant behavior will accomplish the following: (1) rank the 6 tools in preference to a participant's natural leadership style and likelihood of deployment, (2) apply each of the 6 tools to a current work opportunity as a team member and/or as a leader, (3) select 3 of these 6 tools which will be the participant's key deployable first line enhancement opportunities: Social Reframing, Continuous Improvement, 4 C's, 360 Calculus, SWAT and Decision Mapping, and (4) provide an experiential example for use on a resume that would demonstrate the ability to enable a small team to improve efficiency and/or effectiveness as a team member and/or as a team leader.

November 27, 2012

Session 8: Finance

The overall objective of this class is to learn the basics of finance from a manager's perspective. By the end, you should be able to understand the difference between the income statement and a balance sheet, recognize how money (capital) is being put to work by your organization and whether it is having a positive impact, and how to forecast your company's financial future. Students will be introduced to such fundamental principals as: Return-on-Investment (ROI), the Time Value of Money, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Depreciation and Amortization.

December 4, 2012

Session 9: Networking

In this final 3-hour session we will demonstrate how to build an effective network by leveraging your professional and social contacts. We will model the use of your network along with the business and social skills learned throughout this course to develop and execute a targeted interview strategy. We'll also review key learning points from each session and how they all tie together to enhance your performance whether in academia, government, research or industry. Each participant will leave this course with new knowledge in developing his or her short and long-term career plans. In this final session we will accomplish the following: (1) identify at least 3 key resources for building your business and social networks (2) practice new communication and personality techniques in phone and onsite interviews, (3) establish a career plan that maps your goals for the next 5–7 years, and (4) work in small teams applying your new skills to solve a REAL problem.