LJMU Events and Appointments

Crucial Career Conversations

However, many Managers feel intimidated discussing career aspirations and often this topic is avoided with a greater emphasis placed on the more immediate HR requirements of job tasks and yearly objective setting.

This workshop explores why these conversations are so important, equip you with techniques and approaches to follow when steering career conversations AND provide you with the confidence to support your reports effectively.

Are the meetings you run/attend supportive and productive spaces? Do they encourage thought and contribution? Do they motivate and inspire? We have a LOT of meetings but too often they waste time, inhibit or demotivate attendees and fail to advance objectives.

This session will introduce a methodology for running meetings which is proven to transform them into ‘thinking environments’. In these meetings, everyone contributes, creativity and challenge can flourish, pecking orders are eliminated and those attending are motivated and inspired. The result? Happier, more productive teams and better organisational outcomes.

For most of us, confidence ebbs and flows, sometimes driving us towards our goals, but too often limiting us and getting in the way of what we want. In addition, feeling a lack of confidence can make us unhappy and erode our wellbeing.

This workshop will examine three common and interconnected issues which can undermine confidence: imposter phenomenon; procrastination; perfectionism.

Your research, its impact and the trajectory of your career depends on you securing funding. It is vital that your funding applications stand out for all the right reasons.

This workshop is an opportunity for you to review and maybe rethink your approach to writing applications. What parts of the application do you give more attention to than others? What aspects feel like a struggle and why? Are you getting the balance and tone of your applications right? This session is for you if you want to: write funding applications in a more compelling way; understand how writing for publication and writing for funding differs; learn techniques for writing clearly, concisely and in a funder-friendly way. Together we will explore the ways in which you can make your applications exciting and convincing and how you can elevate your applications from good to great.

Ideal for managers of people and anyone who wants to be part of a motivational and engaging workplace, this workshop will examine what respect means in terms of our daily interactions, attitudes and approaches.

Organisational policies rightly reference the need for respectful workplaces emphasising the value of embracing differences and ensuring people can bring their whole selves to work. Do we give enough consideration to the micro choices/behaviours/approaches employed day to day which can have a profound impact on whether people feel respected. We will reflect on the benefits of (and what stops us): involving people in decision making; sharing information; acknowledging specialist skill sets and insights; making time to listen; giving people the ‘benefit of the doubt’; making good use of other people’s time; interacting with compassion.

So much of our communication is problematic. Often without knowing it, we alienate, intimidate or upset others or simply cause confusion by not expressing ourselves clearly.

This workshop will explore techniques that can be employed immediately and which will help you to communicate in a way which gets the results you seek while enhancing the quality of your relationships. We will learn how to: ask directly for what we need; say ‘no’; tackle ‘difficult’ conversations; make requests that do not alienate people; hear the 'true' message when we listen; avoid getting side-tracked by our emotional responses to criticism and judgement.

This session aims to help you navigate the research funding landscape, and understand how you as a technician can apply directly for funding, or contribute to a wider research proposal. The session will also include hints and tips on how to write a successful research bid.

Mike Hession, Research Grants Manager, will cover:

How technicians can contribute to research funding bids – have you been involved in the past? Can your time be costed into a grant? Can you lead proposals as a Project Lead?

Who are the major funders in the UK, and how can you find funding opportunities via Research Professional database?

Hints and tips on writing credible and engaging research bids.

Career progression guidance often focuses on milestones and job changes, but what about the way we operate every day? Much of our everyday behaviours and assumptions can help us to advance or hold us back.

This workshop will explore how we can be more strategic in our careers by focusing on 12 unhelpful habits that many of us fall into and which we could instead 'flip' and use to propel us towards our goals. We will explore, for example: our belief that our good work will get noticed; our reluctance to shout about our successes; our tendency to 'shrink' or 'minimise' in our speech an actions; how valuable is perfecting our craft?

This session aims to help you navigate the research funding landscape, and understand how you as a technician can apply directly for funding, or contribute to a wider research proposal. The session will also include hints and tips on how to write a successful research bid.

Mike Hession, Research Grants Manager, will cover:

How technicians can contribute to research funding bids – have you been involved in the past? Can your time be costed into a grant? Can you lead proposals as a Project Lead?

Who are the major funders in the UK, and how can you find funding opportunities via Research Professional database?

Hints and tips on writing credible and engaging research bids.