Programs for Individuals
Join us for a one-day seminar, a four-day certificate program, or create your own training experience.
Whatever path you choose, HDO Professional Training gives you the knowledge, the skills, and the network to create your competitive advantage.
Upcoming Seminars
Understanding & Managing Motivations
February 28, 2023
Maximizing Mental Agility
March 1, 2023
Risky Business: Human Error & Organizational Resiliency
March 2, 2023
Upcoming Certificate Programs
Strategic Leadership Certificate Program
February 28-March 3, 2023
Organizational Improvement Certificate Program
March 21-24, 2023
Change Management Certificate Program
April 4-7, 2023
One-Day Professional Seminars
HDO seminars combine cutting-edge research with real-world application to provide practical and immediately relevant tools for solving key organizational problems.
Businesses and nonprofits often bring outside specialists on board to improve their organization’s overall efficiency, creativity, and productivity. Participants in our seminars learn to function as “internal consultants,” equipped with new skills and insights to enhance their existing expertise and institutional knowledge.
By exploring specific human, cultural, and communicatory aspects of organizations alongside professionals from a diverse range of industries, participants leave HDO seminars more effective, well-rounded employees.
Four-Day Certificate Programs
Built on strong academic fundamentals and real-world relevance, HDO Certificate Programs are designed to enhance the portfolios of mid-and upper-level professionals.
Over the course of four days, you will gain immediately applicable tools and skills to accelerate your career, whether your goal is advancing in your current organization, deepening your capacities to excel in your existing role, or developing additional skills for a transition to a new position.
During your four-day experience, you will learn alongside and network with experienced professionals from a diverse range of industries. If you cannot commit to four consecutive days, you can also create your own program over the course of a semester.
If you are interested in obtaining employer support for your HDO Professional Training experience, please visit our Employer Support Resources page.
Dr. Richmond-Garza was highly engaging and able to transmit an incredible amount of material to us in only a day’s time. The organization of the material and use of theater techniques was very interesting and useful. This seminar will enable me to pursue a more cognizant and consistent approach to understanding motivation.
I’ve been in Executive Management for over 20 years. The courses I took in the HDO program helped me to gain a fresh perspective on management; specifically, on how people work. I highly recommend taking a seminar or obtaining a certification in this program.
Caryn Carlson, a Professor of Psychology at UT Austin, has been teaching in our Professional Training programs since HDO was created in 2011.
In this video, Dr. Carlson highlights how training participants will benefit from incorporating an understanding of human psychology into their professional toolkit.
Spring 2023 Certificate Programs
Certificate in Human Dimensions of Organizations (Create Your Own Program)
Select any four courses that align with your schedule and your professional development needs. Upon completion of your fourth course, you will receive a Certificate in Human Dimensions of Organizations.
Strategic Leadership
Date: February 28-March 3, 2023 / In Person at UT Austin
Registration Fee: $2,300-$3,000
Registration fee includes books and course materials, catering (breakfast, lunch, and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.
The Strategic Leadership Certificate Program from Human Dimensions of Organizations at UT Austin prepares participants to enhance individual and organizational productivity and efficiency.
As a participant in this program, you will gain tools to:
- Align individual employees’ motivations with team-wide and organizational goals
- Reduce instances of and mitigate the impacts of human error
- Adopt strategies rooted in cognitive science to increase individual and group effectiveness and creativity
- Understand how cultural awareness contributes to ethical leadership and sound decision-making in organizations
Courses Included in This Program:
Understanding & Managing Motivations: Uncovering Potentials
February 28, 2023
Participants in this course will use human expressive works (drama, painting, and film) to ask the questions: “What is the nature of an ethical challenge?” “How can people reason ethically?” and “How is ethical leadership different from any other kind?”
Drawing upon specific examples, participants will examine their own emotional and personal responses as they face difficult decisions. Through a systematic approach to assessing competing motivations in context, participants will also develop workable definitions of ethical leadership. The course will focus on intersectionality, empathy, and vulnerability.
Maximizing Mental Agility
March 1, 2023
Maximizing Mental Agility is a one-day course developed by Psychology Professor and HDO’s Founding Director Dr. Art Markman. The course focuses on six areas of thinking that provide easy-to-learn strategies rooted in cognitive science that will help people to be more productive, efficient, creative, motivated, and satisfied in their working lives, and beyond.
Risky Business: Human Error & Organizational Resiliency
March 2, 2023
This course provides you with core scientific principles from psychology and engineering to help you better understand what human error is, and ways of building barriers to keep errors from turning into major events.
This seminar is helpful for people across sectors and at all organizational levels. The tools provided will empower participants to reduce error, both in their organizations and their personal lives.
Ethics, Culture, and Leadership
March 3, 2023
This course focuses on how awareness of culture can contribute to ethical leadership and good decision-making in organizations. Participants will use case studies to think about ethical issues in organizations related to topics such as compliance, technology use, health and illness, and sustainability.
These topics are considered from a global perspective emphasizing how cultural values inform ethical decision-making and how different ethical and cultural systems address and define moral issues that arise in organizations.
Organizational Improvement
Date: March 21-24, 2023 / In Person at UT Austin
Registration Fee: $2,300-$3,000
Registration fee includes books and course materials, catering (breakfast, lunch, and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.
The Organizational Improvement Certificate Program from Human Dimensions of Organizations at UT Austin prepares participants to build and lead high-functioning organizations.
As a participant in this program, you will gain tools to:
- Understand how neurology drives our emotions and how our emotions impact our ability to lead and follow others
- Develop productive time management, prioritization, and project management techniques
- Optimize individual and team performance through principles rooted in psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science
- Design and implement communications to empower others
Courses Included in This Program:
Emotional Intelligence for Leaders
March 21, 2023
Understanding how our neurology drives our emotions, and how our emotions impact our ability to lead and follow others, is paramount to developing a leadership style that truly motivates others to excel.
In this information-packed and interactive seminar, Consultant Jim Pacey and Psychologist Kirsten Bradbury guide participants in developing the skills and knowledge they need to increase their use of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in workplace leadership.
Integrating perspectives from biomedicine, positive psychology, clinical science, business, and leadership studies, this seminar focuses on four key subcomponents of EQ and their application to successful leadership.
Flourishing in the Workplace
March 22, 2023
This course presents practical strategies for optimizing personal and employee performance via identifying and utilizing character strengths, increasing positive emotion and flow, and creatively conceptualizing issues and solving problems.
Participants identify personally relevant areas for improvement or growth and work individually and in small groups to apply practical strategies presented in the course to enhance satisfaction and success both professionally and personally.
Achieving Balance: Time Management for Modern Professionals
March 23, 2023
Due to changes in work and technology, people’s personal and professional lives are more connected than ever before—and more fragmented, busier, and more crammed with tasks and obligations. Faced with this seemingly endless cycle, people declare “email bankruptcy,” triage tasks, react instead of planning, and sometimes lose their work-life balance entirely. How can we regain that balance? How can we achieve confidence, clarity, and the ability to plan?
In this one-day seminar, Dr. Clay Spinuzzi uses a mix of research, theory, and experience to discuss the challenges we face in planning our time and projects.
Communicating for Impact
March 24, 2023
Whether an individual communication is complex or not, it needs to be crafted thoughtfully by engaging your audience in relevant and meaningful ways. If you don’t take the time to do so, your communication will still have an impact, but not necessarily the one you intend.
The multitude of opportunities to communicate each day all roll up to a master narrative of who you are, your credibility, and your integrity. By applying the right amount of thought and preparation to each communication, you can control that narrative.
Change Management
Date: April 4-7, 2023 / In Person at UT Austin
Registration Fee: $2,300-$3,000
Registration fee includes books and course materials, catering (breakfast, lunch, and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.
The Change Management Certificate Program from Human Dimensions of Organizations at UT Austin prepares participants to lead individuals and groups through periods of uncertainty, growth, mission shift, or reorganization.
As a participant in this program, you will gain tools to:
- Deploy the concepts, strategies, and scripts of successful negotiation
- Apply concepts and practices from Japanese Buddhism as a way of responding to and thinking about the causes of stress and anxiety
- Develop behaviors and strategies to build resilient teams and organizations
- Understand why people resist change, how to plan out the steps for introducing changes, and how to design communications promoting change directed at different audiences and phases of the change process
Courses Included in This Program:
The Art & Science of Negotiation
April 4, 2023
This seminar explores the central concepts, strategies, and scripts of successful negotiation. Negotiation, understood broadly, is an element of nearly every relationship and enterprise. Our premise is that successful negotiators employ interpersonal skills characterized by an artful deployment of both empathy and cunning — that is, heart and mind.
The course integrates theory and findings from the science of negotiation with a concrete set of operational tools. Examples are drawn from the instructors’ study and participation in a varied set of organizations and businesses.
Just Stop: Zen, Stress, Anxiety, and Uncertainty
April 5, 2023
This course draws on the field of cultural anthropology as well as insights from Japanese Zen to think about how to deal with and embrace the problem of uncertainty in our lives and work.
We will use practical examples from both Zen and anthropology to explore how the desire to obtain certainty in life has a way of generating stress and anxiety. Participants will explore concepts and practices from Japanese Buddhism as a way of responding to and thinking about the causes of stress and anxiety. We will also look at similar North American ideas, which can be found in writings such as the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the ideas of Robert Pirsig.
The Heart of Leadership: Moving Forward Through Change
April 6, 2023
This seminar draws on the disciplines of psychology and ethics to examine the various behaviors and strategies that enable leaders to build resilient teams and organizations. Participants will emerge with confidence that they know how to lead others through change successfully.
Addressing Change-o-Phobia: Leading Change Up and Down the Org Chart
April 7, 2023
Leading changes to an organization’s operations, policies, and/or culture requires a keen understanding of emotions, organizations, and persuasive strategies. Drawing on rhetorical theory and organizational psychology, this workshop will help you understand why people resist change, how to plan out the steps for introducing changes, and how to design communications promoting change directed at different audiences and phases of the change process. This class involves case studies and ample time for discussion of participant issues.
Communication & Leadership
Date: April 18-21, 2023 / In Person at UT Austin
Registration Fee: $2,300-$3,000
Registration fee includes books and course materials, catering (breakfast, lunch, and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.
The Communication & Leadership Certificate Program from Human Dimensions of Organizations at UT Austin prepares participants to be strong communicators as leaders or aspiring leaders.
As a participant in this program, you will gain tools to:
- Use scientific principles from psychology to unlock individual and team creativity
- Develop meaningful and persuasive brand or organizational narratives
- Articulate how your ideas solve stakeholders’ problems and how these solutions can be made sustainable
- Leverage historical thinking to skillfully foresee and strategically respond to challenges
Courses Included in This Program:
Behavior Change & Influence
April 18, 2023
Behavior Change and Influence is led by Psychology Professor and HDO’s Founding Director Dr. Art Markman. Drawing on research that was the basis for his book, Smart Change (each participant receives a copy), Dr. Markman provides insights from cognitive science to help you achieve your goals in fostering behavioral change and exerting greater influence.
This course provides you with core scientific principles from psychology to help you understand your personality and motivation. These principles are also essential for successful idea generation and unlocking individual and team creativity.
Perspectives on Branding: Ethics, Ambiguity, Persuasion
April 19, 2023
This seminar draws on the resources of literature and literary theory to explore the ways audiences experience brands and branded material, and the ways that reception can diverge from the expectations of organizations and business owners.
Branding involves compact forms of storytelling, which convey to the audience the ethics, values, and backstory of a particular business or product. Between concept and execution, however, there is a layer of ambiguity that brands can rarely control but can be productively aware of and manage.
In this seminar, we will use the resources of literature, literary theory, and ethics to provide insights into the multiple layers of meaning produced in acts of persuasion, develop greater sensitivity to ambiguity as a communicative byproduct, and develop a framework for telling the story of your brand ethically and inclusively.
A Good Idea is Not Enough: Persuading Like an Entrepreneur
April 20, 2023
In this one-day seminar, Dr. Clay Spinuzzi uses examples from his research on startups and his expertise in rhetoric and communication to illustrate how persuasion works and to discuss principles that can make us more persuasive — in our ventures, our organizations, and our lives.
Organizational Leadership & Strategy in Uncertain Times
April 21, 2023
When facing a critical situation, leaders are pressured to act quickly, often without sufficient time to fully identify and understand the context and background issues influencing the situation. Leaders who embrace history may use it in the wrong way, but those who embrace historical thinking are better prepared to foresee and strategically respond to challenges.
In this seminar, you will learn “Leadership Thinking,” an immersive, experiential process of redefining your role as a leader generally, and your approach to decision-making in particular.
Upcoming One-Day Seminars
Spring 2023
Understanding & Managing Motivations: Uncovering Potentials (2/28) / In Person
Maximizing Mental Agility (3/1) / In Person
Risky Business: Human Error & Organizational Resiliency (3/2) / In Person
Ethics, Culture, & Leadership (3/3) / In Person
Emotional Intelligence for Leaders (3/21) / In Person
Flourishing in the Workplace (3/22) / In Person
Achieving Balance: Time Management for Modern Professionals (3/23) / In Person
Communicating for Impact (3/24) / In Person
The Art & Science of Negotiation (4/4) / In Person
Just Stop: Zen, Stress, Anxiety, and Uncertainty (4/5) / In Person
The Heart of Leadership: Moving Forward Through Change (4/6) / In Person
Addressing Change-o-Phobia: Leading Change Up and Down the Org Chart (4/7) / In Person
Behavior Change & Influence (4/18) / In Person
Perspectives on Branding: Ethics, Ambiguity, Persuasion (4/19) / In Person
A Good Idea is Not Enough: Persuading Like an Entrepreneur (4/20) / In Person
Organizational Leadership & Strategy in Uncertain Times (4/21) / In Person
Not sure what program is right for you or your team?
Contact us via the chat box in the bottom right of your screen or fill out this brief contact form and we’ll get in touch with you!
