Classes and Workshops

Note: All listings on this page reflect Pacific Time. Unless noted otherwise, classes are held virtually via Zoom.

Class Spotlight

Influence Without Authority (Multiple Sessions Available): In this workshop, you’ll learn leadership skills needed to become influential contributors: building trusting workplace relationships, managing up, carving out a niche area of expertise, and connecting the dots from your role to the organizational mission

Self-Care in the Workplace | Friday, November 1: In this course, you will learn the different components of self care, identify key attributes of each component, highlight self care specific for leaders, and create a plan for better self care.

STEP Deadlines & Resources

STEP learning resources | Watch the short STEP overview video

Reminders for the 2024/2025 Performance Year (April 1, 2024, through March 31, 2025)
– Define Criteria: Complete by May 31, 2024
– Check In #1 : Complete by August 31, 2024
– Check In #2 : Complete by December 6, 2024

Questions? Contact step@ucop.edu
Having Technical Issues with STEP? Review this FAQ

Upcoming Classes and Workshops

Featured

Influence Without Authority: Leadership as an Individual Contributor

Online : Thursday, October 24, 10:00 - 11:30am

How can ICs take ownership of their career growth, leverage their knowledge and skills, and make an impact without climbing the ladder? In this workshop we’ll dive into the leadership skills all “rockstars” need to become influential contributors: building trusting workplace relationships, managing up, carving out a niche area of expertise, and connecting the dots from your role to the organizational mission.

Attendees will:

Gain insight into their unique position of influence within the organization.
Explore the leadership skills of relationship building, managing up, honing expertise, and aligning work to the organizational mission.
Identify one skill they want to strategically focus on for the next month.

Additional session available on Thursday, November 7 from 1-2:30pm.

UCOP Learning and Development Cohort Opportunities Overview

Online : Friday, October 25, 11:00 - 11:45am

Whether you’re an individual contributor early in your career or a seasoned manager with years of experience, it’s always the right time to continue developing your professional skills. Join us at this info session to learn more about the various learning and development cohorts that will be offered in 2025. In the first 30 minutes, we will review each of the programs, their purpose, and intended audience and close out with 15mins Q&A. Participants will leave having identified the opportunity that best meets their professional goals.

Additional Sessions:

Thursday, October 31 | 9 – 9:45am
Wednesday, November 13 | 2-2:45pm

Smartsheet Fundamentals

Online : Tuesday, October 29, 9:00am - 12:00pm

Smartsheet Fundamentals is for users who wish to gain a foundational understanding of the Smartsheet collaborative environment and learn how it can be used to track processes and projects and to create reports and dashboards for different audiences.

Class curriculum includes:

Create a Project
Create a Grid
Create a Report
Create customized dashboards generated from projects, grids, and reports
Do easy math to discover data insights and share those insights
And more!

GROWing your Check In Conversations for Managers

Online : Tuesday, October 29, 10:00am - 12:00pm

GROW is a popular coaching framework used around the world for problem solving, goal setting and performance improvement. This interactive session provides managers the opportunity to discuss and practice using the GROW framework as a strategy and tool to support engaging STEP checkpoint conversations. GROW is a simple meeting structure that supports a growth and development stance in employee-manager coaching and feedback conversations.

Additional Session:

Wednesday, December 4 | 10am-12pm PT

Self Care in the Workplace

Online : Friday, November 1, 10:00am - 12:00pm

Successful employees have an array of unique skills, talents, personalities, and passions. One thing many of them have in common is self care. In the last few years, the term self care has become common, with little attention on its importance not just for self, but also for healthy teams. Adapting the necessary tools of self care improves emotional, cognitive, and spiritual capacity, while offering the opportunity for connection and thoughtful partnership. Creating the spaces and opportunities to care for yourselves opens the possibility of sustainability, longevity, and healthy personal and team dynamics. In this course we will identify the different components of self care, identify key attributes of each component, highlight self care specific for leaders, and create a plan for better self care.

STEP: Define Criteria

Online : Tuesday, November 5, 10:00 - 11:00am

In this instructor-led training on the Staff Talent Evaluation Process (STEP), we will expand on the materials presented in the STEP Fundamentals for Employees eCourse by going into detail on the first stage of STEP, called Define Criteria. You will practice writing goals and review strategies for choosing focus competencies.

UCOP Safety: Active Attacker Trainining

Online : Tuesday, November 5, 2:00-3:00pm

Melissa Collins, Program Manager for Security, Risk and Resilience, will facilitate this live virtual class in which participants will learn skills and strategies to respond if exposed to active attacker situations. The course will review real-life incidents and discuss options in the event of potential similar encounters. Melissa joined UCOP after serving 20 years with the UC San Diego Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant, and is a safety expert.

Additional Sessions:

December 5: 2-3pm

Excel Power BI

Online : Wednesday, November 6, 9:00am - 12:00pm

In this 3-session course, users will learn about and practice using Power BI. Users will learn how to: Connect to data sources. Perform data cleaning, profiling, and shaping. Visualize data with Power BI. Create interactive visualizations. Enhance reports and dashboards. Publish and share reports and dashboards.

*Participants must attend all 3 sessions from 9am-12pm on Thursday, November 6,13, and 20 to receive credit for the course.

GROW Plus: Accountability Conversations for Managers

Online: Wednesday, November 6, 9:30am - 12:00pm

GROW Plus: Accountability Conversations for Managers is the second part in the required live training series on manager and employee performance conversations. This training answers the question: What do I do when my coaching is not improving performance? In this virtual, live, and highly interactive workshop, we will cover: providing productive critical feedback, managing emotions, creating efficient documentation, and holding effective accountability conversations. Managers will also practice having role Accountability Conversations using the UCOP GROW Plus framework. This training is part of the STEP training plan developed by the STEP workgroup made up of people from all divisions. The previous STEP trainings are all prerequisites to this training.

Additional sessions from 9:30am-12pm Pt:

Tuesday, November 19

PowerPoint Techniques

Online : Tuesday, November 12, 10:00 - 11:30am

In this session, you will learn powerful techniques that can help save significant time, better manipulate and format presentations, convey information in a compelling way, and collaborate with others more effectively.

Psychological Safety

Online : Thursday, November 14, 1:00 - 3:00pm

Research shows that a culture of psychological safety is the #1 determinant of team success, beating out average team tenure and IQ. But what is psychological safety, and what power do we have to influence the working conditions of our teams? Join us in this workshop designed for managers as we:

Define the benefits of building a culture of psychological safety on your team.
Explore the 4 Stages of Psychological Safety and the behaviors associated with each.
Assess your current team culture and behaviors that contribute to or reduce psychological safety.
Engage with the BICEPS framework for keeping a pulse on psychological safety on an individual level.

People Leader Forum - Tips and Tricks to Make STEP Work for You

Online: Friday, November 15, 1:00-2:00pm

The People Leader Forum is a monthly opportunity for people managers to connect with one another to develop leadership skills, build community, share best practices, swap strategies for navigating current challenges and learn to better support themselves and their teams.

2024 PLF Topics:

December 20: Team Reflection Activities

Box Fundamentals

Online : Wednesday, November 20, 11:00am - 12:00pm

This course will give you an overview of Box, the cloud-based service that provides secure file storage and file sharing.

How to use Box
How to collaborate with UCOP and non-UCOP people
Commenting directly on files, folder permissions, shared links, and many other tips that will help you when using Box.

Administrators from IT will be on hand to answer your questions and review the best features of Box. More info on Box can always be accessed in this webpage.

Change Essentials

Online : Friday, November 22, 10:00am - 12:00pm

Change Essentials is based on the best-selling book, Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, by Dr. John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber.

Dr. Kotter’s research revealed eight key steps and four critical leadership principles that, when applied effectively, help to ensure successful change. This three-part workshop will provide you with a foundational level of knowledge and skill to help you identify strategies to apply those steps and principles to a current or anticipated change within a department, or as part of a broader organizational change initiative.

Attendance is required for all three sessions on Nov 22 (10am-12pm), Dec 3 (1-3pm) and Dec 5 (1-3pm).

Subtle Acts of Exclusion

Online : Tuesday, December 3, 9:00am - 12:00pm

The term “microaggression” has become widely used, yet just as widely misunderstood. Join us as we reframe microaggressions as Subtle Acts of Exclusion (SAE). Explore the SAE framework and participate in group dialogue on how to normalize interrupting these acts and engage colleagues in discussion. In this session, participants will: Reflect on socialization and its impact on our outlook, attitudes, and behaviors Understand the shift in language from Microaggressions to Subtle Acts of Exclusion Explore the Subtle Acts of Exclusion Framework Participate in group dialogue on best practices to interrupt SAEs

UCOP Safety: Basic Awareness

Online : Tuesday, December 3, 11:00am - 12:00pm

Melissa Collins, Program Manager for Security, Risk and Resilience, will facilitate this live virtual class that will provide basic safety tips to help employees feel informed, alert, and safe as they travel to and from the workplace. Extra time will be allotted for questions and feedback. Melissa joined UCOP after serving 20 years with the UC San Diego Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant, and is a safety expert.

Accessible PDFs

Online: Wednesday, December 4, 1:00-2:30pm

This course focuses on Adobe Acrobat and advanced PDF accessibility remediation techniques. You will learn how to edit or enhance accessibility within a PDF file and check PDFs with a screen reader.

Excel Macro/VBA

Online : Thursday, December 5, 9:00am - 12:00pm

In this two-part series, you will learn how Macros and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) help users customize and automate repetitive tasks in Excel. Macros can automate those tasks to be repeated when needed. Where macros are limited, VBA coding can expand a user’s ability to perform those necessary tasks.

Participants must attend both sessions from 9am-12pm on Thursday, December 5 and 12.

Career Development Tools

Online : Tuesday, December 17, 11:00am - 12:00pm

UCOP has free career development tools available at your fingertips. Come learn how to use My UC Career, LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning to support you with career planning.

Additional Classes

UCSB Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification Training

Online: , Register for UCSB Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification Training on

This certificate course will be facilitated UCSB Lean Six Sigma instructors at no cost to participants. Each cohort will consist of 3- four hour sessions with hands on practice, project simulations, and intersession homework. Attendance at all 3 sessions is mandatory for course completion. At the end of the cohort, Participants will receive a Yellow Belt certificate of completion.

To register login to the UC Learning Center and type UCSB Lean Six Sigma into the search bar at the top right of your screen.

Using the UC Learning Center

Registration: Log in to the UC Learning Center using your UCOP login and password. In the Search box on the left, enter the name of the class you want. Select the session you want, then select the Register box and Submit.

Cancellation: You can cancel your registration through the UC Learning Center. We ask that you cancel 48 hours before the scheduled class time so that others may sign up, or contact the Learning & Development Team.

If you require any assistance or accommodation with finding, registering or attending a class please email the Learning & Development Team.