Course Themes

Table of Contents

To help you navigate our course offerings more effectively, we have organized our courses into five core Professional Themes. These themes are designed to help you quickly identify learning opportunities that align with your specific developmental goals and the competencies required for your role. 

By reviewing the themes listed under each class, you can see exactly how a session contributes to your growth. Whether you are looking to strengthen your interpersonal skills or manage large-scale organizational change, these themes provide a roadmap for your professional journey within the State of Iowa.

Communication and Teamwork

  • Learn skills related to the process of exchanging information and ideas, verbal and non-verbal, between people and groups.
  • Build communication skills, productive working relationships, and a sense of trust.
  • Develop interactions and exchanges between teams in order to individually and collectively achieve organizational goals

Leading People

  • Articulate a vision, ideas, and facts in a clear and organized way.
  • Encourage and facilitate cooperation, pride, trust, and group identity while emphasizing and fostering creativity and innovation.
  • Empower others by delegating clear job expectations, providing meaningful feedback and coaching, managing performance issues, and measuring performance.
  • Monitor workloads and document performance
  • Act as a change agent, initiating and supporting change within the organization by implementing strategies to help others adapt to change and being proactive. 

Managing and Developing Self

  • Demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning, self-awareness, and individual performance planning through feedback, study, and analysis.
  • Meet organizational goals through effective planning, prioritizing, organizing, and aligning human, financial, material, and information resources.
  • Balance work priorities with personal life. 

Public Service and Organizational Integrity

  • Deliver superior services to the public and internal and external recipients, including customer/client identification, expectations, needs.
  • Develop and implement paradigms, processes, and procedures, demonstrating agency and personal commitment to quality service.
  • Increase awareness, build skills, and model behaviors related to identifying potential ethical problems and conflicts of interest, appropriate workplace behavior, and legal and policy compliance. 

Systemic Integration

  • Approach planning, decision-making, and implementation from an enterprise perspective; understand internal and external relationships that impact the organization.
  • Utilize a strategic perspective to effectively analyze complex problems while appreciating the viewpoint of higher management.