How you can build your leadership skills through BOCEP Deep Learning

Most planners and public affairs professionals are like beige wallpaper -- pleasant and easy to ignore.

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program is designed for people who would rather help make decisions than just give information.  Besides giving you practical skills, how do our Deep Learning courses help you become a more effective leader?

• The "anytime, anyplace" format of the discussion boards challenges you to manage your time more effectively.  Leaders have to have good time management skills.  Leaders are often catalysts and have to commit to missions for the long-term.  If you can't manage your time well, you won't be able to manage projects or lead people.
• The discussion boards encourage you to be a better communicator.  When you are challenged to write down your ideas in concise formats, you can become more organized in your thinking and more strategic about your language.  It's not ideas that make leaders successful -- it's how good leaders are at communicating them.
• The 5.5 weeks of class give you time to think, act and reflect.   One of the key differences between a mere technician and being an effective leader is that technicians do things right, while leaders do the right things.  In a BOCEP Deep Learning course, you learn more than practical skills.  You learn to think more deeply about your work, so you can be more creative and innovative.
• The classes encourage you to be more culturally competent.  Our classes are open to anyone who has a commitment to improving communities.  There are planners, engineers, and non-professionals.  Some have dozens of years of experience; others are fresh out of school.  BOCEP learners live throughout the US.  Effective leaders learn from everyone they can.   Those professionals who think they can learn only from people like themselves sustain enormous blind spots that will keep them from innovating.  If you keep having the same conversations with the same people, you're going to get the same answers.  In a dynamic and diverse world, that's a recipe for obsolescence.
• Anyone seeking a Bloustein Professional Certificate is eligible to receive free monthly leadership development sessions. These group peer learning sessions can help you learn more innovative ways to deal with project, group, organizational or community challenges.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

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The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers Deep Learning classes in community development, cultural planning, economic development, land use law, leadership, professional practice and urban design.  Classes run between September and July.  Learn more or find courses.

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New workshop: Making your pitch pitch-perfect

Making Your Pitch Pitch-Perfect is a skills-building workshop to help you develop "elevator speeches" and effective executive summaries.  This workshop is for anyone who wants to be more persuasive. It is taught by Leonardo Vazquez, Director of the Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute of Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.


The next session will be June 23, from 9 am to 11 am eastern at the Bloustein School, 33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ.  Cost: $10.  Participants are eligible for 2 AICP Certification Maintenance credits.


Learn more or register for this session.

Designed for planners, architects, engineers and any other public affairs professionals, this workshop will help you: *Condense long, complex and complicated information into key statements that can get your audience's attention and interest. *Tailor your "elevator speech" to the four common personality types. *Write compelling executive summaries, which may be the only thing your audiences read. *Learn to read the signals that let you know when to make your pitch - and when to wait for a better time. Participants will be able to practice their pitches and get expert and peer coaching.

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