This core module is integral to your Postgraduate Certificate programme. You begin the module by taking part in activities that help you become more self-aware of your strengths, areas for improvement, and the skills and knowledge needed for your personal and professional growth. This helps you plan a course of study that aligns with your personal and professional development needs. Throughout the programme, you will receive support from a learning mentor.

After designing and negotiating your programme, this module will support you throughout your learning journey until its completion. The main purpose of the module is to help you learn about learning and develop this important lifelong and work-based skill. This will give you the confidence to critically evaluate and challenge ideas, advocate for your own opinions, and communicate complex ideas to different audiences.

This course sets the scene for understanding the context and agenda for organisation development. The topics covered include:

• What is Organisation Development? History, perspectives and definitions
• Theory and practice of Organisation Development
• Organisation Development and its links to business strategy, HR strategy, systems thinking and organisation learning
• Models for understanding your own organisation
• Developing organisation practice
• The role of Organisation Development Practitioner - limits and possibilities

The project syllabus will be largely determined by the focus and nature of your project and will be agreed between you and your mentor-facilitator. You will be guided, supported and encouraged to take a proactive role in designing your own learning. It is likely this learning will be located in the following areas:

• Knowledge creation - identifying potential enquiry approaches suitable for work-based projects that deliver impact
• Developing critical cognitive skills for questioning and challenging existing organisational ideas and practices
• Developing clarity and consistency in communicating with a range of organisational and academic audiences.
• Exploring social and ethical challenges in changing organisational contexts

Effective collaboration and successful teamwork are key features of successful organisations. This course will develop your critical understanding of the features of "high-performing teams" and your skills working as a team leader or member.

You will explore key concepts, models and theories of team roles and dynamics and relate these to your own experience. You will evaluate frameworks for assessing and developing team performance and consider their usefulness and applicability to your own practice.

We will explore with you the answers to some key questions:

• What is the impact of leadership on the performance and development of teams?
• What leadership skills and strategies are effective?
• What is 'collective leadership'?
• What are the specific challenges of working with inter-agency and inter-professional teams?

You will evaluate ideas, relate them to your situation and develop practical strategies you can adopt at work.

Creative thinking is the ability to imagine or invent something new and is a powerful skill in the work context spanning the spectrum of 'brilliant ideas' to 'better ways of doing things'. It can be closely linked to problem-solving. This module will help you develop your abilities and support you to develop a creative, innovative culture in your team.

You will examine concepts and models used to stimulate creative thinking and frameworks for problem-solving and assess their applicability and usefulness to your work. For example, you might look at the work of experts such as Edward de Bono and evaluate ideas such as ‘left and right brain thinking’, ‘six thinking hats’ and a ‘solution focus rather than a problem focus’.

This module will cover:

• Managing people for effective performance through the life cycle of employment
• Managing day-to-day performance
• Dealing with performance issues
• Understanding an individual’s motivation, personality, and behaviours
• Developing appropriate, effective people management responses
• Leading and developing your staff

The module will help you develop an understanding of best practices for managing staff performance and a range of skills to enhance your ability to lead and manage staff routinely. You will increase your understanding of others' behaviours and motivations, explore a range of tactics to engage staff and improve your own ability to manage staff performance.

In this module, you will:

• Develop your knowledge and understanding of a range of strategies through which work-based change may be achieved
• Enhance your ability to select and apply work-based change models to suit your own organisation context
• Explore factors affecting the adoption of change in organisations, including power, ethics, culture and resourcing implications
• Design and plan a change project.