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MAT’s live webinars offer an effective learning opportunity through an instructor led presentation, group discussions, and Q & A. Live webinars allow for the flexibility and accessibility of online learning with the added elements of synchronous learning and interactivity.
 

Webinars are offered at various times throughout the year and are usually announced on a quarterly basis. 
 

All of our offerings are also available upon request to individual agencies with a minimum of 16 participants required. 


Individual students may request a fee waiver by emailing amyers@fishwildlife.org. 

 

Breaking Down Stressful Situations (BSS-101)

2-hour webinar

Many people believe all stress is bad, but a certain level of stress can help us grow. While examining stressful situations at work or in our personal lives we will:

  • Define forms of stress
  • Outline stress in the conscious and unconscious to clarify action
  • Learn the four greatest personal fears and how they affect stress
  • Practice uncovering deep personal judgments that often cause undue stress

Boundary Setting (BOU-101)

2-hour webinar

For many, 2020 showed us the need for creating better boundaries between work and personal lives. Our “always on” culture had blurred the lines and new work from home orders amplified the need to communicate boundaries and expectations, which are what drives behavior. Clear boundaries and expectations improve personal and professional relationships, reduce stress, improve morale and provide a powerful framework to get work done efficiently and effectively. In this webinar, we will:

  • Determine personal values as the key to creating boundaries
  • Discuss ways to develop team operating values and behaviors
  • Identify what prevents us from setting boundaries both personally and professionally
  • Make a commitment to setting at least one new boundary and discuss how to communicate it

Communicating Effectively During Difficult Times (CED-101)

2-hour Webinar

This webinar examines the art of communicating effectively during difficult times through the lens of Emotional Intelligence. Communication is more than just speaking and listening. Even more important than the words we say is how we say them. Unfortunately, when times are stressful or uncertain, our survival instincts can work against us when we are trying to communicate. Also, when there is interpersonal conflict, those same survival instincts can negatively influence the way in which communicate with others. This interactive webinar will define good communication and will use the Emotional Intelligence framework to guide us toward more effective interpersonal communication and more effective communication aimed at a broader audience. Several tips and tools will also be provided along the way.

Conflict Resolution (CFR-101)

2-hour Webinar

Conflict is inevitable and there is a simple process to guide you to shared understanding and compromise. During this webinar, we will use a personal conflict situation to help us:

  • Identify different types of conflict
  • Apply a conflict resolution model to resolve personal or professional conflict
  • Explain a process to get “unstuck” from a stressful situation
  • Illustrate similarities to two other popular conflict resolution models

Cooperative Language (COL-101)

2-hour Webinar

Progress requires cooperation. This webinar will help you identify and use language that inspires cooperation within your teams. We will practice iterative listening and will leverage reactions to statements and/or personal experiences to help us:

  • Use shared meaning to reach shared goals
  • Discuss assertive versus controlling language
  • Learn the importance of ordinal process for everyone to be heard
  • Cite at least three differences between resistant and non-resistant language

Creating a Culture that Truly Engages Employees and Supports Learning (CEL-101)

4-hour webinar

Employee engagement is at the heart of being an effective and productive organization. Still, recent research suggests that 70% of American employees are disengaged at work. Unfortunately, the reasons behind this lack of engagement can be complex and difficult to address. This webinar will present a simple, research-based, and integrative model that provides a three-tiered framework for assessing and building engagement into your culture. The model also sets the foundation for the learning organization - one that focuses on constant improvement and open and honest communication, while also holding people accountable for their actions and the health of the organization. The model integrates work from several thought-leaders and researchers in organizational and personal effectiveness and provides concrete examples of how to improve employee engagement from the "inside out" of your organization.


Objectives:

  • Explore the factors that affect employee engagement
  • Understand the integrative model for evaluating your organization's culture of engagement
  • Utilize the model to determine interventions needed to increase employee engagement
  • Review real-world and research-based examples of how to improve employee engagement from this inside out
  • Share ideas that have worked in your organization with others

Cultural Competency and Humility (COH-101)

2-hour webinar

Cultural competency and humility are required for all aspects of life and work when we care about diversity, inclusion and belonging. Our awareness, knowledge, and skills in understanding different cultures is key to engaging with more diverse audiences. We must understand our own lenses to the world and be clear on where our assumptions about others might affect our approaches to hiring, relevancy, working with constituents and partners, and improving internal work culture, just to name a few. In this webinar, we’ll touch on the differences between cultural competence and cultural humility and what it means for the work in conservation.

Difficult Conversations and Dealing With Difficult People (DCP-101)

4-hour webinar

We all have co-workers, acquaintances, or stakeholders who seem to bring out the worst in us. And most of us find difficult conversations to be stressful and uncomfortable. Interacting with difficult people can often leave us feeling inadequate or, at the very least unsettled. The uncertainty of how difficult conversations will transpire can make us anxious or even fearful. The keys to being successful when dealing with stressful situations are (1) to better understand why we find these situations to be so stressful and (2) to be prepared for success before we engage in difficult conversations. This webinar will explore several strategies that reduce uncertainty while providing a sense control when we are interacting with challenging people or having to provide feedback that might be hard for someone to hear.

Great Presentations with PowerPoint (GPP-101)

2, 2-hour webinars

This 2-part webinar series will help not only provide you with a skill set to create better PowerPoint slides, but also give you knowledge as to how people comprehend. This webinar series offers you the opportunity to improve both your PowerPoint and presentation skills.

Human Nature Connection: Building Ecowellness, Stewardship, and Inclusion (HNC-101)

4, 2-hour webinars

Are you ready to open to people who have relationships with nature different from your own? Join us for a four-part series that will explore and challenge your beliefs about access and nature. We will consider an ecowellness model to examine our own relationship with nature and dig into environmental identity. We will contemplate ways to converse with and embrace the experiences of anyone we meet outdoors while minimizing harm. The end goal is to pursue ways to move people from tourists to explorers and advocates of our land, water, and wildlife.

This series evolved from 2020 workshops called Beyond #ResponsibleRecreation to Human-nature connection and an Ecowellness workshop held at the 2021 North American Wildlife and Natural Resources conference. Anonymous data from these past participants will be sprinkled throughout.

The first session will focus on homework reflection, self-awareness, and self-care regarding nature. We will acknowledge ways our environmental identities develop. The second session will uncover access and dive deeper into aspects of environmental identity. We will be claiming our own environmental identities in session three. We will also finish our discussion of the ecowellness model, including a gaze into transcendence and putting humans in perspective to nature. The final session will include an introduction to a nature relationship spectrum and a fishing program using the ecowellness model. It will conclude with breakouts to consider how to incorporate series concepts into agency relevancy.

What to expect:

  • A pre-homework assignment and completion of a survey with your homework reflection is required for access to the series. We will provide modifications to anyone who cannot get outside.
  • An environmental identity assignment between session 2 and 3.
  • Engagement through a combination of breakouts, polls, and chat.
  • Reflection on the previous workshop at the beginning of each new session.
  • Small mindfulness and presence activities conducted throughout.
  • A compiled list of ideas for agency relevancy discussed during the sessions.


Please note that this series was carefully designed to be effective with all four sessions.

Inclusive Leadership: Creating Brave Spaces (CBV-101)

3, 3-hour webinars

If you ever wondered, how might we have the most critical of conversations and keep moving forward? This is for you. If you ever felt not heard, not seen, and not valued for your story, who you are and not found meaning to collaborations; this is for you. If you are curious about handling difficult people in conversation; this is for you. If you want to invite diversity, inclusion and belonging to your workplace but not have found the means or ways to go all the way, this is for you.

The power of an inclusive space lies in first experiencing one. It also requires building up psychological muscle and learning what is required to create psychological safety. We invite you to join us in this three-part experiential learning lab for co-creating spaces where we all feel brave, including the hosted and the hosts. You will know what it feels like to experience “a holding container” or brave space, learn how to create the container, how to keep it energized, keep the conversation going and move toward actionable outcomes. You will leave with an action plan for an upcoming meeting feeling confident to have that critical conversation in a safe and courageous manner.

Objectives:

  • Create safe to brave spaces for crucial conversations
  • Design an action-based learning plan for your next critical conversation/meeting
  • Navigate emotions and work toward possibilities
  • Strengthen psychological muscle
  • Build collaborative and meaningful conversations with teams (and stakeholders)

Internal Dialogue (IND-101)

Internal dialogue gives us clues to our deepest thinking. Learning to capture and use this dialogue improves emotional intelligence and leads to better conversations. During this webinar, we will learn and practice techniques to uncover our internal dialogue. Using challenging statements and personal experiences we will:

  • Practice iterative listening
  • Capture primal thoughts and feelings
  • Turn personal triggers into useful responses
  • Explain feelings of inferiority common to all humans

Leading with Empathy (LWE-101)

3-hour webinar

Empathy is biologically-based skill that we are all born with and empathy has been shown to be a strong predictor of effective leadership. However, the practice of empathy comes more easily for some of us than others. The under-use (or over-use of empathy) can work against us when we engage in leadership activities.

Would you like to learn about the biological underpinnings of empathy and implicit bias? Would you like to discover ways to be more empathetic and learn short-cuts you can use if empathy doesn’t come naturally to you? Do you feel like you are too empathetic and your feelings get in the way of your leadership endeavors? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this webinar should be well worth your time.

Mindfulness and Compassion in Conservation (MCC-101)

4-hour webinar

Mindfulness plays a role in our understanding of reality. If we are not present, parts of reality will be missing from our understanding. This webinar is grounded in the belief that conservation efforts benefit from a more compassionate approach to the large-scale and quickly changing resource issues of today. We will talk about the need to include staff resourcing and resilience practices as we face the growing challenges in our conservation work. We will also discuss human-nature relationship regarding issues dealing with the health of our people and planet. In this foundational session, we will:

  • Explore the practice of mindfulness, including a nature-based mindfulness practice
  • Complete and discuss a self-compassion assessment
  • Understand how mindfulness and compassion work together
  • Explore the barriers to implementing mindfulness and compassion in the workplace
  • Brainstorm ways to incorporate mindfulness and compassion on teams
  • Consider the balance between planning and presence

Navigating Change and Embracing the New Normal (NEC-101)

2-hour webinar

Over the past couple of years, the world has changed in ways that we could have never imagined. As a result, we have had to change the way we work together, communicate with each other, lead and manage our teams, and interact with our stakeholders. These changes have impacted almost every aspect of our daily lives and many of those changes are here to stay. As we all know by now, change is not easy to make and it has left many of us tired, burned out, and overwhelmed. This webinar will help participants understand why change is so difficult while providing a framework for navigating change in healthy ways. Participants will not only learn about how to approach change in a systematic way, but they will also be able to walk through a personal, real-life example of how to embrace change at work or at home. Finally, we will discuss how to help others in our charge navigate change and embrace the new normal.

Objectives include:

  • Understand our general reluctance to change from both a biological and a psychological point of view
  • Explore individual differences when it comes to embracing change
  • Understand the questions we need to ask to navigate change effectively
  • Define the work we need to do to embrace change
  • Apply these principles to our unique situation
  • Review tools we can use to help others embrace the new normal

Plain, Simple, and Concise Writing (PSC-101)

3, 2-hour webinars

Learn how to write your next Federal Aid report, briefing paper, or just about any other document using 25-30% fewer words, in plain English, and without losing any critical content. This webinar series includes numerous exercises to practice the techniques you learn and time to apply what you learn to one of your own documents. You will finally understand how writing in active voice uses fewer words to say what you want to say more directly and concisely. This webinar series meets three times, with homework assignments after each webinar session.

The Power of Inclusion (POI-101)

4, 2-hour webinars

Required Text: Inclusify by Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson

The Power of Inclusion webinar series was researched and developed by several AFWA National Faculty members to provide participants with a relevant, experiential learning opportunity. The focus is on the individual as the primary tool in increasing diversity and generating greater inclusion in the workplace. As the individual gains greater awareness of their role in the system, each will begin to share insights and develop the means to make change. Individuals will create tools and/or best practices that move the needle on the value of uniqueness and a sense of belonging at work, strengthening agency culture. This experience will offer insights to fully appreciate and understand the benefits of not only diversity, but also the need to be more inclusive. The aim is to follow-up with participants quarterly or semi-annually to assess, measure, and evaluate best practices. The MAT will continue to add to the toolkit of interventions and best practices after each webinar series.

Public Involvement in Conservation (PIC-101)

2-hour Webinar

Have you ever thought about the value of working more closely with the public as you go about your work? Whose resources are we managing?Join us as we explore this idea of involving the public in our work. We’ll examine what it means, why we should consider it and then review some best practices to help us try it out. We will draw on several resources including Bleikers’ Systematic Development of Informed Consent, materials from the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2), and a book by James L. Creighton, “The Public Participation Handbook”. According to Hans Bleiker of the Institute for Participatory Management and Planning, some of our projects will be doomed without public involvement. In today’s world that is a valid and sobering concern. Many state fish and wildlife agencies use public participation techniques in a variety of ways to inform, consult, involve, collaborate and/or empower stakeholders.

Objectives Include:

  • Show why public involvement is mission-critical
  • Identify the elements of fostering relationships and successful conservation projects
  • Explore resources and best practices for public involvement

Self-Care for Conservationists (SCC-101)

2-hour Webinar

Self-care is imperative if conservationists are to be at their best to overcome the environmental and conservation challenges of today. Being your best self means prioritizing your health and wellbeing before caring for others and our land, water and air. Self-care is not selfish, it is necessary. Our self-care practices (or lack of) are influenced by deeply held beliefs, attitudes and upbringing. During this webinar, we will assess our attitudes and current situation in self-care to help us:

  • Examine what self-care and wellbeing are and are not
  • Identify personal beliefs around self-care and wellbeing
  • Determine barriers to successful self-care plans

Social Location and Relevancy (SLR-101)

2, 3-hour webinars

Social location influences our identity, our felt sense of self and our lens to the world. When it comes to relevancy, our social location is important in understanding (or not understanding) the experiences of others with very different identities, values, beliefs and attitudes about nature and outdoor recreation. An individual’s social location is defined by a combination of factors such as gender, race, social class, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic location. Therefore, no two people have the same social location.

This webinar series will allow participants to understand their own social location. We will also examine power positions when it comes to conservation related identities, such as recreation participation, wildlife value orientation, access, organization type, authority and education. We will use what we learned about ourselves and each other to discuss how we meet people, of all backgrounds and experience levels, outside. The objectives of the webinar will be to:

  • Claim our social location and power position in conservation.
  • Discuss what power and position mean for relevancy.
  • Learn about and practice cultural humility.
  • Reflect on social location, power position and belonging in the conservation community.

This is a two-part series that includes a minor pre-requisite homework assignment. Two, 3-hour sessions held one week apart to offer time for reflection.