The Academy of Work Science

Providing tools, Knowledge , & support to help organizational leaders and HR specialists develop, manage, and integrate science-driven talent management

Closing the gap between organizational science and talent management practice underpins AWS’s mission. This is most evident in our Talent Management Professionals (TMP) assessment and development track, which provides the tools, knowledge, and support to develop, manage, and fully integrate a science-driven talent management program. Upon completion of this certification, participants will be able to leverage the AWS framework to link all elements of talent management (hiring, onboarding, coaching, training, HiPo identification, leadership development, workforce analysis, and succession), with the goal of strengthening critical psychological skills throughout the organization.

As a first step, HR professionals and organizational leaders become certified in assessment and coaching techniques within the framework of 4 psychological skills that are critical to building careers and performing at high levels within today’s world of work. Participants start by completing the Psychological Skills Profile (PSP), an assessment of 16 psychological facets as they apply to:

• Mental Toughness
• Emotional Intelligence
• Intellectual Curiosity
• Achievement Striving

Customized reporting provides interpretation of scores as well as detailed developmental content tailored to the individual’s assessed strengths and development gaps. Participants are then scheduled to work with one of our consultants for deeper interpretation of results and to formulate a comprehensive development plan.

From there, participants engage in self-directed, online training to become certified in the interpretation and application of the psychometric assessments, as well as in the Cognitive Behavioral coaching techniques that are designed to enhance the 4 psychological skills across the entire organization. Application will focus in such critical talent management areas as hiring, onboarding, identifying training and development needs, HiPo program design, leadership development, climate shaping, and succession planning. In addition to learning to how to quantify human capital and individual potential through the use of psychometric and other diagnostic tools, participants in the TMP track learn to apply people analytics and modeling to quantitatively link talent management outcomes with business results. This is not only useful for guiding talent management goals, but provides the compelling evidence needed to raise the strategic stakes.

The certification process is almost entirely self-directed and can be completed after approximately 30 hours of engagement. The following table describes the courses required and available through his certification process:

Course Descriptions:

Integrating Work Science into Your Organization (Complete all)

TMP 100: The Role of Science in Business Participants explore the many ways in which science and scientific thinking impacts the success of business and organizations, with application emphasizing human capital issues. Participants learn how to use an evidence-based approach to making decisions, how to assess the credibility and applicability of scientific information, how to differentiate between statistical significance and the practical importance of findings, and create a climate in which best practices in scientific inquiry are appropriately and consistently applied.

TMP 101: Making Research Actionable The gap between scientific findings and business application in organizations remains large. As much as a ten-year gap between initial scientific findings and first appropriate application in business organizations is not uncommon. In this course, participants will learn to create significant competitive advantage for their companies by interpreting and leveraging scientific findings as they emerge from the scientific community. Emphasis will be placed on transforming scientific methods into business application, as well as on effectively communicating to all stakeholders their roles in the process and the business relevance of proper execution.

TMP 102: Applying People Analytics I Proper understanding of and confidence in applying people analytic techniques remain significant barriers for many organizations’ use of evidence-based talent management. This course is designed to empower talent management professionals with easy-to-apply quantitative methods to strategically link talent with strategy. Participants learn application of psychometric assessment, application of descriptive data, and basic inferential techniques to support an evidence-based approach to such talent management issues as workforce planning, diagnosing performance issues, and identify developmental needs. No background in statistics is required for this course.

TMP 103: Applying People Analytics II This course is a continuation of TMP 102 and focuses on the collection and use of primary data sources (e.g., collecting your own data via surveys, applied experimentation, and other observational methods). Application will focus on relevant organizational topics such as leadership emergence, employee engagement, turnover intentions/flight risk, and perceptions of climate/culture.

Gaining Buy-In for and Executing an Evidence-Based Approach (Complete all)

TMP 105: Navigating Today’s Work Organization Participants learn how to garner support for ideas and initiatives by leveraging organizations’ formal and informal communication channels and power relationships. Application will focus on gathering and accurately assessing information from various organizational sources, identifying and recruiting key influencers and true decision makers, and techniques of influence when one is not necessarily in a formal position of authority.

TMP 106: Developing and Presenting Compelling Proposals Participants learn how to write effective proposals for evidence-based interventions to appeal to both internal and external clients/stakeholders. This course surveys all elements of a sound formal proposal, as well as additional presentation/selling techniques to help win support for your proposal. Application will focus on interventions such as enhancing employee engagement, shaping climate/culture, and developing future leaders.

TMP 108: Leading Organizational Change Participants learn to effectively create a vision for change and engage others to implement the change process. Application will focus on initiating, proposing, and supporting major change that aligns company mission, vision, strategy, goals, and practices with the realities of a changing and dynamic business environment. Special emphasis is placed on creating environments that value diversity, promotes inclusion, and leverage available talent.

TMP 109: Assessing and Communicating Business Impact and ROI Participants learn how to identify and communicate the strategic link between talent management initiatives and important business outcomes. This is not a statistics course, rather it is focused on helping participants better draw a direct link from strategy to talent, how to interpret basic indices of project success, and how to effectively apply and communicate those indices to relevant business measures.

Becoming Certified in the Psychological Skills Profile (PSP) (Complete all)

PSP 100: Applying the Academy of Work Science Career Success Model Extensive organizational research shows that there are 4 psychological constructs (Mental Toughness, Intellectual Curiosity, Emotional Intelligence, & Achievement Striving) that significantly support work performance and career success. Participants learn how to identify these traits in others, as well as how to begin to leverage these traits to improve the career success and performance of individuals and teams.

PSP 101: Applying Psychometric Tools in the Work Setting The use of cognitive and non-cognitive tests in organizations is ubiquitous, with 70% to 80% of all companies using these in some form. Participants will learn how to effectively utilize these assessments throughout the talent management lifecycle, from hiring to succession. Emphasis in application will focus on accuracy (e.g., reliability & validity), test-takers’ motivation (e.g., social desirability & fakability), test-taker experience (e.g., procedural justice & face validity), and legal implications (e.g., adverse impact & ADA compliance).

PSP 102: Interpreting and Applying the Psychological Skills Profile I The Psychological Skills Profile (PSP) is a psychometric assessment that measures 4 broad psychological constructs (Mental Toughness, Intellectual Curiosity, Emotional Intelligence, & Achievement Striving) that have been found to support career success across a wide range of performance domains. Participants learn how to interpret the 16 facets that underpin these psychological skills, and how to provide constructive feedback, as well as career and performance coaching, based on interpretation of various combinations of facet scores.

PSP 103: Interpreting and Applying the Psychological Skills Profile II This course is a continuation of AWS 101 and focuses on application of PSP results and associated deep developmental content to a wide variety of career and performance contexts. Participants also learn how to apply the assessment results and associated tools at the team and organizational level, focusing on talent management programs such as hiring, on-boarding, team leadership, HiPo identification, leadership development, and succession.

Applying AWS Coaching Techniques (Must complete all)

COA 200: Cognitive Behavioral Techniques Applied to Coaching I The Cognitive Behavioral approach is a set of scientifically developed techniques used to improve individuals’ motivation, behavior, performance, outcomes and well-being. At the core, Cognitive Behavioral Techniques (CBT) challenge individuals to interrogate their own patterns of thought, how they perceive the social environment, how they come to fix their beliefs, and how they come to make decisions. While CBTs are employed in a wide range of development context, this course will focus exclusively on those techniques most consistent with needs of coaches in the professional business environment.

COA 201: Cognitive Behavioral Techniques Applied to Coaching II This course is a continuation of CBT for Coaching I and guides participants through the application of specialized techniques that are customized for the coaching setting. The techniques learned in CBT I will be applied more specifically to development with the context of Mental Toughness, Emotional Intelligence, Intellectual Curiosity, and Achievement Striving.

COA 202: Managing Perceptions at Work Participants learn how individuals perception and interpretation of the work environment trigger either the behavioral activating system or the behavioral inhibition system of the brain. Participants learn related techniques designed to enhance employee well-being, intrinsic motivation, employee retention, and engagement.

COA 203: Organizational Behavior Management Participants are introduced to the techniques of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), which is driven by the identification and modification of the environmental variables that affect employee behavior and performance. With emphasis on observable causes of employee behavior and measurable outcomes, OBM approaches are more amenable to ROI verification.

Coaching for Mental Toughness (Select 1)

MT 101: Driving Through Obstacles and Challenges Incorporating findings across diverse performance contexts such as professional sports, sales, entrepreneurship, and the military; participants learn what it takes to persevere in overcoming difficult challenges, setbacks, and obstacles to achieve critical objectives. Participants develop and learn how to leverage psychological strengths as they apply to self-regulation, self-efficacy, and locus of control to eliminate fear of failure, avoid distraction, and reverse a “fixed mindset.”

MT 102: Building Resilience Participants learn the psychological skills required to adapt positively to significant adversity, threats, setbacks, rejection, and other sources of stress. Participants will learn and apply techniques based on the most recent advances in the science of resilience, with strong focus on factors that are amenable to targeted development.

MT 103/EI 103: Regulating Emotions This course provides insight into the science and function of emotions, with emphasis on identifying triggers, recognizing patterns of thinking, and effectively managing emotionality toward better decisions and positive performance outcomes. Participants learn to apply techniques in the three components of emotional regulation: 1) initiating actions, 2) inhibiting actions, and 3) modulating responses triggered by emotions, with basic cognitive behavioral techniques (CBT) such as cognitive reappraisal, mindful awareness, and ABC functional analysis.

MT 104: Strengthening Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy is one’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance levels and goal attainment. Participants learn how to identify and manage cognitive self-evaluations that influence a sense of control over one’s motivation, behavior, and social environment. Application will focus on developing self-efficacy as the basis for enhancing resilience, self-regulation, curiosity, initiative taking and communicating persuasively.

Coaching for Emotional Intelligence (Select 1)

EI 101: Becoming More Empathic and Open-Minded Participants learn to apply the techniques of active listening and fostering two-way communication. Techniques applied in specific business contexts include perception check, interpretive listening, paraphrasing, and questioning.

EI 102: Managing Others’ Emotions Participants learn to recognize and predict the response patterns of others in various contexts, with emphasis on stressful, emotional, and challenging situations. Leveraging basic behavioral cognitive techniques, participants will leave this course better able to diffuse highly charged situations, respond optimally when others react emotionally, and help others re-channel emotions in constructive ways.

EI 103/MT 103: Regulating Emotions This course provides insight into the science and function of emotions, with emphasis on identifying triggers, recognizing patterns of thinking, and effectively managing emotionality toward better decisions and positive performance outcomes. Participants learn to apply techniques in the three components of emotional regulation: 1) initiating actions, 2) inhibiting actions, and 3) modulating responses triggered by emotions, with basic cognitive behavioral techniques (CBT) such as cognitive reappraisal, mindful awareness, and ABC functional analysis.

EI 104: Influencing and Persuading The ability to win respect, influence people and cultivate cooperation is absolutely essential to career success. Participants learn to apply psychological techniques to persuade, convince, or impress others in order to get them to support a specific agenda or to take a specific course of action. Participants learn to apply techniques for both rational (central) and emotional (peripheral) appeals. Application will focus on communicating ideas, presenting proposals in a compelling way, and motivating others to take action.

Coaching for Intellectual Curiosity (Select 1)

IC 100: How We Come to Believe The process by which people fix their belief about events and the world around them is a complex coming together of cognitive, emotional, motivational, and situational factors that frame the way we perceive and think. In turn, these beliefs serve as the filter through which we continue to adjust and reinforce the interpretations we make about our environment. Participants learn how work and other performance contexts interact with personal attributes to give rise to the beliefs, perspectives, values, and personal philosophies that significantly impact just about all work and career outcomes.

IC 101: Critical Thinking for Business Participants learn effective techniques in assessing business-related threats and opportunities, developing rational arguments, and garnering organizational support for recommended courses of action.

IC 102: Eliciting Ideas and Opinions from Others

IC 103: Enhancing Creativity Through Paradox Mindset In this course, participants learn to leverage apparent contradictions in order to break down assumptions, spot hidden connections between diverse ideas, and discover new ways to look at business problems and opportunities. Participants learn to use contradictions and to re-frame everyday work paradoxes such as dual performance requirements (e.g., minimizing costs while maximizing innovation) and resource scarcity (i.e., having to perform at high levels under limited time or financial resources) to fuel creative and divergent thinking.

Coaching for Achievement Striving

AS 101: Why Do We Work?: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation Participants will learn how to leverage intrinsic motivators to encourage behavior change. this course explains the science behind internal motivation and shows how to apply these techniques to everyday motivation challenges. Application will focus on the rapidly changing jobs and performance needs, with emphasis on greater complexity, need for specialization, and related need for high level collaboration.

AS 102: Personal Work Values and Ethics Recent research has uncovered 5 intuitive systems that form the basis for how we develop our moral ethical beliefs. These intuitive systems form the basis for a number of ways in which employees perceive and interact with the organization and work environment. Participants learn techniques to identify these intuitive systems in employees, as well as coaching strategies to help those employees become more self-aware. Application focuses on how these systems relate to effective leadership communication, employee engagement, performance and organizational citizenship behaviors.

AS 103: Setting Performance and Career Goals

AS 104: Creating Healthy Competition

AS 105: Achieving Flow Flow describes a motivational state in which one is so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it (Cziksentmihalyi, 2008). Leveraging the psychological nature of this active experience, participants learn techniques that support greater awareness and perceived control over one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.