Explore Our Training Programs

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Crucial Conversations 

Crucial Conversations teaches skills for creating alignment and agreement by fostering open dialogue around high-stakes, emotional, or risky topics—at all levels of the organization. By learning how to speak and be heard (and encouraging others to do the same), you'll surface the best ideas, make the highest-quality decisions, and then act on your decisions with unity and commitment.

Hard Science Soft Skills Series

This innovative lecture series focuses on addressing soft skills, including communication, conflict management, implicit bias, leadership, diversity, and equity and inclusion to facilitate the transition of traditional interpersonal communication and enable our employees’ success. Hard Science Soft Skills speakers have devoted significant work, research, and publications to these topics. This live lecture series provides a unique way for our employees to gain the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in working and engaging with their colleagues and collaborators.

Hollaback! Bystander Intervention

The Hollaback! Bystander Intervention workshop provides our employees with the methods to do their part to protect their neighbors, colleagues, friends, and strangers when witnessing bigotry and harassment. Employees are equipped with the Five D’s of bystander intervention to support someone who is being harassed and demonstrate to others that everyone has the power to make the community safer. This workshop provides our employees with the confidence and knowledge to successfully and safely intervene in instances of public bigotry and harassment, thereby fostering a proactive mindset to our sense of community, and ultimately making the world a more tolerant and pleasant place to exist. 

Leadership Development Program

STScI’s Leadership Development Program provides our managers with the tools they need to effectively lead a diverse and inclusive workforce, as well as grow personally and professionally. The program focuses on developing leadership skills for self-assessment, social awareness, recognizing skill gaps, and self- and relationship management. Topics include unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion, 360 feedback, and mentoring.

Microaggressions & Triggers: Small Behaviors with Big Consequences

In a world where we are constantly learning how to adapt to become more inclusive and embracing of diversity, examining the small behaviors and instances in which we might offend and trigger others is the next step in self-reflective behavior and improvement. This workshop will examine the common microtriggers and microaggressions we're all guilty of making, without realizing the impact it has on those we engage with. These words, actions, and non-verbal cues may seem on the surface innocent enough, but can potentially have a negative impact on the people around us who witness or are victim to these slights.

Safe Zone

STScI partners with Johns Hopkins University to offer Safe Zone Training, which equips our staff with the knowledge and terminology to become better allies with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, especially those within our own organization. The Safe Zone mission is to promote an environment where the LGBTQ community and their allies flourish intellectually, socially, and emotionally, which aligns closely with STScI’s diversity, equity, and inclusion values and initiatives.

Unconscious Bias: Understanding Bias to Unleash Potential

Bias is a natural part of the human condition. It affects how we make decisions, engage with others, and respond to various situations and circumstances. It can also limit potential outcomes. There is nothing more fundamental to performance than how we see and treat each other as human beings. This workshop offers a principle-based, practical approach to identifying and addressing bias in our everyday lives by helping participants build practical skills that help them recognize bias in action and counter its potentially harmful effects.