The Bridge
Join The Bridge
Connect your individual growth to organizational success.
The Bridge is a series of interactive professional development workshops that will prepare you to resolve conflicts, manage change, build trust, establish boundaries, give feedback, discover your strengths, and so much more. Workshops are led by expert facilitators who bring a wealth of experience and are passionate about seeing you succeed.
Tailor your experience by signing up for only the classes you need - or take advantage of bundle offers available for a more comprehensive experience.
Bridge the gap between your personal growth and professional goals. There's no better time than now!
When: The Bridge launches August 5, 2025, with sessions being offered twice a month from August 2025 through May 2026. The upcoming 2026-'27 season goes from September 2026 to June 2027.
Where: All workshops are in-person and will meet in Cedar Rapids. Please view each session's registration page below for details.
Who: This series is perfect for driven professionals at any level, including individual contributors, informal leaders, future leaders, and current leaders.
How Much: Pricing is $169 per session if signing up as an individual. If you attend four classes, you'll receive a voucher to attend an additional class for free. *Corporate Training bundles are available in groups to suit team training needs.
How to Register: If registering as an individual, use the links found in the "Training Sessions" section below or call 319-398-1022 to sign up. For bringing your whole team, contact Kirkwood Corporate Training at 319-398-5623 or email corporatetraining@kirkwood.edu.
2025-2026 Sessions | Registration Links
Accountability is the foundation of high-performing, growth-focused teams. This workshop will let you explore practical strategies to address performance issues, deliver impactful feedback, and inspire personal ownership. Learn how to create a culture where accountability is not feared but valued. Together, we'll discover how being accountable together can elevate trust, clarity, and results across any team.
You don't need a corner office to be a leader. This engaging session provides actionable tools and techniques for effective communication, problem-solving, and collaboration. Learn how to step up, contribute meaningfully, and lead through your actions and influence.
Ever wonder why some people navigate challenging situations and build strong relationships with greater ease? The answer often lies in their Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Come gain a practical understanding of EQ and equip yourself with the tools to enhance your own emotional awareness and interpersonal skills. This isn't just about being "nice;" it's about understanding, managing, and leveraging yours and others' emotions to achieve greater success in your personal and professional life.
2026-2027 Sessions | Registration Links
Traditional leadership models have rewarded decisive, command-and-control direction from the top. However, teams with servant leaders most often achieve success. In this session, we'll examine the "leader as servant" philosophy, focusing on how prioritizing the growth and well-being of team members directly drives organizational success. Learn the techniques and strategies of these leaders, along with practical tools to focus your talents for service.
In a culture that rewards constant striving, courageous leadership begins by redefining what's enough. This reflective and practical webinar invites leaders to release the pressure to prove, and to reconnect with grounded confidence, clarity, and purpose. This experience helps leaders shift from doing more to being more - creating the freedom to lead with authenticity, self-trust, and intention.
Change is inevitable - but chaos is optional. Learn how to lead and navigate change using John Kotter's 8-Step Change Model, giving you a clear, structured approach to move ideas from concept to reality. You'll also apply a SWOT analysis and a quick PESTEL scan to identify risks, uncover strengths, and anticipate external forces that can impact success. Whether you're a leader, team member, or project lead, you'll walk away with a practical, easy-to-use change plan you can put into action immediately.
Across industries, leaders encounter similar challenges: Sustaining engagement can be difficult, expectations continue to rise, and the work of navigating performance, accountability, and growth is rarely simple. And, the customer experience consistently mirrors what is happening within the culture. Learn how balancing accountability with genuine care, fostering continuous learning, and showing authentic appreciation creates an environment where people feel seen and supported.
Equip yourself with a clear understanding of Agile values, principles, and the mindset that drives iterative, collaborative work. Explore the Agile Manifesto, compare Agile to traditional Waterfall methods, and gain insight into scaling frameworks like SAFe and LeSS. Through hands-on activities and real-world examples including the integration of AI tools, see how Agile improves adaptability, productivity, and data-informed decision-making. This course is ideal for anyone looking to respond more effectively to change, strengthen teamwork, and apply practical Agile techniques to everyday projects and workflows.
Accountability isn't just about holding people responsible - it's about creating clarity, ownership, and high performance. In this interactive workshop, explore what accountability really looks like in the workplace and how it strengthens team dynamics, improves results, and supports growth. Through engaging discussion and practical exercises, you'll learn how to identify and address performance issues effectively, deliver feedback that motivates improvement and inspires ownership, and help build a culture where accountability is embraced rather than avoided.
Burnout is increasingly common, but it doesn't need to be inevitable. This interactive workshop blends science, self reflection, and a bit of movement to help participants understand and interrupt the burnout cycle. We'll explore the physiology of stress, boundary setting in the workplace, and practical tools to make an immediate impact for those experiencing burnout. Leave feeling energized, more self aware, and equipped with a more sustainable, personalized definition of success.
Life gets messy. Stress hits. Goals feel far away. And sometimes it feels like you're running on fumes. In this session led by author Eric Benson, you'll explore how to navigate life's challenges (the "squeezes") while staying focused on what you want most (the "juice"). You'll leave with tools you can use immediately - daily habits, mindset shifts, and refresh-button strategies that help you build a happier, healthier, and more inspired life.
Many of the most successful people in the workplace have leadership coaches because they understand the value in having someone who is dedicated to helping them continue to grow and develop as a leader. In this session, explore how coaching serves as a leadership style and developmental activity that leaders at all levels can use with their direct reports. Tips and techniques for ways to lead by coaching will be discussed, with an emphasis on improving communication, setting and achieving goals, increasing accountability, building teams, and solving problems.
Experience the power of Design Thinking in just a few hours in this interactive workshop focused on real-world business challenges. You'll learn how high-performing teams build clarity, alignment, and momentum by leading with empathy, surfacing hidden assumptions, defining the real problem, and generating bold ideas. You'll also practice rapid prototyping and real-time testing so you can move from ideas to action faster. In just a few hours, you won't only learn Design Thinking, you'll experience it first-hand.
Ever wonder why certain situations at work or in life trigger stress, frustration, or self-doubt? This session explores how emotional intelligence and inner dialogue shape our reactions, often without us realizing it. By building greater self-awareness, participants can shift how they interpret challenges, communicate with others, and navigate daily demands with more resilience.
Join us for a high-impact, interactive session where you'll discover how to harness mental fitness skills that fuel exceptional performance, stronger relationships, and sustainable well-being - starting with YOU. You'll explore how to identify and interrupt negative thought patterns that drain energy, undermine collaboration, and limit performance, practice simple science-backed techniques to strengthen mental fitness, and activate your "Sage" perspective to take purposeful action, elevate productivity, and strengthen teamwork.
How we show up, especially under pressure, has a direct impact on our relationships, our teams, and our results. Emotional intelligence (EQ) helps us recognize patterns, manage our emotions, understand others' perspectives, and respond more intentionally in everyday interactions. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore practical EQ tools to strengthen self-awareness, build trust, navigate challenging situations, and improve communication.
If data drives decisions in your workplace, you deserve to keep a hand on the wheel. Develop practical skills to interpret common statistics, evaluate data visualizations, and understand what "statistically significant" really means. Gain confidence in meetings, make clearer decisions, and separate genuine insight from persuasive spin.
Strong results don't come from systems alone - they grow from healthy, aligned relationships. In this interactive workshop, leaders will learn and practice the TWI Job Relations 4-Step Method, a practical framework for addressing people challenges fairly and consistently. Come prepared with a real situation to work through and leave with a clear, practical approach you can immediately apply in your everyday work - because when relationships improve, results follow.
Success at work isn't achieved alone. It's built through strong teamwork and meaningful collaboration. During this session, we will explore how teams evolve and how to strengthen coordination and cohesion. We'll walk away with practical approaches for providing leadership that fosters teamwork, modeling collaboration, and celebrating shared success - building a culture where "we" is more powerful than "me."
This immersive, high-impact session helps leaders and teams understand how individual mindset, behaviors, and everyday work habits directly shape collective performance. Together, we'll explore how to better align tasks, meetings, communication, and workflows with individual strengths and team needs, so work gets done with less friction and more momentum. With reflection, discussion, and interactive practice, you'll leave with practical tools you can use immediately to boost productivity, build trust, improve team effectiveness, and strengthen resilience when pressure is high and priorities change.
Today's workplace brings together multiple generations - each shaped by distinct cultural, economic, and technological influences that impact how they communicate, collaborate, and define success. Gain practical insight into how generational perspectives influence workplace expectations, leadership styles, communication preferences, and approaches to work-life balance. More importantly, this session moves beyond awareness to action - equipping attendees with strategies to bridge generational gaps and foster a more inclusive, productive environment.