Insight Series

According to leading business experts, the key to staying relevant in an increasingly automated world is to enhance your human skills like adaptability, resilience and problem-solving. The Dhillon School of business and its partners, MNP Lethbridge and the CPA Education Foundation are ready to help you future-proof your career.

The Insight Series micro-course seminars will challenge you to develop an understanding of and capacity for critical thinking, curiosity, creativity, communication and emotional intelligence in a professional context. 

Topics include:

Critical thinking in industry

Leverage expertise in sectors such as agriculture, Indigenous nations, dealerships, and food and beverage processing. You'll explore deductive and inductive reasoning, fallacies of adequacy and relevance, and argument assessment techniques while studying organizational missteps and successes.

Curiosity and creativity

The prevalence of change has made resilience an essential skill. One way to bolster resilience is through curiosity and creativity. These skills make for fewer decision-making errors, greater acceptance of change, reduced team conflict and better communication. While developing your curiosity and creativity, you'll develop a healthy attitude toward risk-taking, inquisitiveness and teamwork.

Disruption or distraction

Knowing which distractions require our attention, and how to leverage them for organizational benefit, will be the key to survival for businesses of the future. By examining the successes and failures of technology deployments in real companies, participants identify and evaluate the risks and factors driving both positive and negative outcomes and then formulate plans to recognize and leverage those factors.

Attitudes, ethics and stewardship

Thanks to the abundance of information (reliable or not), the challenges facing most businesses have become volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Using recent business cases, you'll explore the major ethical schools of thought and their modern relevance, stewardship, how to evolve a governance mindset and popular frameworks for decision-making amidst ambiguity.

Problem identification and definition

Despite access to extensive volumes of information, organizations risk poor decision-making if that information is misapplied. To become effective at solving problems, we need to know how to identify and define a problem. In this course you'll apply common models of logic and analysis to identify root causes in business scenarios using quantitative and qualitative information.

Harnessing your EQ for leadership and success

Success in the complex world of business requires more than just intelligence. In this course we will explore how Emotional Intelligence (our EQ or emotional quotient) enables us to achieve the best outcomes through self-awareness, effectively managing emotions, and harnessing both our intellectual horsepower and our emotional energy to build our personal brand, a successful career and thriving organizations.

Who can enroll?

For-credit option: current ULethbridge students:

If you are a current student at the University, admitted to any program, you may register for MGT 3832 – Insight: Disruption and Creative Problem Solving or MGT 3833 – Ethics, Emotional Intelligence and Critical Thinking through the Bridge. Contact your academic advisor to see how these courses can fit into your program.

For-credit: non ULethbridge students (Open Studies):

Open Studies registration allows a community member to register for a course without gaining admission to a University program. Upon successful registration into and completion of MGT 3832 – Insight: Disruption and Creative Problem Solving, or MGT 3833 – Ethics, Emotional Intelligence and Critical Thinking, you will be awarded three credit hours (per course) that can be applied to a future degree, diploma or certificate with permission of the faculty offering that program. To take courses as an Open Studies student, you will be required to complete an Open Studies form and pay any required fees and then receive confirmation of registration.

Continuing education (non-credit): non ULethbridge students

Community members may take Insight Series courses on a non-credit modular basis, via CPA Alberta. The courses are eligible for CPD hours and are listed as:

  • Insight Series: Critical Thinking in Industry
  • Insight Series: Curiosity and Creativity
  • Insight Series: Disruption or Distraction 
  • Insight Series: Attitudes, Ethics, and Stewardship 
  • Insight Series: Problem Identification and Definition 
  • Insight Series: Harnessing your EQ for Leadership and Success

Please see https://go.cpaalberta.ca/courses to find more information and register. 

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The Insight Series has been made possible by generous donations from CPA Education Foundation and MNP.