Project Management and Interpersonal Skills for PhDs - A (2025)
Enrolment options
The course is fully booked! Please sign up at the waiting list.
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration, aauphd@adm.aau.dk.
Welcome to Project Management and Interpersonal Skills for PhDs - A (2025)
Description: This course is a practical hands on workshop, which will support PhD students in their endeavors to manage the PhD project. The focus is twofold:
1) enhancing project management skills in a university culture that is characterized by unruly creative work, lack of formal structures and network organization.
2) Enhancing interpersonal skills, particularly in relation to the cooperation with supervisors and other important stakeholders.
Research within neuroscience, leadership, project management and conflict resolution, long term experience as PhD coach and feedback from earlier participants at this course show that PhD students benefit immensely from being challenged to reflect on, discuss and experiment with their planning practice and the way they approach cooperation with supervisors and other important stakeholders.
Prerequisites: Being a PhD student
Learning objectives:
After the course the PhD student should be able to:- Understand the challenges of project planning as a PhD student
- Reflect on ones own planning practice and the specific pittfalls and resources one poses
- Develop strategies to address those pittfalls and provide feedback to other PhD students
- Practice a more realistic and efficient planning
- Understand the individual needs and challenges in specific cooperations with supervisors and other important stakeholders
- Apply important negotiating skills
Teaching methods:
The workshop will introduce and illustrate a method on how to plan your time on a daily and long-term basis. The approach is inspired by the GRID method by neuroscientist Magdalena Bak-Maier (2015), Steven Covey (2005) and the game plan approach from the world of coaching. Relevant research and knowledge from leadership literature and project management will be presented (e.g. Pearce and Conger, 2007; Karl Weick, 1976 and 2012; Atkinson, 1999; Nicholas and Steyn, 2021).The course will also work with the negotiation and conflict management approach from the Harvard Negotiation project (Stone, Patton and Heen, 2010) as a tool to explore interpersonal communication structure. Key issues in the relationship between PhD student and supervisor will be identified and analyzed by means of practical exercises.
There will be a possibility for an individual follow up coaching session after a month for those PhD students that find it beneficial.
Course structure:
- 2 consecutive days consisting of a mix of introductions and exercises individually and in groups.
- Two assignments related to actual skills is to be send in before the workshop
Criteria for assessment: Handing in assignments and participating in the course are criteria for passing the course.
Key literature: Course literature:
Covey, S.R. (2005). The seven habits of highly effective people. ISBN 9780743268165
Danish Centre for conflict resolution (1996). Conflict-Solving: Simple and Difficult. Uploaded below
Conflict resolution. A brief introduction (No date, no author) Uploaded below
Patton, B. (2017). You can't win by avoiding difficult conversations in Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 3274, 553-557. Emerald Publishing Limited. ISSN 0885-8624
Heim, C. (2012). Tutorial facilitation in the humanities based on the tenets of Carl Rogers in Higher Education 63: 289-298. Springer. DOI 10.1007/s10734-011-9441-z
Prochaska, J. O. , Norcross, J.C and Diclemente, C.C. (2007). Changing for good. A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward.
HarperCollins Publishers, New York, USA. Stone, D., Patton, B. and Heen, S. (2010). Difficult conversations. How to discuss what matters most. Penguin Books. London, England.
Atkinson, R. (1999). Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. International Journal of Project Management, 17(6), 337-342.
Pearce, C. L., Conger, J. A., & Locke, E. A. (2007). Shared leadership theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 281-288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.009
Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems. . Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/2391875
Weick, K. E. (2012). Organized sensemaking: A commentary on processes of interpretive work. Human Relations, 65(1), 141-153. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726711424235
Organizer: Pia Bøgelund
Lecturers: Pia Bøgelund
ECTS: 2.0
Time: 8 - 9 May 2025
Place: Aalborg University Rendsburggade 14.3 room 4.321
Zip code: 9000
City: Aalborg
Maximal number of participants: 20
Deadline: 17 April 2025
Important information concerning PhD courses:
There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.
For external PhD students: This course is a general course and is prioritised for PhD Students enrolled at Aalborg University. If there are available seats, PhD students from other universities will be accepted. You will be notified shortly after the deadline if you have been accepted.
To attend courses at the Doctoral School in Medicine, Biomedical Science and Technology you must be enrolled as a PhD student.
We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at phdcourses@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.