Quick, bite-sized insights to build your skills and boost your career.
Missed a past edition? Visit the Learning Bites Archives 2025 and 2026 to explore previous topics, revisit professional development insights, and continue building your skills throughout the year.
Spotlight Skill:
Shining a light on the skills that help you learn, develop and grow!
August Edition: Advocating for Yourself at Work
In this month’s UA spotlight skill, we are offering ways to making the most of your 1:1’s with your Supervisor. It’s easy to assume your supervisor knows what you’re juggling day to day—but with competing priorities, they rely on you to keep them informed. Sharing updates, challenges, and ideas helps your supervisor understand where you need support and where you can contribute most.
Core Behaviors to Practice
- Communicate with Confidence: Clearly express your needs, ideas, and concerns while keeping the focus on solutions and outcomes.
- Know Your Value: Recognize your strengths and contributions so you can confidently communicate the impact of your work.
- Create Shared Understanding: Ask questions, clarify expectations, and align on priorities to ensure everyone is working toward the same goals.
- Own Your Development: Seek feedback, pursue learning opportunities, and communicate your career goals to support continued growth.
Quick Tips to Elevate Your 1:1’s
- Prepare before important conversations. Gather relevant examples, accomplishments, or data points that support your perspective or request.
- Use confident, solution-focused language. Frame concerns around outcomes and possibilities rather than problems alone.
- Speak up early. Address workload challenges, resource needs, or conflicting priorities before they become larger issues.
- Share your achievements regularly. Keep supervisors informed about progress, successes, and contributions throughout the year, not just during performance reviews.
- Ask for what you need. Whether it’s clarification, support, professional development, or feedback, remember that others may not know what you need unless you communicate it.
Call to Action:
This month, identify one workplace need, goal, or opportunity you’ve been hesitant to discuss, and take the first step by starting a constructive conversation about it.
Check out these LinkedIn Learning courses for a deeper dive into maximizing 1:1’s:
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Augest Edition: Resilience
Inspired by Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”Every career includes challenges such as unexpected changes, difficult conversations, setbacks, and moments that test our patience and determination. While we can’t always control what happens around us, we can control how we respond.
Resilience is the ability to adapt, recover, and move forward when faced with adversity. It doesn’t mean ignoring difficulties or pretending everything is okay. Instead, resilience is about learning from challenges, maintaining perspective, and continuing to move forward with purpose
Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down reminds us that resilience isn’t about never struggling, it’s about choosing to keep going, even when the path isn’t easy.
Think About These Lyrics
“Well, I won’t back down.”
→ Resilience means remaining committed to your values and goals, even when challenges arise.
“You can stand me up….. but I won’t back down.”
→ Difficult situations don’t define us. Our response to them does.
“Hey, baby, there ain’t no easy way out.”
→ Growth often comes through navigating challenges rather than avoiding them.
Why Resilience Matters
Strong relationship management helps us:
- Adapt to change with confidence.
- Maintain focus during challenging situations.
- Learn from setbacks and apply those lessons moving forward.
- Manage stress in healthy and productive ways.
- Support teammates through times of change and uncertainity.
Questions to Ask Yourself This Month
- How do I typically respond when things don’t go as planned?
- What challenge has helped me grow professionally?
- What habits help me stay focused and positive during difficult times?
Call to Action
This month, focus on strengthening your resilience by:
- Viewing setbacks as opportunities to learn.
- Focusing on what you can control rather than what you can’t.
- Asking for support when you need it—and offering it when others do.
- Celebrating progress, even when it’s incremental.
- Reflecting on past challenges you’ve overcome and the strengths you gained because of them.
Resilience isn’t about never falling down—it’s about finding the strength to get back up, learn from the experience, and keep moving forward.
Where fundamentals meet real‑world impact. Show up and skill up!
August Edition: Initiative that Builds Trust
When we hear the phrase “take initiative,” it can mean different things to different people. In the workplace, effective initiative is not about acting independently at all costs—it is about reducing friction, advancing the mission, and helping the team succeed.
Taking initiative means anticipating needs before they become problems, preparing for upcoming work, following through on commitments, and keeping stakeholders informed of progress. These behaviors create clarity, improve collaboration, and help teams move forward with confidence.
Just as importantly, initiative has boundaries. Taking initiative does not mean overstepping authority, implementing changes without appropriate input, or agreeing to every request regardless of workload. While these actions may be well-intended, they often create confusion, duplicate effort, or slow progress rather than accelerating it.
The most effective contributors pair initiative with communication. When colleagues and supervisors know what you are working on, what support you need, and where things stand, trust grows. Clear communication also prevents duplicated effort, fills information gaps, and helps everyone stay aligned on priorities. Together, initiative and communication strengthen relationships and create a culture where people remove obstacles rather than unintentionally creating them.
Call to Action: This month, identify an upcoming need in your area and take a proactive step to address it. Obtain any necessary approval or support, then communicate your action and progress to relevant stakeholders. By month’s end, demonstrate one specific example of how your initiative improved efficiency, supported a colleague, or helped your team achieve its goals more effectively.