Workshops on self-management + career-planning

Can regular exchange with peers help me accomplish my career goals?

How often do other PhD candidates meet with their advisors?

Which planner will help me organize my life?

Workshops deal with the questions that are currently on your mind.

Workshops deal with participants’ concerns and with possible solutions everyone can try right away – creating an open, trustful and productive atmosphere.

I teach workshops on topics regarding self-leadership and career-planning. My offer is primarily directed at academic and research institutions that offer professional skills training and career planning for students, early career researchers and research managers. I am happy to adapt my seminars to your needs – your target group, your time budget and your staff development program.

Self-Leadership

The following topics lend themselves well to a workshop format:

Work organization

Overcoming obstacles to the working process: procrastination, perfectionism, distraction

Time- and Task-Management

Self-organization through goal setting, time management, task management and planning of work processes

Lateral leadership

Communication of your own needs in a team, realistic expectations, designing work processes in a team; managing the relationship with PhD supervisors, working in a sandwich-position as a postdoc

Peer-coaching

Founding success teams / guidance for peer coaching

Would you like to empower your new PhD candidates to have a successful start? In my workshop “Making it Happen”, candidates learn central principles of time- and project-management, plan their PhD phase individually and build a sustainable peer network.

Do you see your M.A. students having trouble finishing assignments on time? In my workshop “Get it Done!”, students analyze obstacles such as procrastination and perfectionism, learn tools to overcome them and plan their own project to set themselves up for success.

Do you think your PhD candidates could benefit from additional mentoring? Let them form success teams in which they meet regularly to communicate their goals, report progress and difficulties and support each other. I facilitate founding such teams.

Career Planning

I offer career-planning workshops for early career researchers. PhD candidates and postdocs can use the courses to decide if they want to follow an academic or a non-academic career path. To facilitate decision-making and career-planning, I like to combine work in the seminars with brief coaching sessions.

Recognizing competencies

What are my skills? What are my strengths? Which talents do I want to utilize in my professional life? Which are valuable for a non-academic career?

Determining a valuable work life

When do I consider myself professionally successful and happy? We may use the concept of career anchors by Edgar Schein to explore these questions.

Developing options

What do people do for a living who are like me? What could my life look like? Together, we develop visions.

Determining next steps

Where do I go from here? Successful occupational change happens in many small and big steps. We determine the next ones.

Hands-on workshops

My workshops offer the opportunity to immediately put the presented techniques to practice and to adapt them to individual needs. Participants engage in individual, partner and group exercises. This gives me the opportunity to respond to individual inquiries, allows participants to learn from each other and enables participants to provide each other with feedback. I also encourage the participants to support each other beyond the workshop. Exercises, continued feedback and reflection of the seminar’s contents support transfer into everyday work.

I create substantial handouts for individual work during the workshop. Throughout the course, I visualize the contents on flipcharts and pinboards. After the workshop, all participants receive a photo summary with added tips.

I offer my workshops in both German and English.

About the workshops

Two years have passed since the workshop, and my success team still meets regularly. The open exchange with my group is a great source of motivation.

PhD Candidate (32), Workshop “Making it Happen”

Christiane’s training helped me chart out a plan for my PhD. It was a very helpful exercise and she provided us with the time and tools to carry it out.

PhD Candidate (33), Workshop “Making it Happen”

Participating in the workshop "time and self-management for your PhD" right at the beginning of my PhD definitely helped me develop the necessary skills for the upcoming years. I am still using many of the techniques mentioned in the course for the organization of my weekly tasks.

PhD Candidate (30), Workshop "Making it Happen"

I felt very comfortable in the workshop. Christiane clearly structures the workshop, both temporally and thematically. That is especially helpful when working in a virtual setting.

PhD Candidate (27), Workshop "Interpersonal Relationships"

Working with Christiane is a pleasure. She is professional at all times, reliable, and her workshops are well thought out and popular with our PhD researchers. We look forward to collaborating with her again in the near future.

PhD Director, Hertie School

Our instute collaborates successfully with Ms. Kasack, especially in accompanying our mentoring programs. We appreciate her warm, sincere and competent ways, her open and cheerful communication with the participants, and her uncomplicated professionality regarding our internal accounting procedures.

Career Center, Max Delbrück Center

I went into Christiane’s Plan Early for Life with a PhD workshop feeling unclear about my future. After one and a half days, I not only learned more about what makes a job a good fit for me, but have a plan and the confidence to make it happen. Thank you Christiane!

PhD Candidate, Workshop "Plan Early for Life with a PhD"