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CTC (Travel Agent Certifications) study plan

CTC · Give each week a clear focus.

8 weeks · About 7 hours per week

Week 1

Finance & DISC Behavioral Styles

  • Compute and interpret the core line items of the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement from a supplied data set

  • Calculate contribution margin, break-even volume, and operating leverage for three cost scenarios

  • Classify your own behavioral style across the four DISC dimensions and list two observable cues for each style

  • Draft three coaching-style questions tailored to each of the four DISC quadrants

Your checkpoint

A one-page finance formula sheet with 12 formulas each worked with real numbers, plus a completed four-quadrant DISC adaptation matrix

Week 2

Project Management & Emotional Intelligence

  • Sequence a 15-activity project into a network diagram and identify the critical path by hand

  • Calculate cost variance, schedule variance, CPI, and SPI from given earned value inputs

  • Distinguish self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management in eight written workplace scenarios

  • Write an empathic restatement and a reframe for four emotionally charged statements

Your checkpoint

A five-item earned value problem set with all work shown, plus an EI scenario log of eight responses each tagged to a competency

Week 3

Conflict Management & Negotiation

  • Differentiate the five conflict-handling modes and justify a mode choice for six distinct scenarios

  • Script a full conflict conversation using an interests-based sequence from opening to agreement

  • Prepare a negotiation plan naming BATNA, reservation point, target, and estimated ZOPA

  • Identify three cognitive biases likely in a negotiation and write a countermeasure for each

Your checkpoint

A one-page negotiation plan plus a recorded ten-minute role-play self-scored against a six-criterion rubric

Week 4

Mentoring and Coaching & Team Building

  • Contrast mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring and assign the right intervention to five developmental situations

  • Write a 30/60/90 development plan for a hypothetical mentee including measurable outcomes

  • Diagnose a team's developmental stage and prescribe two stage-appropriate interventions

  • Construct a team charter covering purpose, norms, roles, and decision rules

Your checkpoint

A completed mentoring action plan template and a one-page team charter for a supplied scenario team

Week 5

Creative Problem Solving

  • Rewrite three solution-contaminated problem statements into clean, scope-bounded problem frames

  • Generate at least 20 ideas across three divergent techniques and cluster them into named themes

  • Score four candidate solutions on a weighted decision matrix and defend the selection

  • Facilitate a 20-minute ideation session and capture the output in a structured log

Your checkpoint

A single creative problem-solving worksheet carrying one problem from framing through scored solution selection

Week 6

Presentation Skills

  • Structure a ten-minute presentation with a hook, three supporting points, and an explicit call to action

  • Cut an existing deck to eight slides with no more than six words of on-slide text each

  • Record a seven-minute talk and self-score it on six delivery criteria

  • Draft bridging responses to three anticipated hostile questions

Your checkpoint

A recorded seven-minute presentation plus the tightened eight-slide deck and a completed self-scoring rubric

Week 7

Finance & Project Management

  • Re-solve break-even and earned value problems at 90 seconds per item to build retrieval speed

  • Build an eight-item risk register with probability, impact, and response strategy for each risk

  • Complete a 20-item mixed finance and project management quiz and score at least 80 percent

  • Write a root-cause note for every missed item linking it to a specific concept gap

Your checkpoint

A timed 20-item quiz score sheet with a written error analysis entry for each incorrect answer

Week 8

Mentoring and Coaching & Conflict Management & Creative Problem Solving & DISC Behavioral Styles & Emotional Intelligence & Negotiation & Presentation Skills & Finance & Project Management & Team Building

  • Complete two full-length timed practice exams under test-day conditions

  • Rank all ten domains by practice accuracy and re-drill the three lowest-scoring domains

  • Rehearse the DISC, conflict-mode, and negotiation frameworks aloud until recall is fluent

  • Assemble a one-page exam-day checklist covering timing, pacing, and flag-and-return rules

Your checkpoint

A mock exam score report showing per-domain accuracy plus a prioritized remediation list for the three weakest domains

Milestones

Week 4: Score at least 75 percent on a 30-item quiz drawn only from weeks 1 through 4 (finance, DISC, project management, emotional intelligence, mentoring, team building); if below, reallocate two hours from week 5 to re-drill the weakest of those domains

Week 6: All six domain worksheets and both recorded deliverables are complete and self-scored; confirm that every one of the ten domains has at least one written artifact before entering review mode

Week 8: Average 80 percent or higher across the two full-length mocks with no single domain below 70 percent; if any domain falls short, spend the final two days exclusively on that domain's artifacts and flashcards