Author: STL Trainer

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Management Training Professional & Management

Case Study: Intro to Management

helping with that vital step up into management

As part of our Public Schedule portfolio, STL offers our Introduction to Management Course (part of 2 day and 1 day management training courses) to a wide range of organisations, from IT and Banking to Sporting Facilities and TV Stations.

Their HR/Learning and Development departments select this particular course because they have identified a clear ‘profile’, namely employees who are progressing into a new management role or who have been a manager for a while but not had the benefit of formalised and structured training.

At the end of this two-day course delegates will have a range of practical tools and strategies to help them succeed as managers. Techniques covered include planning, delegation and assertiveness as well as how to manage stress and conflicting priorities. 

Benefits

They want their managers to employ techniques and strategies to:

  • Understand a Manager’s role and how it fits into the organisation
  • Clarify your responsibilities so that new managers can perform with ease
  • Learn about the Management Process and the impact that has on you, your team and the wider culture
  • Develop effective communication skills including deep listening, building rapport and how to ask effective questions.
  • Successfully develop and lead a team including building, giving feedback and appraisals, leadership styles and focus and planning processes
  • Learn what it takes to lead productive meetings that stay on track, have a clear purpose and ensure action and participation
  • Excel at handling difficult situations, identifying problem scenarios, developing assertiveness in the workplace and deal with conflict
  • Manage yourself; your time, stress levels, motivation, priorities and change.

According to a Forbes Insights and PMI survey of more than 500 executives, 85% of respondents say change management is critical to their success in these times of disruption.

Learning Deliverables for Managers

Our Intro to Management leaves plenty of space throughout the two days for high-level discussions and time for each delegate to work on their individual examples and case studies together. One of the biggest benefits of course is precisely this – the fact that we have a number of delegates from different industries all openly sharing their hopes, experiences and challenges around current management techniques. It’s incredibly though-provoking and inspiring.

Two areas that come up time and time again are how best to managing ourselves (primarily our time) and our teams – namely, how to get the best out of them, as well as dealing with any performance issues and problems that may arise.

The principles of management can still be categorised into four major functions; planning, organising, leading, and controlling (the P-O-L-C framework). These four functions are actually highly integrated when carried out in the day-to-day realities of running an organisation and we cover those in great depth during the two days.

As a trainer, it’s always gratifying to facilitate Intro to Management. With 80% focused on practical exercises and discussions, delegates emerge with a newfound confidence in their skills and often form lasting connections with peers from whom they will have learnt to see their activities and challenges through a new lens.

 Feedback

 

 

Our feedback has been excellent across the board with delegates saying;

“Very professional but with a human touch”.

“Fantastic trainer, great introduction to management, enjoyed it a lot more than I thought. Discovered some things about myself and how to improve”.

“I really enjoyed those two days. A solid background to management. Thank you very much”.

“Absolutely great course and very useful for my job right now as well as some great tips for my future career”.

 Finally…

As a trainer, I really enjoy bringing the two days together with some serious action-planning. It’s the only way to ensure that the material taught, and the exercises and role plays that we’ve done are firmly embedded, and that there is accountability built in for when delegates come into work the following day. We also encourage them to make clear notes throughout in their course manuals, so that they have a strong point of reference for the future.

For your further reading, these books have been identified as the best and most current in developing effective management skills and there’s a great blog post with more expert tips and tricks for new Managers to boost efficiency further.

 

 

Categories
Application Professional & Management

How To Train Your Team Using Dedicated Training Providers

While in-house training is an essential part of managing and improving your team, it’s also true that there are practical skills they need you cannot train or provide. It might be that helping your team adapt to the latest practical thinking in their industry, finding a cohesive business consultancy approach dedicated to squeezing productivity out of your office, or helping a dysfunctional team come back to health will require a more promising approach.

This means that finding dedicated providers can be important. Knowing what to look for when searching for said services is crucial. After all, a somewhat ineffective service can not only be a waste of an investment, but their offered advice may conflict with better, newer providers you decide to opt for instead.

In the following advice, you’ll learn how to get the most from your training providers, to help your team flourish in the midst of a fast-paced and continually changing industry.

Six Woman Standing and Siting Inside a Training Room

Vet Those Services

It’s easy to be impressed by the programme offered by a select firm, service or consultant, but are they, in actual fact, going to offer those services? Reading service reviews and customer testimonials can be a good idea, provided they are listed through a third party service. Businesses will cherry-pick testimonials to suit their needs, and so to a certain degree they cannot be relied upon. Look for reviews that encompass case studies, such as a team becoming 5-10% more effective during the holiday rush thanks to the advice gained.

Additionally, opt for services that offer constructive feedback. ‘Life coach’ or ‘motivational’ services may seem good on the surface, but they hardly offer anything outside of a motivational pep talk. This can be valuable for some teams, but practical skills and the measures in which to apply them will always yield more insight than flowery language offered by a charismatic individual.

Value vs. Statistics

It’s also important to consider how values are important to a firm. Not all firms practice these values, despite believing that they do. A training provider with a proposal of increasing integrity, of improving customer relationships, of building better B2B networks should offer this advice through the lens of practical decision making, but also in how that translates to the firm itself. This way you get all the idealistic benefit of the ‘business coach’ with all of the practical necessities related to your industry. For example, taking the time to deliver on promises, to remain impartial despite success or failure, to learn from each step forward will be practical advice a team could readily learn, while also impacting their new pursuit going forward.

Healing Dysfunctional Teams

If your team is dysfunctional, it’s important to get to the heart of the issue and clearly understand what the problem may be. Healing the rifts between people is more of a job for your HR team, but what if your HR is dysfunctional too? It might be that lessening the blaming culture that has arisen and encouraging personal responsibility is a lesson sorely needed. This can go deeper than the simple advice or experience offered by team building activities, although these can help non-communicative teams feel comfortable around one another again.

Photo Of People High Fiving on a Training

What’s The Result?

So far, we have explored the theory of training and improvement. However, none of this is worthwhile without the pursuit of actionable goals aimed at possible results. This is how a firm will really improve, and it’s crucial for all managers and decision-makers in your brand to understand that. 

Perhaps a training provider is happy to get your team up to standard relating to the latest health and safety practice and legislation. But do they also have a goal of decreasing your workplace injuries by 25% minimum? Can they teach you new methods of error reporting, or of ensuring vital issues are reported and thus prevented in consequence?

Always ask yourself ‘what’s the result?’ This can help you decide what actionable processes are important for your team to learn. After all, we can all sit in a circle and pat ourselves on the back or vaguely commit to goals, but it’s the structural changes that make the difference.

SMART goals, that is those that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Targeted can help any team feel as though they’re on the right track again. You will also fully measure the competency of your changes provided you keep those metrics to heart.

With this advice, we hope you’ll feel much more confident in selecting a training provider or business training company for the improvement of your team.