Manager Training Topics
The length and content of courses are customized to fit your organization or team needs, interests and experience.
Bringing New
Employees on Board
You have a new hire. What can you do to ensure expectations are clear and the new hire feels welcome, appreciated, and able to contribute to the work of your team and the organization as quickly as possible? This training is for managers who have, or expect to hire, direct reports.
Building and Leading High Performing Teams
This session introduces several team development models to improve performance and accountability on your team, and explores how the role of team leader can be leveraged to support more effective team performance. The course will also introduce you to a number of facilitation tools useful for engaging the team in problem solving and decision making.
Delegation Skills
Do you want to be a more effective delegator? In this session, we'll talk about advantages and risks, how to determine what to delegate (or not), steps for effect delegation, and strategies for improving both communication and outcomes. We'll also dive into the implications of fixed versus growth mindset for both the employee and manager.
Developing Employees
Development planning doesn't have to be elaborate or costly. At its core it's mostly a matter of good managers taking the person-to-person time to understand their employees - recognizing their skills and challenges and guiding them to fill in the gaps. We'll talk about ways to facilitate productive conversations with employees about their career development interests and needs, and identify development options.
Difficult Conversations
This session will help you prepare for a difficult conversation at work. You will discover how to create conditions that make it easier to discuss hard issues, address underlying assumptions that get in the way of productive conversations, and explore how to effectively convey a message and draw out the perspective of others, especially in emotional and high stakes conversations. (Note: This session does not cover how to address performance problems with direct reports, covered in Facilitating Employee Performance.)
Everyday Communication Skills for Managers
This session explores the basics of effective communication and common communication barriers in the workplace. You will learn about what neuroscience research has revealed about how our brains may interpret or misinterpret information from others and what happens when we experience an "emotional hijack," and come away with specific ideas you can apply immediately to improve communication up, down and across your work groups or organization.
Facilitating Employee Performance
The objective of ongoing communication and coaching is to help employees carry out the mission and goals of the organization. The manager role involves engaging employees and enabling their successful performance by reducing obstacles and barriers, and leveraging their strengths. In this session we'll cover how to: establish clear expectations, provide positive reinforcement, identify and address performance problems, and provide corrective feedback.
Facilitating Employee Problem Solving
Every workplace needs employees to solve problems that get in the way of doing great work. In this manager training session, we'll focus on brain science: what we know about the impact of mindset, how to encourage insights that lead to action, and the types and timing of questions that can move conversations with employees from drama to solutions.
Leading Change
In this session, you will learn the difference between change and transition, identify the impact of a specific change on your direct reports and/or team, explore techniques to facilitate transition and build buy-in, and collaborate with other participants on strategies to manage change you're currently leading.
Leading and Managing Former Peers
If you have recently moved up to the role of supervisor from within a work unit or team, you know this involves unique challenges! In this class, we'll tackle the tough issues:
- clarifying your new role
- understanding the expectations of former peers and your manager
- managing multiple (sometimes conflicting) priorities
- adjusting your management style to varying personalities
- delegating work to former coworkers
Understanding Workstyle Differences
This session uses the DISC personality profile to explore four different styles of communicating, processing and organizing work. You will identify how your preferred style shows up on a day-to-day basis as a manager, explore when that style is effective, and when it may get in your way, and think through how and when to flex your approach in specific situations. (Additional $70 fee/participant for the online DISC assessment.)