Our Management Training Seminars

By introducing our Management Training Seminars to your staff we help ease the negative effect of change on both managerial and supervisory personnel. The change in job responsibilities, the change in personnel, job duties, and the rising challenge of developing subordinates are specific goals of our learning systems seminars. We are highly successful at helping Managers and Supervisors learn and adapt to the necessary skills and proper behaviors to be successful at work as well as in their personal lives.

For more information on our management training seminars please contact us.

As a part of our management training seminars, Managers and Supervisors will learn how to:

• Minimize the chance of miscommunication by understanding what people are really saying, and why
• Deal with difficult people, manage tense situations, and resolve conflict
• Make use of proven active listening skills to improve your ability to gain helpful information
• Be able to facilitate, guide, and close discussions in one-on-one or group settings
• Improve understanding and communication by giving and receiving good feedback
• Use ideas submitted by a member of the team without causing other members to be defensive
• Develop a comprehensive team building strategy that improves productivity of the whole team
• Emphasize the value of working toward common goals without devaluing individual accomplishment
• Define and set up a method to track staff activities
• Be able to manage time and work assignments effectively
• Conduct team meetings that capture and hold the audience’s attention
• Interview and hire the right person for the right job
• Save time and work more effectively through the use of a clear time management plan
• Understand and comply with proper hiring and managing requirements
• Communicate effectively with both superiors, peers and subordinates
• Become effective coaches for their work team
• Conduct accurate and difficult performance appraisals

 

Management Training Tips:
A First-Time Manager's Story: A Lesson in Wasted Talent and Money

Why Management Training is Imperative to Success

First line managers are one of the key components of a company's success. These are the men and women who are charged with the responsibility of putting into practice the plans and goals of corporate management. Their actions dramatically impact the future of the company.

Nevertheless, many companies approach the promotion of an employee to a management position as nothing more than a raise and a title. Few consider the management training needs of the new manager.

Although much of this behavior is associated with small and mid-size companies, we see almost every day that this irrational behavior is certainly not a foreign concept in major corporations.

This story comes from a mid-size manufacturing company, although the same scenario plays out at thousandsof companies, including some major corporations.

Management Training Saves Money and Resources

Diana called me one recent morning to discuss the possibility of hiring me as her sales and management coach. If we agree to work together, she'll be with a new company. She had been unemployed since the previous Friday.

Diana was a branch manager for a mid-sized manufacturing company. She had worked there for two and a half years as a salesperson prior to being promoted to branch manager back in September. She had been in her new position for only a little over 90 days before she was let go.

She was the top producer not only in her office but also in her region. She knew the products cold, worked well with her clients, was always prospecting, and had started helping to train some of the newer salespeople in the region. She was doing very well and considered something of a star in her company.

Then, in August, she was approached with the offer to take over the branch manager's position that had come open when the then existing manager left the company. He'd only been the manager for about 9 months. He had taken over after the manager before him had been let go—after less than a year.

The company has numerous offices spread throughout the country; yet, there are only a handful of branch managers who have been with the company for longer than a year or two. The majority of the company's branch managers have been in management less than a year. The company's branch manager turn over is over 50% a year.

As is so typical for many companies, when looking for someone to promote into a first line management position, they looked at the top producer, not the best management candidate. And they didn't bother to invest in management training for the promoted staff.

Diana knew the history. She knew that managers came and went quickly. Yet, she accepted the offer.

She assumed that the problem was that the regional managers were simply hiring and promoting the wrong people to management. Her experience, she knew, would be very different. She knew the products. She knew the company. She knew the customers. She knew how to sell. She was committed to being successful.

She was obviously very, very wrong about what her experience would be as a manager.

As manager, she was responsible for sales. But she was also responsible for the branch's P&L, inventory control, and clerical and installation personnel. The salespeople were just a portion of her new responsibilities. Yet she received no management training.

Diana isn't dumb. She is a very bright woman. But she isn't a manager—yet. She wasn't when promoted, and three months later, she has progressed little.

However, the fault doesn't lie with her. The fault is primarily with her company.

Like a great many companies, Diana's company has no idea how to prepare a first-time manager. She was given two days' training—on filling out the reports!

She received no management training on how to manage P&L. She received no management training on actually managing people (other than on harassment and termination regulations). She received no management training on inventory control, making personnel decisions, scheduling, working with shipping or the warehouse, or any other aspect of her new job.

Diana was forced to sink or swim. Without management training, she sank, just as the majority of the company's other first-time managers had.

Diana wasn't low key when it came to asking for help. She called her regional manager constantly. But he didn't have time. September was the end of the quarter and he had to concentrate on getting sales booked and shipped—and so did she, he said. October and November were busy times as he had to get his 2008 projections and business plan completed prior to the end of November—and by the way, where were her 2008 projections, he wanted to know.

By December, it was too late for Diana. She was overwhelmed, not with the time commitment or the schedule. She was fine with those. She was overwhelmed with the expectations the company had from someone who had never done these things, had no management training, and had nowhere to turn for help or guidance.

She is bitter, yet determined that she is going to make someone a great manager. And she will. She has the determination, the commitment, and the ability. But it will take quite some time for her to become a good manager if left on her own, just as it would most anyone else.

The company is losing some of its best salespeople through its own ineptitude and refusal to provide basic management training!

Certainly, Diana's old company isn't the only example of this “do or die” mentality. It tends to be the norm rather than the exception.

The truly sad part of this story is that it doesn't have to be this way. Developing and instituting a management training program need not be expensive, nor need it be particularly time consuming for any one manager in the company. As a matter of fact, a quality management training program will save the company a tremendous amount of money every year. Depending on the size of the company, those savings can be measured in the tens of thousands or the millions of dollars.

“What crap,” I hear. “We've always done it this way, and we're doing just fine. We eventually find the tough managers who can really make it. This is a tough business, we need tough people.”

It sure must be nice to have all that money to burn—not to mention the people, the good employees and contributors, that are also burned in the process.

Paul McCord: http://www.managerwise.com/article.phtml?id=609

Subject: Management Training

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