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:
How to Deal With Employees When Job Expectations Change

The business world today is moving at warp speed, there are technological changes, economic challenges and increasing global influences. All of this change management has caused some employers to rethink their businesses through reengineering, improving efficiencies as well as upgrading talent. To achieve new goals and get their businesses where they need to go many employers are raising expectations and putting more focus on accountability. However, with this new direction there is an impact on employees that can be positive in some cases but can often be career limiting in others. In cases of change management, what was expected yesterday doesn't apply anymore and just because people were qualified to do the job before doesn't mean they can do it now. This causes a dilemma for the employer, how do you deal with employees who were good, hardworking employees for many years but now they just don't have the skills that you need. There are different ways to approach changing expectations with employees but regardless of the path you chose, you need to remember that it isn't the employee's fault that things have changed. Showing compassion and understanding should be first and foremost so that the employee doesn't feel like they are being cast aside or undervalued.

When you realize that certain positions are going to change you need to establish what skills are different now. Before making any type of change in personnel you must assess whether or not the person currently in the role can handle the new responsibilities. Change management certainly doesn’t mean making assumptions about someone's abilities or aspirations. Having identified the skills that are needed will help you to assess the current person's capabilities as well as giving you a basis for a conversation on what the person would have to do to succeed in the newly defined role. An important change management question at this point is whether or not you have time to develop someone so that they can take on new responsibilities. Keep in mind that recruiting someone is time consuming as well, so before you decide you don't have time, think about the time it has taken in the past to find qualified candidates from outside the company.

Say you are willing to take the chance on your current employee and develop them so they can be successful in the new role, what do you do next? As mentioned earlier it is important to identify what skills are different now. The employee you will be working with will have most likely been successful in the job they have been doing and they will need to know what skills have to be improved and why. Then they will also need to know what it would look like to be successful in these particular skills. Just saying, "you need to be more strategic" is not effective change management. However, being specific about what the behavior looks like will help them to be able to recognize if they have not been exhibiting that behavior. For example, "John, you are very involved in the details of each project your department does, going forward you need to spend the majority of your time looking at trends in the marketplace to set the direction of the department". Another question that needs to be addressed is whether your company has the change management resources to help the employee with skill development. If not, are they willing to use outside resources to assist in the development process.

If you decide after analyzing the employee's current abilities against the needed skills that they cannot be effective, than you still will need to articulate what has changed in the position and why that employee isn't suited to the role as well as establishing what the alternatives are for them. An ideal scenario would be to find another role for the person within the company. This can obviously turn out to be a win-win situation if and only if the employee sees the change management as a positive one. That is why being able to communicate the changes in the position is so important as well as being able to show the employee the benefits of their move to a new role. Regardless if you think the employee will jump at the idea of the new position, you need to be prepared if the employee doesn't want the new role. You can tell them they have no alternative, they can take the job or leave the company or you can lay them off. (Be aware that even if someone quits, they may be able to collect unemployment anyway, that is something that your state unemployment office will decide). If you lay them off you can do so without pay or you can offer to pay severance. If you offer severance then you need to decide how much. You can use whatever severance policy you use for other layoffs (i.e. lack of work) or you can create a special policy and either set a flat amount of 4 weeks for example or a certain amount of weeks per year of service. If you do choose to create a different policy, the key is to be consistent, so anyone affected by changing job expectations will be handled the same.

The advice on severance will also hold true - if you don't have another opportunity for the person to move into, you can chose to exit them from the company and offer monetary assistance to ease the transition.

No matter which path you chose, the key to successful change management is in understanding what skills the job now needs and being able to articulate them to the employee. Don't let your own reluctance to deliver unpleasant news get in the way of doing what is right with respect to reengineering positions in your company. You may think you are being kind to an employee by not telling them what skills they may lack however, you may only serve to confuse them and then create bad feelings anyway. You may also end up with a disciplinary situation if you don't deal with the change in expectations up front. This is one of those circumstances where being proactive is going to garner the best results for everyone concerned.

 

Source: http://www.linkedin.com/in/debrabreski

Subject: Change Management

More Management Training Tips