Management Training Seminars

By introducing our Management Training workshops 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 courses. 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 classes please contact us.

As a part of our management training courses, 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:
Defensive Management Training Wastes Time and Money

Or as Monty Python screamed, "Meetings, Bloody Meetings!"

The silly butt-covering (I don't even want to think about where that image comes from) practice of defensive management is on the rise. On one hand it makes sense that the practice would be more prevalent as management is squeezed into budget, time and other resource constraints. Management that makes mistakes are often punished.

On the other, defensive management devours time and money. Too many unproductive meetings, micro-managing, tightening policies and procedures are all targeted as a major contributor to the higher costs of doing business.

But how widespread is it?

A recent informal, non-scientific query on a management discussion group asked the question:

"Does your company practice defensive management in which people are often checking and rechecking decisions, delaying decisions, having more meeting to make sure everyone is in agreement before proceeding with a project?"

Many managers responded with an emphatic, yes! "Defensive management is practiced everywhere, everyday. And the costs, not to mention the lack of any meaningful innovations are simply enormous," says one frustrated senior manager. "We're killing our entrepreneurial spirit one boring meeting at a time."

Many managers and supervisors -- even executives -- would agree that the threat of being fired significantly adds to the butt-covering going on. In highly integrated companies accountability to other managers is a significant factor in the practice of defensive management.

One manager offered, "I'd guess that 50% of my checking out with this person and that unit is at least partly influenced by the need to demonstrate objective proof of something that we've analyzed and concluded that it was something worth doing to move the business forward."

"It is not just the fear of being held accountable for a mistake," says one supervisor, "but often the fear of being seen as a lesser-quality leader."

"This cover-your-a- pattern becomes the standard," says a vice president of marketing, "and the geometric progression of unnecessary checking out whether everyone is in agreement becomes self-promulgating."

The pressure to over-analyze comes from B2B customers as well. A buyer wants to know that s/he is getting the best for less, that will work 100% of the time and that s/he is not going to look bad.

"Defensive management," says a production manager "is so ingrained that most of us don't even realize we are doing it."

Does your company culture encourage and reward people doing defensive management?

Jim Sellner: link

Subject: Management Training

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