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:
Management Training - Game Players on the Job: The Ducker

The Ducker - why do I call this type, The Ducker? Because they duck out of taking the rap for anything, whether The Ducker has done it or not - it's a matter of survival - backbencher tactics. It's a preoccupation at all costs.

I worked in and around Government for a while, and Government is a ripe playing field for these people. They don't care what they have to do to deflect blame away from themselves. A lot of good people get hurt in the process because they will fire people just to show it was not them who is to blame for the fiasco. The buck never stops with them!

They are guarded and often you can't see this self-defense behavior occur until a crisis hits. One appointed senior bureaucrat I knew was a master at it. She was obviously not competent to be in her position and had obtained it through the elite social contact process. Of course, when these people are placed in management positions, they repeatedly fail to accomplish the prescribed objectives. She was so highly skilled at ducking though, and being in government, she had plenty of victims available to her. She would demote or eliminate others, claiming their incompetence led to a lack of desirable results - and, yes, she was convincing. After all, she claimed, she had inherited a department filled with incompetent people. Can you imagine anyone believing that story? They did. It would take a long time before she was discovered, and by then, she would likely be on to another high level management position, leaving a train wreck behind her.

They are hard to spot. In an interview, sometimes you get a glimpse of it. If their questions focus on who supervises whom, who has the authority where, what is the reporting structure, etc. When callling their references, you see a pattern emerging sometimes in which companies went bankrupt just before or after they left, yet the individual's claims are that she/he had nothing to do with it - it was someone else's fault.

Let's say The Ducker is hired. You'll find an extraordinary amount of notes and documentation piling up. That's a first sign. And The Ducker keeps copies of absolutely everything. The real players scheme and manipulate others into saying and doing things which "could be attributed" to the downfall of any project, group, organization or company - very sly behavior. The Ducker diverts blame every early on too with statements such as, "I warned you..." What's the aim of all this documentation? Can you imagine what it would be like to have to go through every single piece of communication to determine who said what when? Of course, it's a deterrent.

Don't we all engage in some of this type of behavior? Yes. Tracking is important but the reasons for tracking are to assure accurate history of numbers, projects, etc. The difference here is the purpose of tracking and recording should not be to place blame on anyone for anything that goes wrong but to look back and learn from mistakes of the past or to prove something to someone. Big difference in attitude and approach as only significant documentation is retained.

The Ducker's drain of time, money, goodwill, productivity (imagine how long it takes them to produce and file all their notes, memos, letters, emails, etc.), and creativity is astronomical. Everyone else starts behaving the same way - protecting themselves - and very little gets accomplished of any significance.

The underlying modus operandi of these people is pessimism, negativity, dividing and conquering, covering their tracks, rigididy, jealousy, defensiveness, and, of course, an "everyone else is wrong" attitude. Heaven help you if you are the optimistic type - you'll soon be shown the door!

Yes, it's true that The Ducker can be useful in an area that requires tracking and checking for quality control, but, for all the destruction they cause, business leaders and management need to really asses whether or not it's worth it to keep these people on payroll. They create a defensive atmosphere instead of a creative and productive one.

Lorraine Arams: link

Subject: Management Training

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