Stepping up to Management — A 4-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

• Are you new to supervising or team leading?
• Do you want to be listened to?
• Do you find it hard communicating what you want in a clear and compelling way?
• Do you need to give people work to do and monitor how it gets done?
• Do you feel overwhelmed with the amount of work you now have to do?
• Do you need some guidelines to help you prioritise your work?
• Do meetings get hijacked or end in conflict rather than producing solutions with people responsible for putting them into action?

If the answer is "YES" - this is the course for you!

Developing management abilities is key to the growth of both the individual and the company. It is imperative that new supervisors and managers acquire the foundation of relevant skills upon which to build their career.

You will acquire new skills in time management, communication and build confidence in your own abilities. As a result you will feel more confident about managing a team, planning workloads and dealing with issues.

Course Objectives

On completion of this training course, delegates will be able to:

• Understand what people want from a team leader or supervisor
• Be able to give feedback in a constructive way
• Learn how to plan and resource work tasks
• Learn how to allocate tasks and monitor them
• Organise your own time and personal development
• Be able to recognise what the key elements of your communication are
• Learn how to manage meetings that result in action not minutes

From the Practical Workshops, students will:

• Experience using resourcing tools
• Experience learning how to communicate effectively
• Practice asserting yourself
• Interaction with other people with different communication styles and learn how to give and receive feedback in a positive way
• Practice being heard whilst listening to others in meetings
• Creation of a personalised daily plan

Intended Audience

This course is intended for:

• New supervisors or team leaders will receive the complete toolkit of skills they need from this course.

Benefits for your Company

Companies need managers to motivate and drive teams to get work done. There is huge company benefit in terms of: work saved, time saved and by managers who know what they are doing and can motivate teams to accomplish what they have planned.

Benefits for You

Being able to plan work for your team, communicate simply and clearly and manage both their time and your own, are basic management skills.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Outline Course Contents

Introduction & Welcome

You will meet other delegates in a similar position of responsibility to yourself. An experienced, friendly trainer will ensure the course focuses on the particular skills you want to develop.

Role of the Team Leader

You will discuss the qualities of good and bad leaders and the elements involved in leadership of a team. You will discuss the leaders you have known - good and bad and learn from the experiences of others to shape how you would like to be perceived as a leader.

Challenge Your Assumptions

This session is practical in nature with delegates exploring in teams the differences between them and the things that annoy them when people communicate badly. You will identify different communication styles and the cause and effect of assumptions.

You use flip chart paper to record communication issues with other delegates and present back to the group.

Assert Yourself

You will be introduced to the concept of assertiveness and personal beliefs. We have assertive or personal rights that enable us to assess our own and others behaviour. Being clear about our rights makes it easier to choose to behave assertively.

You will notice how your interpretation of actions can label others as aggressive, assertive or non-assertive.

You will assess where you are on the Assertion Triangle and practice useful strategies to employ when under pressure.

Communicating Your Ideas

The three golden rules of communication are discussed, as well as information on body language and tone of voice and how that affects what people hear. We look at building trust and creating rapport.

Giving Feedback

You will look at what makes feedback good or bad and how to give both positive and negative feedback in a way that drives the behaviours you want and reduces those that are unhelpful.

Convey Your Ideas: In Writing

We will look at preparation including objectives and desired outcome for the writing as well as selection of the correct media (including when to talk not write).

We will look at structure for documents and email and some best practice will be shared amongst the group.

You will practice some simple structuring techniques and re-write some emails to make them better. Bring your own examples to use for maximum benefit.

Manage Meetings

The session starts off with everyone discussing meetings and what makes them fail / waste time. We then look at the roles of chairperson/members, including effective agendas, ways to agree actions/gain decisions, take minutes, along with general guidelines for how to make meetings more productive.

Organise Your Time

Basic tips and tricks, including the difference between urgent and important (priority matrix), creating a daily plan and scheduling work rather than dropping everything when something new comes in.

Manage Resources

You will learn how to define goals by agreeing objectives, constraints and assumptions and documenting these with terms of reference. You will then see how goals can be broken down into tasks and allocated to team members. We will then discuss various methods of working with others to monitor and control the completion of tasks to the right standards by defining success criteria, managing expectations and change.

You learn how to estimate, plan and manage against your plan.

Progress Reporting

You look at what information is needed and the levels of accuracy required. You will also workshop who to communicate with and how often these reports are required.

You create an idea of what your progress report might look like.

Conflict & Escalation

We will look at what causes conflict and the various methods of dealing with it. You will explore how issues are escalated and what that means. We also look at how to deal with discipline and what the various stages of formal discipline are.

You share experiences of conflict with the group and try out other solutions that you may not have considered.

Action Plan

You decide what you will put into practice when you get back to work and how you will track your personal development.