Coaching & Consulting Network

Management is the art of creating an environment within which a given leader’s or manager’s personnel can grow, learn, take initiatives and responsibilities, feel empowered enough to take measured personal and professional risks, develop their autonomy, experiment new performance solutions, focus on achieving results and generally increase their organization’s value.

Good management rests on people skills.  These skills help reduce costs and turnover, increase quality, develop responsibility, manage time efficiently, increase reactivity to market variations, permit people-development, consolidate individual and collective engagement, strengthen company culture, increase client fidelity, etc.  The list is long.  In fact today, there are practically no measurable reasons to avoid implementing an effective empowering management style within any maturing organization’s culture.

Empowering management, however, is not a list of principles but a set of very precise skills and behaviours.  Empowering management can be acquired by practicing those specific behaviors which permit key leaders and managers to create a learning and growth environment within which personnel can expand and deliver their full potential.

More practically, the skill set daily deployed by an empowering manager can very extensively be used in specific settings such as when processing personnel and yearly evaluations, mentoring, negotiating and setting goals, recruiting, designing and managing projects, attending meetings, responding both to urgent organizational needs and strategic issues, etc. 

The program detailed below proposes practical behavioural training on specific strategies and skills chosen and adapted to enhance the performance of those leaders and managers who wish to develop effective behaviors within their personal and work environments.  It is delivered to very measurably train leaders and managers to develop the personal attitudes and behavioral skills which permit the creation of a truly learning environment to benefit their own and their personnel’s empowerment and their organization's sustainable development.

TOOLS :

• Listening skills in one-on one relationships, silence, verbal punctuation.
• Posture, receptive attitudes, body language.
• Passive and active pacing and prodding. 
• Effective reformulation and the difference with mere repetition or "parroting"
• Respectful expression and formulation of feelings and intuitions by the manager.
• Linguistic clarification.
• Etc.

Each technique is extensively practiced by each manager in small groups, during five to ten-minute sequences followed by an evaluation of results and discussion.

MANAGEMENT THEMES :

Creating an empowering relationship and environment when:

• Hiring
• Negotiating goals
• Designing presenting projects
• Evaluating personnel
• Mentoring
• Problem-solving

Each leader or manager will set personal goals to implement the newly acquired skills within their professional environment in specific situations, with deadlines.

• Definition of "target" situations and people to practice skills on the job.  
• Targeting managerial and other communication situations where the use of management tools could prove useful or effective (evaluation, goal-setting, meetings, etc.)
• Personal follow up dates and reality checking.

II  THE MANAGERIAL ART OF DEVELOPING PERSONNEL GROWTH AND AWARENESS

2-day behavioural training workshop

Presentation/Inclusion of the participants, training process presentation. 
Revisit of the on-the-job work and experimenting implemented between the sessions
Revisiting  the "empowerment" context facilitated by communication skills and strategies.   Reminder of the specific empowering manager posture (dialogue versus discussion).
Definition of the work groups (manager, employee, observer), operating process.

TOOLS :

Practical and progressive introduction to each management communication skill and tool:  Each technique will be extensively practiced by each participant in small groups, during five to ten-minute sequences.

• Questions : The judicious use of open, closed, directed, neutral and powerful questions by the empowering manager.
• Questions to explore employee challenges, issues, objectives, needs and stakes.
• The manager’s use of questions focused on facilitating emerging solutions.
• Manager use of questions to enlarge transform operational frames of reference.
• Manager use of questions focused on who the employee is and on how the employee processes rather than on the content of a problem, project, situation or objective.
• The use of "powerful" questioning techniques in days-to day managerial situations.
• Questions for action plans, focused on results.
  

THEMES:

The art of asking the right kind of questions at the right time is a key managerial technique to facilitate responsible empowered delegation.  The skill can also be very powerful in negotiation, personnel evaluation, hiring, mentoring, etc.,  This segment of the training process calls for intensive practice by each of the participants.

Specific goal setting for on-the-job implementing between the sessions.

III   CONTRACTING SKILLS IN MANAGEMENT

2-day behavioural training workshop
 
Revisit of on-the-job experimenting and implementing between the sessions
Revisiting of  the "empowerment" context facilitated by the communication tools and strategies.  Reminder of the empowering management posture (dialogue versus discussion) and its relevance in leadership.
Definition of the work groups (manager, employee, observer), operating process.

TOOLS :

Practical and progressive introduction to each tool:  Each skill or technique will be extensively practiced by each participant in small 3-person groups, during five to ten-minute sequences.

• Contract clarification including objectives, pertinent measures and performing measurement instruments.
• Triangular contract contexts and negotiation.
• Contracting in internals networks, for functional and transversal support.
• Written contracts.
• "Anti-sabotage" focus and strategies.
• Follow-up, checks and tracking measures for managers and employees.

THEMES:

Complementary issues can be covered :

• Prescription of diagnostics, (360°, MBTI, audits, etc).
• Contract « games », modifying contracts, concluding contracts,
• Team meeting agreements and meeting time management.
• Contracts for questions/reformulations/expressing perceptions.
• Implementation contracts, project contracts.
• Follow-up contracts and measures.
• The place for quarterly follow-up and yearly evaluations for the manager.

Specific goal setting for on-the-job implementing between the sessions.

IV   PERCEIVING AND MANAGING TEAMS WITH A “SYSTEMIC APPROACH”

2-day behavioural training workshop

Revisit on-the-job experimenting and practice between the sessions
Revisiting of  the empowerment context facilitated by manager communication tools and strategies.  Reminder of the specific empowering manager posture (dialogue versus discussion) and its relevance in delegation.
Definition of the work groups (manager, employee, observer), operating process.

TOOLS:

Practical and progressive introduction to each tool:  Each technique will be extensively practiced by each participant in small groups, during five to ten-minute sequences.

• Systemic and projective techniques in planning and interviewing, differed and «  live » or on-the-job managing and mentoring.
• Employee and team relationship indicators and how the manager can use these with a metaphorical approach.
• The manager – employee relationship, transference and counter transference.
• Strategic choice of “high” and “low” positions for the leader or manager.
• Projective tools, how and when a manager can use them
• Each skill technique will be extensively practiced by each participant in small groups, during five to ten-minute sequences.

THEMES : Some complementary themes can be covered :

• Presentation of systems approach principles as they apply to team management.
• Introduction to systemic supervision for the manager.
• The scapegoat process, family constellations, systemic games in teams.
• Performance potentials inherent to employee interfaces
• Contracts for projective work sequences, use of video, flip charts, projectors, drawings, etc. 
• Space management (Gestalt), time management (future projections).
• Triangulation.
• The use of paradoxical strategies, paradoxical questions and affirmations by the manager.