Coaching & Consulting Network

Empowering 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 make decisions, take measured personal and professional risks, develop their autonomy, experiment new performance solutions, focus on achieving results and generally increase their organization’s value.

If empowering management principally rests on people skills, it also has a very important effect on operational results.  In  a larger systemic way, these indirectly help reduce costs and turnover, increase quality, develop responsibility, manage time effectively, set challenging goals, increase reactivity, shorten time to market, foster internal people-development, consolidate individual and collective engagement, strengthen company culture, increase client fidelity, increase resuts and profits, etc.  The list is incredibly long.  In fact today, there are practically no measurable reasons to avoid implementing a truly empowering management culture within any maturing organization’s.

For the systemic leader, executive, entrepreneur or external coach capable of creating such en empowered environment, there is also a lot to gain.  One can havemore personal time and energy for strategic thinking, to develop more effective networks in the organizational context, to prepare to face the increasing complexity of today's business environment, to plan for longer-term transformation, to prepare for their own future career, etc.

• Caution: A systemic and empowering management approach, however is not just a revisited list of leader-chic principles, but a set of very precise skills and behaviours. Empowering and systemic management know-how can be only acquired by extensive practice.  Room for this extensive practice is built into our program.
  

Specific systemic coaching skills permit key leaders and managers to become true change agents.  This happens by creating a collective learning and growth environment within which partners and employees can expand and deliver their full potential.  Acquiring these skills is the only way to avoid paradoxical "do what I say and not what I do".

More practically, the transformational coaching skill set that can be deployed daily by an empowering systemic manager is very extensive and practical.  It can be used in specific managment situations such as when managing individuals, mentoring, negotiating goals, recruiting, designing and managing projects, attending or leading meetings, enforcing procedures, processing yearly evaluations, responding to urgent needs and strategic issues, collaborating with business partners, creating collective transformational processes, etc. 

Consequently, the program detailed below proposes intensive and very practical behavioural training on systemic coaching strategies and skills specifically chosen for their effectiveness in systemic and transformational management.  These skills are adapted to enhance the performance of those leaders, managers and coaches who wish to develop new and more effective change-agent behaviors within their personal and work environments, or as external coaches. 

CAUTION:   This program is not centered on delivering management theory.  It is a practical learning environment in which participants will acquire and develop new behavioral skills.

FOR WHOM:  This programme concerns all high-potential leaders and managers who wish to learn how to use performing behaviors, strategies and tools in their professional (and personal) environments.  Among others this practical training can also concern, recruiters, sales representatives, HR professionals, internal trainers, coaches, etc.

To enhance on the job follow-up and experimentation between the training sessions, we strongly recommend grouped enrolment of two or three participants originating from the same organizational environment.

This program is exclusively delivered by Alain Cardon, a Master Certified Coache validated by the International Coach Federation.  It is based on an exclusive and protected ICF-recognized Coach Training (ACSTH) program designed and delivered by the Metasysteme Coach Academy.

I   CO-CREATING AN EMPOWERING RELATIONSHIP

 2-day behavioural training workshop

Presentation: Inclusion of participants. Training process presentation. Introduction to empowerment contexts facilitated by communication tools and strategies. 
Introduction to the empowering managerial attitude and posture (dialogue versus discussion) and its relevance for effective leaders and managers.
Definition of the work groups (manager, employee, observer), operating process.
Practical and progressive introduction to each tool:

TOOLS :

• Presence to system resonance patterns. Listening skills in one-on one and collective relationships.  Effective use of silence vacuum. Verbal punctuation.  Receptive listening
  
• Creating personal availability and offering developement space.
  
• Posture, receptive attitudes, body language. Quieting inner noise, letting go. De-stressing.  Focus on interface patterns rather than on problems and solutions.
• Effective time management.  Eight-minute interventions
  
• Passive and active pacing and prodding.  Creating a common growth context. 
• Effective reformulation and the difference with mere repetition or "parroting"
• Respectful expression and formulation of feelings and intuitions by the manager. 
• Linguistic clarification, corporal alignment, aspiration tools. Dealing with confusion and chaos.   Welcoming emerging solutions.
• Effective solution-oriented feed-forwarding.
  
• Etc.

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

MANAGEMENT THEMES :

Creating an empowering relationship and environment to allow for emerging solutions 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 in order to measure their powerful impact.

• 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.  Review of the specific empowering manager posture and attitude (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 as solution-focused communication scalpels : The judicious use of open, closed, directed, neutral and powerful questions by the empowering manager.
• The manager’s use of questions focused on facilitating emerging (systemic) 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, to transform systems and their cultural patterns.
• Action oriented-questions for project management, focused on responsibility, means, deadlines, tracking, follow-up, etc.
  

THEMES:

The art of asking the right kind of questions at the right time is a key managerial technique to facilitate responsible empowered delegation.  This section is focused on acquiring transformational skills.  Their practical application ranges from project management to running effective meetings, from negotiation to career management, from conflict resolution to strategic planning, from personnel mentoring to defining organizational vision and mission, 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

Presentation/Inclusion of the participants, training process definition. 
Revisit of on-the-job experimenting and implementing between the sessions
Revisiting of  the "empowerment" context facilitated by manager-coach communication tools and strategies.  Reminder of the empowering management attitude and 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.

• Questions to explore employee challenges, issues, objectives, needs and stakes.
• Contract clarification to align values, objectives, means, ethics, deadlines, measures of success, etc. Pertinent measures and performing measurement instruments.
• Triangular contracts, managing complexity, integrating political contexts and game contexts, clarification and negotiation.
• Contracting in internal and external networks, for functional and transversal support.
• Written, verbal contracts and agreements.
• "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 leader and manager.
• Specific goal setting for on-the-job implementing between the sessions.
• Celebrating success
  

IV   PERCEIVING AND MANAGING TEAMS WITH A “SYSTEMIC APPROACH”

2-day behavioural training workshop

Presentation/Inclusion of the participants, training process definition.
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 attitude and 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.
• Integrating environemental inputs, seizing opportunities, entrepreneurial reactivity, learning how to read the environment, integrating geographical criteria, strategizing with the environement,
  
• Employee and team relationship indicators and how the manager can use these with metaphorical approaches. 
• The manager – employee relationship, using transference and counter transference in management and when coaching (using resonances and manage with fractals). 
• 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 :

• Synthetic presentations of systems approach principles as they apply to individual, team and organizational 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.