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The Leadership Series -
Leadership Essentials Courses
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This series of courses is ideal education for new managers, team leaders, pre-management development candidates or as a refresher for incumbent managers
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Each module is a stand-alone course for online or classroom delivery
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Download a brochure on the complete Leadership Series
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The 12 "Essentials" courses in the Leadership Series are listed below with objectives and skill points itemized. Link to a detailed description of the course by clicking on the title
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We invite you to preview the online Leadership Series course, Essential Skills of Communication - no charge
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Essential Skills of Communicating
Classroom - 4 Hours or Online Course - 1.5 Hours
Managers and team leaders will be able to:
Create a Climate of Open Communication
The bedrock of good communication is openness—the extent to which the organization and its people support the free exchange of open, honest communication. Openness contributes more to a positive communication climate than any other factor.
Design Clear, Concise Messages
Messages that are well designed are clear and concise. Managers and team leaders need to organize their thoughts and speak to each team member’s level of understanding.
Manage Nonverbal Behaviors Effectively
Voice tone, intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and posture are some of the nonverbal factors that managers and team leaders must understand and learn to use for effective communication.
Listen to Communicate
Effective communication cannot take place without effective listening, which includes the ability to reflect, probe, support, and advise.
Objectives
See that communication is a two-way process.
Construct clear, concise messages in the interest of the listener.
Manage nonverbal behaviors to reinforce the intent of messages.
Listen actively to improve communication.
Create a climate of open communication, which increases team members’ motivation and commitment.
Skill Points
Create a Climate of Open Communication
Design Clear, Concise Messages
Manage Nonverbal Behaviors Effectively
Listen to Communicate
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Essential Skills of Leadership
Classroom Course- 4 Hours or Online Course - 1.5 Hours
Managers and team leaders will be able to:
Maintain and Enhance Team Member Self-Esteem
This is probably the single most important skill a manager or team leader can have. It is the ability to provide direction, evaluate performance, correct work habits, deal with complaints, and resolve conflicts while supporting a team member’s sense of self-respect and dignity.
Focus on Behavior
Problems on the job are solved more effectively and less stressfully when managers and team leaders deal with what people do rather than with their attitudes or personal characteristics.
Encourage Team Member Participation
Involving team members in decision-making, problem solving, and other non-routine, on-the-job activities is one of the manager’s or team leader’s key motivational tools.
Objectives
Deal with team members on a day-to-day basis in such a way as to maintain and enhance their self- esteem.
Base discussions about performance and work habits on behavior rather than on personalities and attitudes.
Involve team members in goal setting, problem solving and decision-making
Skill Points
Maintain or Enhance Team Member Self-Esteem
Focus on Behavior
Encourage Team Member Participation
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Upon completion of this module, the team leader will have the skills to conduct a successful meeting with a team member on how to perform a job, task or skill. The team leader will also learn how to distinguish between performance problems that require coaching and those that can best be handled by some other means.
Objectives
Understand what coaching is, why it is important, and how it supports individual and company goals.
Prepare for a coaching session by using observation and analysis to build a plan for a successful dialog.
Hold a coaching conversation that improves an individual’s performance and increases productivity.
Use coaching as a way to build a valuable sense of teamwork between the team leader and team member through communication, shared goals and collaboration
Skill Points
Observe and Analyze Performance
Identify Area of Performance that Needs Improvement
Demonstrate How Task Should be Performed and Ask Team Member for Questions
Have Team Member Demonstrate and Give Team Member Feedback on Performance
Set Up Time for Review
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Absenteeism . . . Repeated tardiness . . . Conduct . . .Dress code. If your team leaders are faced with these or other work habit issues, this module will show them how to address these issues. Merely quoting company regulations to the noncompliant worker will not solve the problem. The truly effective team leader immediately addresses poor work habits in a supportive, non-threatening way.
Objectives
Recognize the difference between job performance and work habits. Managers will understand that a work habits discussion is not coaching and requires different skills for successful resolution.
Understand that unsatisfactory work habits must be dealt with quickly and effectively before they require disciplinary action.
Explain clearly and specifically the nature of the team member’s unsatisfactory work habit while focusing on behaviors rather than attitude.
Use an action plan and ongoing reviews to help team members improve work habits and demonstrate personal accountability.
Skill Points
State problem clearly and specifically
Ask team member’s view
Ask team member for solution
Agree on plan
Set up time for review
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Whenever people work together, conflicts arise. They may be simple misunderstandings that your managers and team leaders can clear up. Or they may reveal subtle, but pervasive, morale problems that threaten to tear the delicate fabric of your organization. This module shows managers and team leaders how to explore a conflict and get to the heart of the problem to correct it before it’s too late.
Objectives
Accept conflict as an inevitable part of all work situations and deal with it in order to maintain individual and team focus and productivity.
Recognize the positive and negative impacts of conflicts and leverage conflict to everyone’s advantage.
Distinguish between the two major sources of conflict so that they it can be resolved fairly and effectively.
Establish a cooperative atmosphere to resolve conflicts when they arise.
Skill Points
Ask each team member to state problem
Ask each team member to state other’s view of problem
Ask each team member to confirm accuracy of other’s restatement Focus on objective facts, areas of mutual need or mutual goals
Ask each to suggest solutions
Bring both to agreement on specific steps to resolve conflict and set up time for review
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As the link between management goals and the frontline labor force, the manager or team leader is the key to supporting change. Dealing with the “comfort level” of team members and involving them in detailed discussions will facilitate their acceptance of new ways of doing things. This module shows managers and team leaders how to introduce change without inducing defensive reactions.
Objectives
Understand why change happens, how people react to it, and how to support team member’s struggles with change.
Involve team members in a change initiative by promoting their understanding and ownership of the change and its benefits.
Plan for individual or group follow-up sessions that support the change process and reinforce personal and organizational goals.
Skill Points
Detail coming change and explain reason for it
Let team member ask questions, express opinions and concerns
Respond to team member’s questions and concerns
Get commitment and set up time for review
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Most of us dislike having to discipline team members. Discipline team members because feelings can be easily hurt and resentment can linger for a long time. The skills your managers and team leaders will learn in Effective Discipline will preserve team members’ self respect and egos while changing the unacceptable behavior. This process encourages the best kind of discipline-self-discipline. It also motivates team members to accomplish their goals and work well within the organization.
Objectives
Use the techniques of effective discipline to eliminate problem behavior .
Communicate concerns in terms of behavior rather than perception or opinion.
Minimize defensiveness and focus on solutions.
Reduce conflict avoidance behaviors that undermine team morale, impact perceived fairness and impede overall productivity.
Review performance to make sure the problem is resolved.
Recognize the importance of team member participation in defining the problems and solutions.
Skill Points
State Performance Problem
Ask Team Member’s View
Ask Team Member for a Solution
Agree on Plan
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Delegating
Classroom - 4 Hours or Online Course - 1.5 Hours
This module gives valuable insights into and practice of the “Three W’s” of effective delegation: When should team leaders delegate?; Whom should they delegate to?; and What explanation should they give to team members? Delegating also shows how to use delegation as a motivational tool, and improve team members’ skills.
Objectives
Understand the role of delegation in time management, resource utilization, job satisfaction and overall team productivity.
Use a delegation process that ensures team member participation, involvement, and success so that what needs to be done gets done – properly and on time.
Establish a team member’s responsibility and authority for a delegated task – creating a framework for accountability and personal growth.
Skill Points
Explain need for delegation
Use delegation of task to motivate
Explain task and ask team member’s view
Specify responsibility and authority
Confirm team member’s understanding and set up time for review
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Most managers and team leaders realize the importance of upward communication, but few accept the responsibility for the quality and effectiveness of communicating with their own managers. Managers and team leaders will learn how to frame communication so that a desired result is achieved.
Objectives
Understand the importance of framing all
communication with their manager in terms of his/her self-interest.
Enter meetings with their manager armed with a well-thought-out and clearly stated objective.
Clearly link their objective with facts that support their plans and goals.
Work with their manager to uncover any questions or reservations he/she may have concerning their message.
Move conversations toward agreement with questions that focus on the benefits to be gained when the objective is reached.
Clearly and concisely restate the decisions that results from Communicating Up and insure that those decisions are mutually understood.
Skill Points
State objective concisely in terms of the needs and interests of their manager
Detail objective and support it with facts
Ask for and/or respond to questions
Probe for agreement
Summarize and confirm conclusion
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As the leaders on the front line, managers and team leaders are often the first to hear team member complaints. And though sometimes they may seem to they may seem to be unimportant, each complaint should be addressed and resolved. This module shows how to resolve simple complaints and identify the “hidden agendas” that so often underlie the chronic grievances.
Objectives
Understand why all team member complaints must be dealt with rather than ignored or dismissed.
Be more sensitive to all the problems-minor or trivial, real or imagined-that can lie behind complaints.
Understand techniques used to determine underlying problems, which are not always the same as those the team member thinks are responsible for his/her difficulties.
Use various techniques to solve such problems while maintaining a positive relationship with the team member.
Skill Points
Ask team member to detail complaint
Get agreement on substance of complaint
Ask team member for solution
Schedule time for investigation and agree on action plan
Set a date for follow-up meeting
Summarize and confirm conclusion
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Unless your managers and team leaders are successful in spelling out the organization’s specific goals, their team members are not going to know how to meet those objectives. This module shows trainees how to establish specific, measurable, attainable, result-oriented, and time-framed performance standards. It then illustrates the steps that gain team member agreement and commitment to those performance standards.
Objectives
Define goals, objectives, and performance standards.
Identify and set performance standards that are specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time-framed, using concrete active language.
Establish time limits for all performance standards.
Involve team members in creating their own individual performance standards.
Negotiate to develop performance standards for team members that address both desired results and team members’ capabilities.
Monitor team members’ progress toward their goals by holding individual review meetings.
Skill Points
State broad goal of the plan
Ask team member's view of what his or her performance standards should be within the plan
Negotiate by modifying unrealistically high or low performance standards
Agree on a set of performance standards that are clear, specific, and measurable
Confirm team member’s commitment and set up review
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This module shows how evaluation is done by the experts. First, relevant performance standards are established. Then, the team member’s own performance evaluation is solicited. This accomplished, the stage is set for a summary evaluation that will be clear and credible to the team member.
Objectives
Base assessments on facts and behavior. Assess performance.
Use positive feedback to motivate team members.
Gain team member participation in assessment.
Gain team member agreement with the assessment.
Gain team member commitment to the change needed to improve performance.
Skill Points
Ask for team member’s evaluation and give your evaluation of performance
Identify what would help maintain or improve performance
Ask team member to identify how improvement can be achieved
Agree on plan
Get commitment and set up review
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Download a matrix on the complete Leadership Series
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Note: You are invited to preview ANY MODULE of the Leadership Series - simply contact ALD and within 24 hours you'll receive an access code for your preview.
The Leadership Series courses are products of Vital Learning Corp, Omaha, NE
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