Course Description

Why a program about managing managers? What is it that’s difficult?

• Balancing daily tasks with long-term strategic thinking. If you have managers reporting to you, lots of their “stuff” ends up being “fires” for you to put out.
• Your direct reports may manage a wide variety of functions, and it’s difficult for you to create a sense of unity and cohesiveness for your entire group.
• If you’re typical of most mid-level managers (and of most people!), you would just as soon ignore sticky situations such as dealing with difficult people. In fact, you may even back away.

Managing managers takes courage, and we’re going to give you a two-pronged approach — focusing on developing your business strategy and leadership strategy skills.

Learning Objectives

Successful completion of this course will increase your knowledge and ability to:

• Inspire a shared vision.
• Adjust your leadership style to meet your managers’ needs.
• Use delegation to empower your managers.
• Create action steps to develop your managers.

Course Outline- Full Day Agenda

 Chapter 1: Your Role As Liaison

• Introduction
  • What are your guiding principles as a manager?
  • The fear factor
• Translating the organizational vision into functional strategies
  • Balancing daily tasks with long-term strategies
  • Extracting goals from your mission statement
  • Achieving goals through individual execution
• Developing meaningful performance measurements
  • Stick to these guiding principles:
  • What to measure
  • Task management worksheet
• Evaluate your strategic skills
• Strategic thinking skills
  • SWOT analysis
  • Risk analysis
• Developing strategic relationships

Chapter 2: Sharpening Your Communications Skills

• Job description: Translator
  • Shifting between big-picture and daily-task focus:
• Job description: Information pipeline
  • Sharing feedback up and down the organizational ladder
• Job description: Storytelling
  • Using storytelling to inspire and share information
• Job description: Listener
  • Two basic listening modes
  • Levels of reflection
  • How to do it
  • Listening self-assessment
  • Specific words and phrases
  • For a difficult or confrontational conversation

Chapter 3: Increasing Your Management Effectiveness

• Understanding what motivates your managers
  • Definition of empowerment
  • Building ownership
• Removing obstacles and demotivators
• Creating a sense of unity and purpose among different units
• Choosing the most appropriate leadership style
• The dreaded micromanager
  • Avoiding micromanaging while maintaining practice controls

Chapter 4: Developing Your Managers

• Your hidden responsibility
  • Using delegation as a tool for growth
  • Traps to avoid:
  • How to delegate work “only you can do:”
  • Before you delegate, answer these questions:
• Recognizing “emotional contracts”
• Giving direction without giving answers
• Coaching managers
  • Defensiveness assessment
  • Coaching the “uncoachable”
  • What are some good goals?
• Tips for managing a diverse workforce
  • Different types of diversity
  • How diversity affects decision making and conflict

Workshop Participants

TMG considers the optimal number of participants to be 14-20 for facilitation of this workshop. A maximum of 24 is allowed.

Training Materials

A comprehensive workbook accompanies this course that serves as a reference guide for course content.

TMG Training Sessions Delivered to You On-Site.

The date you choose. The location you want. The results you need! TMG on-site training is the perfect solution for training ten employees or launching a company-wide training effort. It’s affordable, completely customizable and absolutely hassle-free. You can count on organizational results that are immediate and measurable.