Course Objectives

Participants Will Learn How To

• Lead and manage teams within a strategic context
• Enable effective decision making in challenging situations
• Extend alliances across the organization
• Proactively manage and facilitate change to achieve desired results
• Focus on individual and team strengths to enhance capability and performance
• Navigate organizational politics to get things done

Who Should Attend

 Experienced and middle managers and team managers who wish to enhance their ability to drive results and take their leadership skills to the next level

Course Content

The Role of an Experienced Manager

• Assessing your strengths
• The scope of the middle management role
• The voice of experience
• Building credibility and trust
• Managing for results

Linking Strategy to Action

Implementing a strategic direction

• Seeing the big picture
• Identifying what impacts your strategy
• Establishing and maintaining internal alignment

Translating strategy into measurable outcomes

• Ensuring people get and stay focused on the right results
• Building momentum using measures and milestones
• Communicating results up and down the hierarchy

Making Tough Decisions

What makes a decision challenging

• Dealing with the unknown
• Problems and dilemmas
• Recognizing cognitive and personal biases

Decision-making styles

• Identifying your own style
• Flexing your style to gain buy-in

Implementing a decision-making model

• Employing a step-by-step process
• Generating and prioritizing options
• Weighing decision criteria
• Minimizing the potential for conflict
• Making appropriate tradeoffs

Expanding Your Influence Across Your Organization

Fostering Change from the Middle

The challenge of change

• Why change is difficult
• Helping people see the need for change
• Inspiring action from your team

Making change happen

• Implementing approaches throughout the change process that deliver effective results
• Identifying those resistant to change
• Transforming resistance into cooperative productivity

Engaging and Mobilizing Others

Leveraging team performance for strategic results

• Supporting improved individual and team performance
• Eliminating performance barriers
• Fostering ownership, accountability and teamwork in your management team
• Effectively integrating new team members

Harnessing individual strengths

• Motivating others through a shared vision
• Aligning individual purpose with organizational goals
• Promoting individual talents and skills

Politics with IntegrityOrganizational culture

• Demystifying your organization's culture
• Appreciating political dynamics
• Recognizing the politics in internal processes and relationships
• Valuing different perspectives