Excellence in Leadership
Course Length: 3 days
Course Description
This course takes a deep and insightful look at the topic of leadership, the “art” side of management, from two distinct yet integrated perspectives; leadership as applied to oversight responsibilities and the ongoing personal development of a leader.
The course will emphasize the critical role that the “human relation” side of management plays in the planning, execution, and control of any size project effort. Utilizing insights and critical distinctions based on the facilitator’s vast and varied management and executive leadership experience, participants will be brought face to face with questions about their own leadership effectiveness. This course requires “real” and substantive participation that will result in the participants being lead through a detailed look at the critical aspects of effective leadership, personal development, coaching-mentoring, managing in a chaotic environment, proactive and effective communication, and the distinctions of effective personal development as a leader.
This course is highly interactive and adaptive to class interests and needs. A lecture/discussion approach is used and is accompanied by individual and team exercises with team reports. Managers and executives who have leadership roles in their organizations would benefit from attending this course.
Course Objectives
- Learn the critical success factors to leadership in an oversight environment
- Gain insight into the power and influence positions in effective leadership
- Examine the critical success factors and best-practice behaviors in achieving effective and lasting results with coaching and mentoring
- Understand the many “faces” of leadership and gain insight into the best-practices and mind-sets inherent in successful leadership models
- Work with the current models in emotional intelligence and its application to intuitive leadership principles
- Assess your effectiveness as a leader and create a personal development plan for future insight, efficiency and success
Effective Leadership Techniques
Course Length: 3 days
Course Description
This course takes a multi-dimensional look at the responsibilities that face managers every day. In today’s business environment, the manager and his or her staff have a different relationship than ever before. The successful manager has to master the art of motivating, managing and taking charge of projects and people. This course will address the pertinent issues facing today’s managers and develop real world solutions based on real world issues. It will also illustrate an effective approach to implementing an action plan against field performance or development plans.
This course is highly interactive and adaptive to participant’s interests and needs. A discussion approach is used and is accompanied by individual and team exercises. Managers and team members who wish to enhance their leadership skills and manage for results would benefit by taking this course. Participants should come to class ready to discuss real management situations and optimize their class time. Assignments may be given between sessions.
Course Objectives
- Create a road map for successful communications that can reach across organizational boundaries
- Establish your style of leadership
- Build spirit, motivation, role modeling and empathy to develop a team environment
- Build synergy to allow for team based discussions that lead to consensus
- Position yourself and other team members to achieve success
- Use project management skills to plan and manage work
- Assign resources based on skill sets to reap better results
- Identify and understand the critical success factors necessary to consistently achieve high yield negotiations
- Explore techniques for presenting information and creating a win-win for all
- Understand persuasion, personal power and how they can help you become a better influencer
- Determine objectives from varied sources to set the tone for a comprehensive and goal oriented plan
- Identify creative problem solving techniques to solve leadership problems
- Manage difficult employees and situations proactively
- Harness conflict and use its energy for productive output
- Give effective performance appraisals
- Implement corrective actions
- Understand meeting management basics
- Identify effective facilitation skills
- Use change productively
- Identify ways to help employees deal with change
Leadership Skills: Introductory Techniques and Practices
Course Length: 1 day
Course Description
Managers face a set of unique challenges in the daily management of resources and administration of services. This important position requires successful incumbents to rapidly move between a focus on leading the team, delivering world class services and concurrently managing processes and procedures. This course is developed to equip managers with the tools and strategies needed to interact effectively in all facets of their management role. The focus is on providing managers with a system to improve team behavior, negotiation, decision-making and conflict management skills, and in turn, results. Attention is paid to individual skill sets as well as the collective culture. This course is interactive in nature and utilizes case studies, team work and a variety of exercises that effect positive change and provide new and experienced managers with the requisite skills for success.
The format of the course is highly interactive and how-to oriented. Discussion of concepts and principles is followed by exercises. The emphasis is on the practical application and adaptation of selected tools and processes. Professionals new to the management role will benefit from attending this course.
Course Objectives
- Learn the fundamentals necessary for effective management and how they affect the individuals you oversee.
- Understand and adopt the company’s management philosophy
- Know when to manage and when to lead
- Analyze your leadership style and make it work for positive results
- Enhance your communication skills for greater success
- Plan for performance and development and write effective evaluations
Enhancing Executive Leadership Skills
Course Length: 2 days
Course Description
One of the greatest challenges that a manager, director or executive can face is that of effective leadership. Leadership is the ability to direct, supervise, encourage, inspire, and coordinate, and in doing so facilitate action and guide change. Leaders develop their own leadership qualities and those of others so that, through development and training, new leaders may follow.
Effective leaders know themselves, their strengths, weaknesses, and those of the people around them. They must know your objectives and have a plan of how to achieve them. They must build a team of people that share their commitment to achieve those objectives, and must help each team member to achieve their best. This two day course is designed to provide Vice Presidents and senior level executives the ability to assess their personal leadership styles, turn vision into strategy, and devise a plan to optimize leadership skills resident in their company.
This course is highly interactive and how-to oriented. Discussion of concepts and principles is followed by hands-on exercises. The emphasis is on the practical application and adaptation of selected tools and processes. Vice Presidents and senior level executives would benefit by taking this course
Course Objectives
- Turn vision into strategic thinking
- Understand the competencies of executive leadership
- Understand and apply situational leadership
- Identify ways to use business ethics to build trust
- Articulate a passionate/noble purpose and personal vision
- Assess personal values and be able to integrate them into the business setting
- Describe 3 keys to motivating the workforce
- Coach employees toward improved performance
- Improve communication through active listening and future-focused conversations
- Define Emotional Intelligence and its organizational benefits
- Understand personal Emotional Intelligence strengths and developmental needs
- Prioritize based on the 80/20 rule
- Draw on a personal development plan for further development as a leader
21st Century Leadership: Managing for Results
Course Length: 3 days
Course Descriptions
This course is developed to equip team members with the tools needed to interact effectively. It will provide attendees with a system to improve team behavior, negotiation and conflict management skills and in turn, results. Attention is paid to individual skill sets as well as the collective culture. The assessment instruments and communication tools utilized in the delivery of this program can be adopted by any organization to continually improve individual and team performance. In addition, the program is designed to help participants develop a clear and concise thought process required to plan, conduct, control, and succeed at negotiations of all levels.
This course is highly interactive and adaptive to participant’s interests and needs. A discussion approach is used and is accompanied by individual and team exercises. The coverage is practical but intense and designed to impart usable skills for each participant. Managers and team members who wish to enhance their leadership skills and manage for results would benefit by taking this course.
Course Objectives
- Identify communication links
- Create a road map for successful communications that can reach across organizational boundaries
- Build synergy to allow for team based discussions that lead to consensus in a timely fashion
- Position yourself and other members of the team to achieve success by utilizing the right person for the job
- Identify and practice the basics of meeting management
- Identify and understand the critical success factors necessary to consistently achieve high yield negotiations
- Determine objectives from varied sources to set the tone for a comprehensive and goal oriented plan and build in room for changing and varied circumstances
- Understand creative problem solving
- Use your creativity to solve leadership problems
Elements of Effective Executive Coaching
Course Length: 1 day
Course Description
Experience tells us that each of us requires feedback and assistance if we are to understand how well we are doing at a given task, set of tasks, or organizational expectations. We also know that people that work with us and for us need that same information and coaching. Knowing how to coach and mentor, especially how to construct effective messages, give and receive feedback, and actively listen, is an art in as much as a science. Knowing how to coach and mentor is a critical competency and one that takes some time to acquire and refine.
This course for executives and leaders includes information regarding the importance of coaching and mentoring, tips for coaches, a look at the communication model, a discussion of listening skills and an opportunity for participants to practice coaching skills.
This course is highly interactive and adaptive to participant’s interests and needs. A discussion approach is used and is accompanied by individual and team exercises. The coverage is practical but intense and designed to impart usable skills for each participant. Executives who wish to understand the intricacies of the coaching process would benefit by taking this course.
Course Objectives
- Understand the elements, benefits and uses of effective coaching and mentoring
- Define an effective coaching activity
- Assess behavior and performance development activities
- Determine targeted coaching/mentoring objectives, set goals and create action plans
- Select the appropriate behavioral change techniques, learning model and self-monitoring strategy
- Understand why effective communication is critical in the process
- Explore elements of the communication model for coaching
- Define and utilize a systematic method for effective, results-based coaching
- Select the appropriate behavioral analysis, measurement techniques, data collection and analysis tools
- Establish a suitable framework for evaluation (ROI, ROE)
- Create a client report card to provide critical feedback
Implementing, Leading and Managing Knowledge Management
Course Length: 3 days
Course Description
Understanding what knowledge management is and why it is beneficial to an organization are only the beginning steps to developing a sound and solid effort. Understanding how to effectively implement and how to lead and manage the knowledge management effort are the next steps in the process.
In this course, we will look at best practices for implementing knowledge management. Participants will understand what to do and what not to do and will develop a plan for moving forward with knowledge management efforts in their respective governmental agencies. This course is highly interactive and how-to oriented. Discussion of concepts and principles is followed by hands-on exercises. The emphasis is on the practical application and adaptation of selected tools and processes. Government personnel would benefit by taking this course.
Course Objectives
- Identify the best practices for knowledge management
- Understand key performance measurement topics
- Build a business case using analysis techniques and decision theory
- Understand the basics of organization development
- Explore the concept of a learning organization
- Understand how to develop and sustain a learning organization
- Develop a knowledge management implementation plan
- Understand how knowledge management changes and how to deal with it
- Understand how to facilitate knowledge management efforts
- Identify key aspects of leading and managing knowledge management efforts
Knowledge Management 101
Course Length: 2 Days
Course Description
Knowledge management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings. In simpler terms, knowledge management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge, increasing awareness and understanding in the process.
Learning Objectives
- Understand knowledge management and the relationship to the President’s Management Agenda and business best practices
- Familiarize with knowledge management terminology
Executive Leadership Certificate Program
Course Length: 10 – 2 Day Sessions
Course Description
The goal of this program is to deliver a transformational management development curriculum based on concepts presented in leading business books.
The program will consist of ten 2-day courses. Participants will be required to read the assigned books before the course date, complete a brief, thought provoking worksheet and come to class prepared to discuss the concepts and methodologies presented in the reading.
This course is highly interactive and adaptive to participant’s interests and needs. Executives and senior management from all areas of an organization would benefit by taking this course.
Course Objectives
- Understand and discuss the concepts and methodologies in the assigned leadership books
- Understand and discuss the concepts and methodologies in the assigned management style and structure books
- Understand and discuss the concepts and methodologies in the assigned human elements books
Program Required Reading
Module I: Leadership
Collins, James C. and Porras, Jerry I.Built To Last. New York, NY: Harper Business, 1994.
Jackson, Phil. Sacred Hoops. New York, NY: Hyperion, 1995.
Covey, Stephen R., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York, NY: Simon and Shuster, 1989.
Krause, Donald G., The Way of The Leader. New York, NY: Berkeley, 1997.
Waitley, Denis. Empires of the Mind. New York, NY: Morrow and Sons, 1995.
Module II: Management Style and Structure
Goodstein, Leonard. Applied Strategic Planning. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1992.
Deming, W. Edwards. Out Of The Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study
Rothwell, William J., Sullivan, Roland, and McLean, Gary. Practicing Organization Development. San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer and Company, 1995.
Module III: Human Elements
Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1990.
Wright, Lesley and Smye, Marti. Corporate Abuse. New York, NY: MacMillian, 1996.
Ackoff, Russell. The Democratic Corporation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Wilms, Wellford W. Restoring Prosperity. New York, NY. Random House, 1996.
MODULE I: LEADERSHIP
Built To Last, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras
Built to Last explores the deep reasons behind American long term corporate success stories. In it, the authors provide new insights into the workings of eighteen visionary companies, including 3M, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney, Boeing, Sony and Hewlett Packard. Drawing upon a 6 year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras studied each exceptional and long lasting company in direct comparison with one of its competitors. Throughout, they asked ” What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies? Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.
Empires of the Mind, Denis Waitley
Empires of the Mind is a revolutionary book that explains why standard management practices, job descriptions and career tracks are obsolete. In order to succeed, individuals at every level must reinvent themselves as their companies and institutions restructure the way they function. This books offers answers to men and women interested in reengineering themselves as well as their corporations.
Sacred Hoops, Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty
One of the most respected basketball coaches in NBA history, Phil Jackson has developed a new paradigm of leadership based on Eastern and Native American principles. Jackson reveals how he directs his players to act with a clear mind, not thinking, just doing; to respect the enemy and be aggressive without anger or violence; to live in the moment and stay calmly focused in the midst of chaos, so that the “me” becomes the servant of the “we”. Sacred Hoops captures the potential of the human spirit.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity – principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom and the power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
The Way of the Leader, Donald G. Krause
For centuries, great leaders have followed the theories of Sun Tzu and Confucius to win victories through effective use of leadership power. This book will clearly demonstrate how the timeless wisdom of these two philosophers has been used by contemporary leaders and how it can be used by anyone to develop and execute true leadership in today’s volatile economic climate.
MODULE II: MANAGEMENT STYLE AND STRUCTURE
Applied Strategic Planning, Leonard Goodstein, Timothy Nolan, J. William Pfeiffer
This text presents a pragmatic to identifying systematizing and implementing the kind of long term strategies that will enable you to compete successfully well into the next century. With its emphasis on integration of business and functional plans, performance audits, organizational culture, gap analysis, and values clarification, this book surpasses strategic planning manuals in all the vital ways that spell the difference between success and failure.
Out Of The Crisis, W. Edwards Deming
The overwhelming challenge that faces the U.S. today is the need to regain competitive position in international commerce. America continues to lose ground in manufacturing and service markets. The problem can be attributed to low quality and the high costs associated with many products and services. The way to correct the problem is to have managers increase the quality and productivity of the systems of people and machines that they manage. Deming proposes that managers do not understand what must be done. In this book, he explains what they have been doing wrong, informs them what they must do and shows them his way out of the crisis.
Practicing Organization Development, William J. Rothwell, Roland Sullivan, Gary N. McLean
In this exciting collection of readings, experts in the field of organization development take you through each phase of implementing the change process. This book is packed with useful, tried and true information on applying OD principles in the real world. Principles learned in this text will ensure success in the role of a change agent.
MODULE III: HUMAN ELEMENTS
Corporate Abuse, Lesley Wright and Marti Smye
The authors’ exhaustive research, spanning diverse fields and levels on the corporate ladder, documents the painful reality that American corporations are wringing blood from stones. But Corporate Abuse isn’t just a litany of business sins: Wright and Smye show how this epidemic manifests itself in a variety of corporate cultures and personality types, how it is a natural outcome of organizations in transition.
The Democratic Corporation, Russell L. Ackoff
A widely respected business thinker and pioneer in the fields of operations research and systems thinking offers a radical new approach to revitalize the American corporation. Ackoff explodes a number of fashionable business notions and introduces new organizational structures that can give a competitive edge. He cites examples from prominent companies such as General Motors, IBM, Kodak, Alcoa, Dupont, and others.
The Fifth Discipline, Peter M. Senge
Senge’s pathbreaking book draws on science, spiritual wisdom, psychology, and the cutting edge of management thought to show how businesses can overcome their “learning disabilities” and beat the odds of failure. The book provides a searching personal experience and a dramatic professional shift of mind.
Restoring Prosperity, Wellford W. Wilms
A vivid and revealing portrait of companies, unions, and individuals fighting to change and survive, Restoring Prosperity offers a road map which will lead workers and management to a better future. Wilms and his team were granted complete access to all employees at four major companies which were struggling, to get a first-hand view of how management reforms really filter down to the shop floor.
