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So What Do You Want to Learn to Do?

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Progressive Manager Network Workshops are focussed on helping you to learn and put into practice management tools and processes that will make you a more effective manager. Each workshop will run typically for 2-3 hours.

Workshops currently available include:

  1. Using 121s Effectively
  2. Giving and Getting Great Feedback
  3. Practical Coaching for Progressive Managers
  4. Hold More Effective Meetings
  5. Effective Delegation – helping your team to grow and get more done
  6. Performance Improvement through Effective Recruitment and Retention
  7. Managing Virtual Teams
  8. Your Role in Effective Employee Development
  9. Putting Strategic Thinking to Work
  10. Making Performance Reviews Work
  11. Managing Your Boss – building a relationship that works – for both of you
  12. Effective Communication – Listening and Responding – especially when you have to say NO!
  13. How to work with Alpha Males, Alpha Females and Other Dominant Types
  14. How to work with Influencers, Persuaders and Sales types
  15. How to work with Steady Eddys’ and Edwinas
  16. How to work with the Rule Followers
  17. Coaching Under-performing Employees
  18. Using ‘Skip Level’ Meetings
  19. Receiving Feedback on Your Direct Reports
  20. How to Build a Network
  21. The Fallacy of Time Management – getting more done in a regular working week
  22. Using a Mentor to Develop Your Managerial Career
  23. Make Brainstorming Work!
  24. Preparing for Your Review
  25. Resolving Conflict Between Members of Your Team
  26. Managing During Mergers and Acquisitions
  27. When YOU have to train – how to do it well
  28. The Art of the Apology
  29. Accelerating Effective Internal Customer Relationships
  30. Developing Urgency in Your Team
  31. How to Make an Open Door Policy work
  32. Handling Peer Conflict
  33. Strategy and SWOT
  34. Clarifying Roles
  35. Using Goals and Objectives to Improve Performance
  36. Just What Meetings Do You Need? – Make Your Meetings Work for You
  37. Effective Influencing
  38. Using Emotional Intelligence as a Practical Management Tool

See something that you want to learn how to do?

Want to learn how to do something that is not on the list?

Then get in touch using the contact form

More Great Questions to Improve Performance

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In an earlier post – Great Questions for Improving Performance through 121s I offered some questions that have worked well for me in 121s.

Well, here are some more.

  • What could you do which, done really well, would make a real difference to this organisation?
  • What do you need, from me, in order to help you to make your best contribution to the company?
  • What are the things for which I, and the organisation, should hold you accountable?  What should we expect from you?
  • How can we best use your knowledge, skills, passion and interest to help the company develop?
  • Who uses the outputs of your work?  What can you do to make sure that your outputs are well used?

Of course these questions can also work well outside of 121s.  The real point is that only when you start to explore questions like these with each member of your team will you really start to improve communication, teamwork and performance.

And of course the answers to the questions change continually as the business and its environment change – so this needs to be an ongoing and frequent dialogue.

This is the real work of coaching, development and performance management.

Anger and Decision Making

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Imagine that there are two people. You have to choose one of them to make an important decision. The first is cool, calm and analytical. The second is red-faced, with a vein throbbing on the side of their neck, angry.

Who do you choose to make the decision? Of course its a no brainer. Cool calm and analytical right?

WRONG!

According to recent research

“angry subjects were better able to discriminate between strong and weak arguments than the ones who were not angry—suggesting that anger can transform even those people who are, by disposition, not very analytical into more careful thinkers”

Despite its reputation as a trigger for rash behaviour, anger seems to help people make better choices—even aiding those who are usually very poor at thinking rationally. This could be because angry people base their decisions on the cues that “really matter” rather than things that can be called irrelevant or a distraction.

So armed with this knowledge what is a good manager to do?

Well firstly I do not recommend that you go around making sure that everyone is good and mad before they decide whether to have tuna or cheese with their salad. No, save this knowledge for when a big decision has to be made.

Translate ‘anger’ into a ‘sense of urgency’. Make sure that people know that their decision will have consequences that matter – to them. Get the adrenaline flowing – this matters. Anger evolved as a physiological state designed to make us make things happen. And this is what good managers are all about. Making things happen – albeit through other people. Developing a culture that is characterised by a sense of urgency will help people to take more and better decisions.

But be careful. Although the researchers do not report on it, I am sure that while too much anger might not be an issue to a Neanderthal backed into a cave by a sabre toothed tiger – it would be an issue for a manager being asked about a slipped deadline by their boss. My guess is that you just need to ‘feel the edge’ to gain the benefit in your decision making at work.

So anger matters – and (at the right levels) it helps. It is a great motivator that can fuel good decision making and action. Anger and passion are just flip sides of the same coin. Just how much passion can your culture stand?