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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

The Mindset of the Progressive Manager?

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This morning I was inspired by a piece that I read from the AGM of Senscot – the social entrepreneurs network in Scotland, written by Lawrence Demarco. In it Lawrence is talks about the role of the social entrepreneur and how they are found beyond the ‘not for profit’ sector. His writing helped me to think through more about what I believe a ‘Progressive Manager’ is all about.

Progressive Managers have a mind-set which says:

‘I am a business person, an entrepreneur, a risk taker and a learner. I will not engage in work which damages people or our planet. I will treat my customers and staff honestly and fairly. Profits and revenues will not be used just to enhance personal wealth – but to do more for the common good. The desire to create a better society, combined with the skills to provide a wonderful product or service will drive my work.’

This ‘Progressive Managers’ mind-set has the potential to change society. To build a culture which holds the concept of social justice as paramount, and which believes that social justice can be measured in the gap between the rich and the poor.

Progressive Management represents an evolution of capitalism. Profit is seen not as an end in itself, but as a means to drive social change. Perhaps the very best of the ‘for profits’ already recognise that driving positive social change is what will drive future profits?

Managers who understand and use the power of this idea will play an increasing part in the future of our world whether they work in the public, private or third sector.

They will be Progressive Managers.

Being Effective – Not Busy!

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Over worked!

Here are some interesting pieces from The Standard, a Hong Kong newspaper, reporting on a seminar for corporate executives held there last week.

“We believe long working hours are a sign of loss of productivity and efficiency,” said Ambrose Linn, Hong Kong manager at Dutch mail company TNT, which enforces a maximum 48-hour week on its employees with no more than 12 hours’ overtime.


. . . a survey by local non-profit organization Community Business found that employees work an average 51 hours a week – 25 percent higher than the maximum working hours set by the International Labour Organization. A third of respondents said their productivity was being affected by long hours while 31 percent said long hours were causing health problems.


“Senior management has to change its mind-set, especially with the new graduates coming out of university. They don’t want to work 60 hours a week, and companies won’t attract the talent,” Shalini Thakur, associate director of diversity at investment bank UBS, told the seminar.


BP says it has stopped making it mandatory for senior management to be supplied with smart phones and e-mail devices because constantly checking and responding to messages goes against the company’s philosophy of promoting work-life balance.

 

Does this sound familiar?

What about reflecting on these obvious – but frequently overlooked questions:

  • Do we have enough people to do the work required?
  • Do they all know, clearly, what they are expected to do?
  • Do they have the time, the tools, and the skills to do it?
  • Are they rewarded enough to make what they do seem attractive?
  • Do they enjoy what they do and give it their best efforts?
  • Are the working conditions suitable to a civilized community?

 High performing organisations focus on maximizing effectiveness in a pretty fixed working week.  They know that regular long hours, fire-fighting, lack of focus and attention are all symptoms of bad management.  And the only thing that you can manage is you!

By improving the way you delegate and prioritise it is always possible to start getting back to something more like a 40 hour productive and efficient week.

Pepper’s 5 Leadership Lessons

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I was reading a great post on the Leading Blog about 5 lessons that the outgoing CEO of Proctor and Gamble, John Pepper had distilled from his career.  I won’t recount the details in full, but in essence they are:

  1. accountability for creating leadership results – attracting winners to the business who then feed of each other
  2. seeking input from others without losing direction
  3. leadership is personal and intimate.  It is about being true to your own passions.  It is about influence through trust not control through power.
  4. positive authentic feedback and honest communication builds respect and trust.  Respect and trust provide the foundation for outstanding leadership and team performance
  5. convey trust and high expectations regularly

Weekly 121s are the best tool that I have found to help managers and leaders to develop and apply these lessons.

Building An Outstanding Organisation

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This post was inspired by something Tom Peters’ wrote in his blog.

“In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn’t work out, you promote them because they were willing to try new things. If people come back and tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.”

Mike Bloomberg – Mayor of New York City

Steps to being outstanding?

  1. find something useful that turns people on – a cause that is worth working on
  2. give people a lot of room to try their own ideas and plans in pursuit of the cause
  3. offer them the respect they deserve for participating in the cause with commitment and determination
  4. provide the most powerful relationship that you can to support their development (121s, feedback and coaching…)

By nurturing passion for the cause, and enabling people to try things, the journey to high performance can begin.

It takes courage and excellent management skills – but it works – in for profits, non profit distributing and third sector organisations.

Not sure the recipe can get any simpler?