Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve invested in training for our managers in the past but they aren’t applying the skills they were taught. There is no real change in their behavior. What do the Enduring Edge programs do to make your training “stick?”
How do you conduct leadership development with an executive team? Is it different from your course for middle managers?
What are the minimal, fundamental skills you would recommend for our middle managers?
Do your workshops mostly present theory or do you also engage people with practical learning activities?
Do you customize your programs?
In the training workshops, do you recommend putting executives in the same room with mid-level managers?
Where does coaching fit in your leadership development programs?
Our managers are extremely busy. Can you do an abbreviated version of your six-day program, The Skillful Leader, say in two days?
Are your programs, The Authentic Leader and The Skillful Leader, stand alone courses or do our people have to take both of them? If not, should they?
We’ve invested in training for our managers in the past but they aren’t applying the skills they were taught. There is no real change in their behavior. What do the Enduring Edge programs do to make your training “stick?”
We humans are creatures of habit. We don’t easily change our ways. When new behavior doesn’t occur back at work, consider these two elements:
- The design of the program. Did the workshop deliver just concepts and theory? Or were your participants taught practical techniques and approaches and given an opportunity to practice in class.
- How has the desired new behavior been reinforced back on the job. Did the immediate managers of the participants encourage and support their new behavior?
There are several ways we help our clients reinforce the learning for their people:
- Include a lot of hands-on skill practice in our workshops.
- Have the participants identify specific behavior they will try back on the job.
- Build in one-on-one phone coaching with each participant as an integral part of a total learning process
- Send a series of monthly follow-up e-mails that reinforce key points from the course and drive the learning even deeper.
- If our client is willing, arrange for each participant to have a structured discussion with his/her manager…
- before the program, to set learning objectives and
- after the program, to plan for specific application on the job
- Again if the client is willing, conduct post-training small-group coaching discussions, on-site, to help the participants address specific challenges they are facing in applying what they have learned.
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How do you conduct leadership development with an executive team? Is it different from your course for middle managers?
A leader operates in both the outer world of his/her actual behavior dealing with people and the inner world of the leader’s beliefs, attitudes and habits of thought. Success at the top is determined more by the latter–character and mindset–than by skills.
We work with executives as a team and as individuals. Our top team transformational process, The Authentic Leader, helps the executive better understand his or her current “inner operating system” that strongly shapes his/her behavior and decisions.
To generate self-awareness as part of The Authentic Leader, we use The Leadership Circle Profile. TLCP is a breakthrough 360º tool that, along with one-on-one coaching, helps you enhance your effectiveness by developing research-proven competencies and ways of thinking that, research shows, lead organizations to significantly higher results.
By contrast, our mid-level management process, The Skillful Leader, places greater emphasis on behavioral skills–how to’s–for leading effectively from the middle ranks of the organization.
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What are the minimal, fundamental skills you would recommend for our middle managers?
Keep in mind that some degree of leadership should be reflected in any suite of management skills. The skills we present in our management development program, The Skillful Leader, fall into five areas:
- Self-awareness
- Any manager who supervises others should have a good awareness of his or her own interaction style, how he/she is hardwired and how to “flex” to other styles when the situation calls for it. This is a fundamental attribute of the best managers.
- Communications
- Since a manager leads people, communications is obviously a critical platform skill. This includes using questions, listening, influencing, non-verbal language, the role of perceptions, and assertiveness.
- Leadership and Motivation
- The best managers today know how to create an environment where employees contribute effort, knowledge, creativity and commitment on a “choose to, want to” basis rather than because they feel they “have to.” Effective managers articulate a compelling purpose for the work their unit performs. They help their employees identify what motivates them and how this can be fulfilled in this work and this organization.
- Coaching
- The Baby Boomers are starting to retire. Employers everywhere will soon be facing a shortage of talented employees. They will need to master the ability to develop more of their future leaders from within. This means that, increasingly, managers will be called up to coach their employees on-the-job, both for currently needed skills and for career development.
- Performance Management
- Includes skills from handling the “nuts and bolts” of managing priorities, delegating, and setting objectives and developing work plans. We cover also the whole performance cycle of (1) setting performance expectations as the year begins, (2) coaching for performance throughout the year and (3) conducting formal performance reviews at year-end. Managers learn how to talk to their employees about performance, acknowledge superior results and take action when performance falls below acceptable levels.
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Do your workshops mostly present theory or do you also engage people with practical learning activities?
Among the participants in any workshop you will find a variety of learning styles. While some prefer to hear the concept and theory first, others acquire the skill by trying it out in class or observing someone demonstrate how it should be done.
We design our sessions to offer as wide a mix of learning modes as possible, including:
- Theory/concept presentations
- Stories and examples
- Hands-on skill practice
- Skill demonstration by the presenter
- Coaching in class
- Videos demonstrating how to do (or not to do) certain skills
- Small group discussions
- Individual reflection
- Problem-solving on real situations from participants’ workplace
- Role-playing
- Simulations
- Concrete action planning for back at work
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Do you customize your programs?
Yes we do!
In four ways:
- Customization begins at our initial meeting(s) with you, our client, where we identify the particular issues you want addressed, what precipitated them, and what outcomes you are looking for in terms of changed behavior and business/organizational results.
- Wherever possible, we like to visit your work site and tour your facility to experience your organization and culture first-hand. In aid of this, we ask to speak with a few of your key executives, managers and/or employees.
- The learning process we ultimately recommend in our written proposal is always carefully designed to meet your particular needs.
- As the development process unfolds, we keep in touch with you to monitor your group’s progress and make any needed adjustments to ensure that you receive the payback you expect from your investment.
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In the training workshops, do you recommend putting executives in the same room with mid-level managers?
There is no single “right” answer to this question. It depends upon several factors:
- The degree of trust and openness that exists between levels of management
- How important it is that both groups experience the same learning
- The skill level of the executives–do they lack some management fundamentals or could they perhaps benefit from a refresher course?
As a general rule, however, we highly recommend that executives join with their managers in workshops, especially for The Skillful Leader program. When they do, you benefit in three valuable ways:
- The executives demonstrate an integrity and humility by being willing to reveal that they, in fact, don’t “know it all” and are willing to learn.
- Opportunities arise in the workshop activities and discussions for the usually more experienced executives to do a bit of coaching in class.
- By participating, they communicate the importance of the particular skills being taught. They also model one particular value found in any high performance organization: continuous learning.
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Where does coaching fit in your leadership development programs?
It plays a key role in both The Authentic Leader and The Skillful Leader programs.
Every program participant is working at his or her own individual level of proficiency in each of the areas covered. Furthermore, part of being human is to resist changing the way we behave and think, even when we know those changes will make us more effective.
Coaching is the single best way to challenge and support managers as they let go of behavior that no longer serves them, overcome their resistance to making personal change, and master new approaches that are more effective.
Coaching is an integral element of our programs. We position these Coaching sessions either between the workshop days or following completion of the program. They are available in two formats:
- Small group coaching for 4-6 participants who meet with a consultant for a couple of hours to work together on skill application by addressing actual people management challenges each person brings to the session.
- One-on-one coaching for select participants whose job or role requires rapid mastery of a particular competency, whose overall performance must improve significantly, or who has the clear potential to take on a greater role in the organization.
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Our managers are extremely busy. Can you do an abbreviated version of your six-day program, The Skillful Leader, say in two days?
We would never try to compress the full program that a manager needs into just a couple of days. It would simply be too rushed and your people would take away few skills that they could apply back at work.
We can in that time, however, give your managers a portion of what they need to know. For example, a stand alone two-day workshop could be Day 1 (understanding your personality type and interaction style) and Day 2 (core communications skills).
However, If you are serious about providing your managers with what they really need to attain a new level of effectiveness, the six-day program is the one you should opt for. While it is spread out over three 2-day segments, what your people receive is a comprehensive learning experience. The payback you receive on your investment is increased results from a more effective management group better able to engage their employees.
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Are your programs, The Authentic Leader and The Skillful Leader, stand alone courses or do our people have to take both of them? If not, should they?
Your managers do not have to take both of them, although they certainly may. They would centainly benefit greatly from the combination.
Typically your senior leadership team would experience The Authentic Leader program, including the powerful 360º feedback assessment, The Leadership Circle Profile.
If your executives have not had much management training, The Skillful Leader will fill this gap very effectively. This can be taken before or following The Authentic Leader and can be delivered to the executives separately or in the same class as your mid-manager group.
For your middle managers, we recommend they first go through The Skillful Leader in order to acquire a solid grounding in the people management area. As a next step, you can put them through The Authentic Leader which addresses the more internally focused aspects of being a leader.
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