The Reality of Being a First-time Manager
The first-time manager often doesn’t realize how much their new role differs from that of an individual contributor. They may have misconceptions about what being a new boss entails, and be surprised to learn that the skills and methods required for success as an individual contributor and those needed for success as a new manager are very different.
This course describes some of the myths about managing people and their corresponding truths in order to clarify what a new leader really does. It also points to the typical demands and constraints of a manager’s job. Finally, it describes strategies for dealing with common mistakes when managing for the first time.
40 Minutes
- Recognize the personal factors that impact a management position
- Describe organizational factors that will impact your new job as manager
- Recognize the typical demands that a manager must deal with
- Specify common constraints faced by managers
- Choose the best strategies for dealing with the mistake of taking on too much
- Identify strategies for overcoming the mistake of not asking for help
- Recognize strategies for helping you avoid projecting a lack of confidence
Facing Challenges as a First-time Manager
High expectations are often placed on a new manager. Along with these expectations comes the pressure to prove you are capable of being the boss and managing people effectively.
When managing for the first time, establishing credibility early and building new working relationships can go a long way in helping you succeed in adjusting to your new responsibilities.
This course describes ways to manage former colleagues effectively and establish credibility as a first-time manager. You’ll also learn how to balance conflicting expectations as a new leader.
30 Minuets
- Specify ways of establishing your credibility as a new manager
- Recognize how to communicate with your team as a first-time manager
- Recognize techniques for acknowledging the relationship change between you and your former coworkers
- Describe ways in which you can use your new managerial position to support your former coworkers
- Identify management guidelines that will help you respond to conflicting expectations in the workplace
Keeping Top Performers Challenged
Top performers expect a lot from themselves. Managing performance in these highly driven people is essential because top performers are such valuable assets to a company. Managers and leaders must keep them engaged and challenged or else lose them to new challenges elsewhere.
In this course, you’ll learn how to identify your top performers. You’ll also learn how to keep engaging and challenging them by providing the right environment, leadership, and communication.
30 Minutes
- Identify the qualities of a top performer
- Recognize the benefits of keeping top performers engaged and challenged
- Identify actions that create a work environment that encourages top performance
- Recognize the leadership skills that attract top performers
- Identify the right way to engage in communication with your top performers
Planning an Effective Performance Appraisal
Few tasks make managers more uncomfortable than conducting performance appraisals – especially when an employee has a performance problem. It doesn’t have to be this way. Difficult conversations, and even terminations, can often be avoided with some effective planning to establish goals, competencies, and performance requirements.
Appraisals assist with managing performance, as they encourage employees to perform their jobs well because they’re addressing the highest priority responsibilities and operating in a way that the organization expects.
Managing performance in top performers, who are particularly valuable to the company, requires challenging and engaging them so they don’t terminate their contracts to go look for challenges elsewhere. In this course, you’ll learn about developing an employee performance plan and monitoring ongoing performance so there are no unhappy surprises at performance review time.
30 Minutes
- Recognize the benefits of conducting performance appraisals
- Identify effective ways to agree on key job responsibilities
- Recognize effective ways to set employee performance goals
- Select appropriate actions to take when identifying required competencies
- Identify examples of how to monitor ongoing employee performance
Creating a Plan for Performance Management
Do you know if your team’s goals are consistently being met or if employees are always performing at their peak? Do you dread difficult conversations when there’s a performance problem that needs to be addressed?
Effectively managing performance can help avoid termination of employees and boost productivity at all levels of your organization. Challenging and engaging top performers is key, as these high achievers are very valuable to the company and may terminate their contracts to seek challenges elsewhere.
In this course, you’ll learn about the factors involved in successful performance management. You’ll explore the phases of the performance management process, critical success factors, and key performance indicators. Finally, you’ll learn about identifying key job requirements when creating a role profile.
40 Minutes
- Identify the factors of successful performance management
- Recognize how a performance management system increases productivity and organizational success
- Recall the five phases of the performance measurement process
- Recognize the four types of critical success factor
- List the characteristics of effective key performance indicators
- Identify the key job requirements summarized in a role profile
Detecting and Dealing with Performance Problems
When valuable top performers choose to terminate their contracts to take up more challenging positions elsewhere, it can be a consequence of poor performance management. Identifying a performance problem early and diagnosing it accurately is key to managing performance effectively.
You’ve got to involve employees in what might be difficult conversations to discover actual root causes and come up with the best possible solutions.
In this course, you’ll learn how to detect, identify, and question problems in your workplace, determine the scope, frequency, and impact when they occur, and diagnose root causes – both external and internal – to help find the best solution and avoid a contract termination of a valuable employee.
40 Minutes
- Identify methods of gathering employee performance information
- Recognize best practices for identifying and questioning performance problems
- Identify questions to ask when assessing the scope and frequency of performance problems
- Match areas of performance problem impact to considerations in those areas
- Recall guidelines for diagnosing employee performance problems
- Recall external causes of performance problems
- Recognize internal causes of performance problems
Gauging Your Organization's High Performing Potential
The current business landscape is so competitive that only organizations with managers who can foster high levels of performance will succeed. Facilitating this kind of environment requires challenging and engaging top performers and optimizing employee development.
In this course, you’ll learn to assess your organization’s potential for high performance. You’ll also learn the five factors to consider when managing performance to create a high-performance environment: your organization’s mission statement and strategy, performance measurement strategies, customer orientation, leadership, and culture.
40 Minutes
- Identify organizational factors that need to be coordinated for success
- Recognize mission statements that indicate high-performance organizations
- Identify characteristics of a high-performance measurement strategy
- Recognize actions to make an organization more customer focused
- Recognize typical actions of a leader of a high-performance organization
- Determine if an organization’s culture supports high performance
Managing for Cross-functionality
Working on a team with employees from different departments can be a huge challenge. These types of teams often consist of people with different talents, goals, and communication styles.
This is why effective cross-functional management is so important. This involves managing teams in a way that bridges the functional silos that constrain your organization. Managing for cross-functionality also means using team leadership skills to support collaboration and teamwork between different departments.
This course defines organizational cross-functionality and its benefits. It helps you develop techniques to support a cross-functional strategy throughout your organization. And it shows you how different types of knowledge management systems can play a role in implementing that strategy.
40 Minutes
- Identify the benefits of cross-functional management
- Recognize advantages of each approach to making your organization cross-functional
- Recognize how to support strategic cross-functionality in the organization
- Recognize the benefits of knowledge management for furthering strategic cross-functionality
- Match knowledge management approaches with their descriptions
Managing Your Company's Talent
Some of the core responsibilities for a HR manager are recruiting, hiring, developing, and retaining talent that will drive an organization’s performance. For many prospective recruits, their ideal company is one that values and develops employees. To meet these goals and desires, you’ll need an effective talent management plan.
In this course, you’ll learn why acquiring talent and effectively managing it is so important to an organization’s success. You’ll discover how to create a strategy that not only develops talent in your company, but that also retains it in the long term.
You’ll also learn about the key activities associated with talent management and the roles played by managers in implementing a talent management strategy.
40 Minutes
- Recognize why talent management is important
- Identify key activities of talent management planning
- Identify key activities for acquiring talent
- Recognize strategies used to develop talent
- Identify methods of retaining talent
- Identify actions a manager should take to motivate employees
- Recognize actions managers can take to help employees thrive
Managing the Unique Needs of Experts
Managers rely heavily on experts for the in-depth knowledge needed on the job. These experts have unique needs in the workplace.
This course explores the characteristics of the experts on your staff; outlines what they want from you, their manager; and covers techniques and strategies to help you meet their needs.
30 Minutes
- Recognize the benefits of understanding experts and their needs
- Identify common characteristics of experts
- Recognize how to be a trustworthy collaborator
- Identify methods of being a competent facilitator
- Recognize actions managers can take to meet the needs of experts
Fostering Mentoring Relationships
Mentor relationships are key to enabling success in both your personal and professional lives. An effective coach can not only teach you vital work and life skills, but can also build up your resilience and self-confidence.
This course covers the benefits of mentoring programs for employees, mentors, and the organization as a whole and explores the differences between mentoring and coaching relationships.
It also details what makes a mentoring program successful, considering the various mentoring models and approaches and how each contributes to making a mentoring program a good experience for all involved.
40 Minutes
- Identify the benefits of workplace mentoring for mentees, mentors, and organizations
- Distinguish between examples of coaching and mentoring relationships
- Identify what makes mentoring programs successful
- Distinguish between the four types of mentoring
- Recognize the advantages of formal mentoring relationships
- Identify benefits of informal mentoring relationships
Effectively Directing and Delegating as a Manager
Understanding the essential responsibilities you have when directing and delegating to others, and the practices you should employ in order to meet those responsibilities, will lead to you fulfilling your duties and realizing the potential of your entire team.
This course provides information on the key proficiencies of managing people, such as setting direction and establishing clear objectives and goals for your direct reports. It discusses the importance of organizing, as well as communicating for clarity and direction.
It also covers the best practices for planning delegation and the techniques you need to carry through with delegation. Finally, the course details the importance of monitoring delegated tasks to ensure employees are on the right track.
50 Minutes
- Sequence the steps in setting the direction and pace of work as a manager
- Identify organizing actions a manager should typically take
- Recognize aspects of communicating for clarity and direction when directing employees
- Identify essential elements of planning to delegate
- Recall strategies for delegating tasks
- Identify examples of ways to follow up after delegating tasks
- Use techniques to give direction and delegate to your employees
Managing Employee Development
Smart companies have learned that supporting continuous learning and self-development among employees reaps dividends in productivity and employee retention rates. As a manager, you’re responsible for developing people, which includes developing talent in your direct reports.
In this course, you’ll learn about the benefits of developing employees and assessing how their development needs can be addressed through organizational learning.
You’ll then learn how to prepare for and conduct a development meeting that includes the necessary development plan characteristics and support for your employees.
50 Minutes
- Recognize the benefits of developing employees
- Identify steps in assessing the development needs of your employees
- Recognize techniques for preparing for a development meeting
- Identify best practices for conducting a development meeting
- Recognize the characteristics of an effective development plan
select actions you can take to provide ongoing support to employees’ development
Use methods to effectively develop your employees
Facing the Management Challenges of Difficult Behavior and Diverse Teams
As a manager, it can be daunting to find yourself in charge of a diverse group, comprised of different age ranges, backgrounds, and experiences. It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter difficulties.
Effectively handling conflict, whether it’s team conflict or difficult employee behavior, is essential to productivity and requires developing conflict management skills.
This course covers useful techniques and processes for conflict resolution. You’ll learn methods for resolving conflict when dealing with an employee’s difficult behavior. You’ll also learn ways of effectively managing team conflict and understanding and dealing with conflict in the workplace as a whole.
50 Minutes
- Identify common effects of not dealing with employee behavior problems
- Sequence the steps in confronting difficult behavior
- Select techniques to build diversity awareness as a manager
- Recall methods of understanding diversity issues as a manager
- Identify how to reinforce group norms as a manager
- Recognize techniques for managing a diverse team
- Recognize techniques for dealing with the challenges of difficult behavior and diverse team.
Being a Fair and Caring Manager
As a manager, you will wear many different hats as you deal with a variety of people. Because you will encounter many personalities, emotions, and practices, it’s important to learn how to be fair and caring when managing others.
In this course, you will explore the many facets of treating others with fairness, including how to apply standards fairly. You’ll also learn how to demonstrate fairness in your communication, decision making, and personal skills such as listening, sharing, and showing concern to your direct reports.
50 Minutes
- Identify actions and behaviors that can affect your fairness as a manager when dealing with people
- Recognize best practices for handling information and applying standards fairly as a manager
- Select the methods of communicating openly to show fairness as a manager
- Identify ways to show fairness through respect and neutral decision making as a manager
- Recognize ways to show caring through listening and sharing as a manager
- Recall techniques to show you care as a manager through knowing employees and showing concern
- Recognize methods of treating employees fairly and with care as a manager
