Supervisor Essentials – June

A practical guide to stepping up and managing a team

Whether you’ve been a supervisor for 1 day or 1 year, it is highly unlikely that you’ve been trained to do the job! This session provides a baseline in understanding what your new role is all about, the multitude of expectations that come at you from every direction and how to establish yourself as the ‘boss’ while maintaining positive relationships. You’ll also be introduced to how Individual Development Planning can help you continue to grow beyond the classroom.

This knowledge-building session gives you the chance to:

• Identify how your role as a supervisor differs from your previous job
• Analyze the impact of the expectations your organization, your supervisor, your employees and your internal customers have of you
• Define your role as a representative of the organization’s culture to your direct reports
• Convert your heightened understanding of the supervisor’s role into the start of your own Individual Development Plan

A beginner’s guide to effective communication in the workplace

This session explores the complexity of communication and focuses on verbal communication, listening skills, and the all-important impact of non-verbal communication. Participants will learn how to lead by utilizing proactive communication skills and how leaders communicate to influence others effectively.

This skill-building session gives you the chance to:

• Recognize the components of the basic communication process including encoding and decoding messages
• Interpret common body language and facial expressions and identify the underlying, unspoken message
• Discover the complexities of communication by exploring the impact of culture, bias, beliefs, values, experience and social standing on our messages
• Rephrase common complaints into proactive communications and enhance your standing as a problem solver

Strategies for successful communication in the virtual workplace

We’ve come a long way from a society that worshipped the long form of cursive letter writing and the flowery language of refined society. Along the way, the rules governing emails, texting, and social media, as well as what passes as acceptable language, have been haphazardly and ineffectively applied. This session looks at the effectiveness, overuse, and liabilities of digital-age communication. You’ll leave this session understanding what OMG means and what NSFW means.

Learn how to resolve disputes and promote a positive work environment

Have you ever thought, “My life would be so much easier if I didn’t have to deal with people!” That’s the way it feels some days, or maybe every day. This session looks at conflicts and problems in the workplace. There are differences between a conflict and a problem, and they require different approaches. We all have our go-to reaction to conflict that doesn’t always serve us well. This session focuses on expanding our reactions to conflict, developing strategies to deal with the issues that take us out of our comfort zone, and increasing our managerial versatility. We’ll also look at formal problem-solving strategies and how to apply them.

This knowledge building session gives you the chance to:

Teamwork is choosing to work together, and team building improves on an aspect of the team’s work

Have you ever wondered the difference between a team and a group of people? Or how to build a trusting team and inspire them to collectively become high performers? Effective teamwork can potentially build strong employee relationships and is an ongoing, dynamic process. This interactive session will explore these questions and offer best practice tips to build a supportive, trusting, and respectful team that stays together, works collaboratively towards common goals, and achieves together utilizing the 4 C’s of a Team Identity.

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Recall why teams, teamwork, and team building are all needed in the workplace
• Understand the relationship between teamwork and teambuilding to achieve peak performance
• Apply team-building strategies for improved group dynamics, guiding teams toward high performance

Learn how to uncover the core challenge and stop putting band-aids on problems

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a useful process for understanding and solving a problem. It lets you reveal the problem source key failure points and identify appropriate solutions. RCA assumes that it is more effective to systematically prevent and solve underlying issues than to treat just the immediate symptoms. During the analysis, equal emphasis is placed on defining and understanding the problem, brainstorming possible causes, analyzing causes and effects, and devising a solution to the problem.

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Discuss the difference between a problem and an opportunity
• Identify the steps of a root cause analysis and discuss how to apply them to problem-solving
• Apply root cause analysis tools to strengthen your approach to problem-solving

Preparation and a thorough process position you and your team for a positive interview cycle

Much goes into developing an interview cycle before conversations even begin. As a hiring manager, you want to ensure you have the right people in the room and the right processes in place to assess candidates accurately and legally. You also want to ensure that by offer time, your finalist has had a positive experience and an accurate understanding of the opportunity and your business culture. So, where to begin? Join us in this engaging session that will offer helpful tips for successfully structuring your interview cycle from soup to nuts!

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Explain the elements of the interview cycle and how to prepare
• Identify key participants in the interview cycle and their roles
• Implement interviewing skills and avoid traps

Take action to set and achieve your career goals

Professional development for yourself and your team members starts on the first day of the job. Having a plan to guide people toward success is essential for both the individual and the business. A partnership between a team member and a leader is essential to identify the skills and resources necessary to advance career and company goals. It all starts with evaluating your team.

This skill-building session gives you the chance to:

• Recall the purpose and value of creating a professional development plan (PDP)
• Summarize the steps needed to create a PDP
• Examine where you are now and where you want to be in the future, both as an individual and for your team as a whole
• Create a plan, including timelines, to fill the gap (including training, development, and other strategies)

Simplifying the process of setting goals, providing feedback, and evaluating employee performance

Managers despise them, employees dread them, and HR is left to make it happen! If that describes your organization’s performance appraisal system, this course is for you! We’ll look at: how you can overcome the reluctance of all involved, how a systematic approach to appraisals can work for your organization, and how HR can ensure consistency and quality in appraisals. We’ll explore how the formal appraisal is simply a culmination of a communications process that keeps employees informed of their status, expectations and consequences.

This knowledge-building session gives you the chance to:

• Recall the common types of performance appraisals
• Describe the four parts of a traditional performance appraisal
• Analyze the common pitfalls associated with an organization’s approach to appraisals that cause stress

Guidance on handling employee performance issues

Telling an employee that they are failing on the job is something most leaders dread. Telling them they’ve lost their job is worse. This session focuses on what happens when improvement doesn’t materialize after coaching. You’ll learn why these conversations are so difficult and how our own values and the organization’s culture and discipline policy influences our decision-making. We’ll review conflict and communications basics and provide ground rules for these difficult discussions. You’ll practice in real-world situations to build your skills.

This skill-building session gives you the chance to:

• State communication and conflict basics to prepare for difficult discussions
• Recognize why these discussions are so difficult for both the leader and employee
• Illustrate risk management by applying applicable laws to scenarios
• Prepare for those worst-case scenario conversations