There’s a lot more to making meetings happen than just picking a time and place and hoping for the best. Too often, meetings end up being a waste of everyone’s time and morale. This session is designed to find ways to get the most out of meetings by focusing on what needs to be done before, during and after to make them truly effective.

Any group functions better when individuals feel empowered, and knowing how to delegate can be a vital part of that empowerment. Participants can learn how to groom and develop their people through delegation and finding out the difference between being a manager or a coach. A nationally-recognized Situational Leadership® model is used to help managers find out the best way to balance support vs. direction. Participants can also examine how they interact, and how they can be more effective as group leaders.

• Gaining Power and Letting Go: There are specific steps for effective delegation and finding out how others can take on tasks effectively, freeing up managers for more long-range planning.
• Developing a Conducive Environment: Examine the “Circle of Influence” and the “Circle of Control” to develop a more proactive environment for all.
• Knowing What to Delegate: Not all tasks are suited for delegation to others. Determine the goal in delegating for a given project, then use a task analysis to decide how to delegate, who’s the best fit for a given task, and making sure of good outcomes.
• Recognize Different Skill Levels: Find out your members’ strengths and weaknesses, and delegate accordingly. The Situational Leadership® model can help you recognize who’s the best for a given task.
• Adapt for Each Situation: Learn how to get the best out of your people by deciding when to be more supportive, or when to be more task-focused.
• Use Effective Delegation and Coaching Skills: Proven methods can help your staff become more self-sufficient – explore specific steps to make delegation work for you.
• Develop Stronger Leaders: Through their roles as managers, team leaders can learn how to capitalize on individual strengths and build leaders by assigning tasks that set them up for future growth.

Competent delegation skills can dramatically improve your ability to develop other members of the team. Participants learn how to develop their people through delegation and the difference between a manager and a coach. A nationally recognized Situational Leadership® model can be used to help managers see how to balance the right amount of direction and the right amount of support. Participants also look at how they interact, and how they can be more effective as team leaders.

Participants will learn how to:

• Gain Power By Letting Go Of Control: Learn specific steps to effective delegation and what you can have others do more effectively. This frees you up for more strategic planning.
• Develop A Proactive Environment: Examine ways to create a more proactive environment, looking at both your “Circle of Influence” and your “Circle of Control.”
• Decide What To Delegate: Some tasks are better delegated than others. Explore which are best to delegate by first determining what your goal is in delegating. Then use a task analysis to decide who to delegate to and how to make sure they are successful.
• Recognize Different Development Levels: People need different things at different times. Using the Situational Leadership®, recognize where they are in their development level for any given task.
• Adapt Your Style To Each Situation: Learn how to give your people what they need at the time. Practice deciding when to be more task-focused and when to be more supportive.
• Use Effective Delegation And Coaching Skills: Use proven methods to help your staff become more proactive and more self-sufficient. Explore specific steps that make delegation more effective.
• Delegate to Develop Stronger Leaders: Through their role as a manager or team leader, learn to utilize individual strengths to develop tomorrow’s leaders by giving people tasks that help prepare them for future growth.

Effective coaching skills can make a huge difference in managing and motivating other members of a team. Participants will learn the difference between a manager and a coach, then learn what it takes to be an effective coach year-round, rather than just at yearly review time. Participants will also reflect on their own coaching style and discuss how to make the best of difficult coaching situations.

• Be a Coach, Not Just a Manager: Learn what your particular coaching style is, and where there’s room for improvement. Learn how to empower your people and adapt to changing situations.
• Develop a Proactive Environment: When you have a good understanding of when to focus on process and when to focus on the task, you’ll open up new ways to improve a team’s overall performance.
• Develop Effective Coaching Skills: Proven methods are available to help your staff become more autonomous. You can learn how to build trust, set milestones, learn from failure, motivate others and measure success.
• Let Go and Gain Power: Knowing how, when and what to delegate can give you more time for strategic planning.
• Reinforce Behavior: Reinforcement works much, much better than reprimands for mistakes. Learn how to guide behavior in honest, consistent and specific ways.
• Conduct a Coaching Session: Find out what’s involved in an effective coaching session that goes beyond a mere performance review to actually helping your people develop and grow.

The Developmental Leadership model is designed to help leaders and managers more effectively engage and empower their employees.  By understanding each employee’s developmental level and applying the optimal leadership strategy, managers are able to better leverage the resources within their team.  Applying the right combination of direction and support enables you to help each individual grow and develop more effectively.  Also, recognizing your own preferred leadership style is essential when having to adapt to various situations.  This is the perfect way to improve your ability to read and respond to each individual, ensuring that their full potential is realized.

• Build a proactive environment: Examine ways to build engagement by focusing on both your “Circle of Influence” and your “Circle of Control.”
• Understand the needs of your people: Recognize that people need different things at different times and how to respond at the right level for any given task.
• Learn to respond appropriately: Learn how to give your people what they need when they need it.  When it is appropriate to be more task focused and when to be more supportive.
• Develop your coaching skills: Use proven coaching methods to help your staff become more self-sufficient by arming them with the tools, direction, and support they need.
• Delegate more effectively: Gain Power by Letting Go of Control.  Learn how to, and what tasks to delegate to free your time and enable you to focus more on strategic planning.
• Focus on developing leaders: Develop your role as facilitator and coach to help develop your people into the leaders of tomorrow.

Effective coaching skills are vital to the cohesiveness and motivation of a team, but it can be difficult to provide coaching when managing people out in the field. Participants will discover what makes the difference between a coach and a manager, and explore how to provide coaching consistently, even over distances. This program is designed to give managers the resources they need to effectively coach teams effectively over distance. We will look at ways of quickly grasping what an individual needs and how to address those needs for improved effectiveness. Participants are also encouraged to reflect on their own coaching style and how to best handle difficult coaching situations.

Participants will explore how to:

• Coach Instead of Just Manage: You can find out the best ways to manage your people and adapt to changing needs. Explore what your particular coaching style is, and find areas where there is room for improvement.
• Develop a Proactive Environment: Understanding when to focus on tasks rather than on the process can enable coaches to quickly see improvements in the performance of the team and individuals.
• Use Effective Coaching Skills and Techniques Over Distances: You can find out about proven methods to help your people become more self-reliant while learning how to set goals, foster trust, learn from mistakes, motivate others and measure outcomes.
• Delegate Effectively: Knowing how and when to delegate tasks can free you up for planning and other duties.
• Reinforce Behavior: Praise and encouragement always work better than reprimands. Explore ways of reinforcing the behaviors and results you want, honestly, specifically and consistently.
• Conduct a Coaching Session: Find out about the actual steps needed for a coaching session. This goes past performance reviews to develop coaching skills that help your people grow.
• Deal with Distance Issues: Working with people across a great distance is one of the biggest challenges managers face, and we’ll discuss tips and techniques for overcoming these obstacles.

It’s a leader’s job to know and understand what motivates others. It’s a skill that’s essential at every level of an organization, for self, managers, colleagues and direct reports. Effectively motivating others means seeing your employees live up to their full potential. Motivated employees are more satisfied and engaged, turning out higher quality work for the company. Participants will learn techniques and models for keeping their team motivated, and can practice putting these ideas to work in their own specific work situations.

Participants can learn how to:

• Know What Motivates Others: Know what motivates different people differently, and understand the difference between motivators and satisfiers.
• Manage and Motivate Different People Effectively: Recognize how to give others what they need to stay motivated, how to manage conflicting work values, and how to keep everyone focused on a common goal.
• Manage “Problem” People: Find out how to overcome overly sensitive, unhappy or negative people and how to help resolve personal problems.
• Keep Top Performers Motivated: Don’t get tied down spending time on problem employees – find out how to keep the high performers going.
• Work Together and Utilize Differences: Find out how to capitalize on strengths and overcome weaknesses, what to do when nothing else works, and generally pull it all together.

The Internet has shrunk the world in ways thought impossible a generation ago, and employers have come to realize that they don’t need teams of people on-site in cubicles. Telecommuting, remote teams come with challenges, though, especially when it comes to getting around cultural, technological and distance. Too often, virtual teaming as seen as a purely technological challenge, forgetting the other fundamentals involved in creating a great team. These two elements – technology and team building – are tightly interwoven, with neither aspect in a vacuum. This full context is critical to setting up and managing any effective virtual work group.

Cultural differences, distance and reliance on technology all complicate virtual teams in ways that on-site teams aren’t faced with. Just by its nature, this environment puts more dependency on certain aspects of team dynamics. Without face-to-face interaction and feedback, trust and communication can become problematic. That high level of trust is crucial in the virtual world as well as the on-site world, heading off problems with miscommunication, ambiguity or varying levels of commitment.

Our approach is to build a strong foundation for effective teamwork within the context of the virtual world. We zero in on activities that simulate this environment, challenging the team to address common problems before they can develop. We focus on preparation and giving teams the tools they need for strong, effective communication, common goals, basic principles and a common culture and history to build on. Most importantly, we strive for a better understanding of all the players involved in the group – it’s an approach that helps build effective teams on a remote, virtual basis.

Program Components:

• Building trust: Trust is the key to making any team work, virtual or on-site. We use various activities to enhance trust within the group. This is even more important and challenging in a virtual environment.
• Creating a common, shared vision: While this may be often overlooked, ensuring clarity and alignment between individual goals and the team’s shared goal can prevent many conflicts later on.
• Developing an effective communication plan: Your team needs a model and plan for how and when they will communicate. It’s necessary to discuss frequency, content and mode as well as outcomes and personal responsibilities.
• Awareness of individual strengths and differences: The cultural diversity of virtual teams can be a huge advantage and a great challenge at the same time. Groups can explore ways of capitalizing on their differences and dealing with their frustrations.
• Managing team related problems: Activities are designed to make the most of the face-to-face time teams spend together. They can experience teamwork in terms of internal team dynamics, evaluating success, and planning on how to move forward as an effective team.
• Coping with ambiguity and uncertainty: Activities are planned to mimic specific situations, giving participants a chance to explore how they can overcome the frustrations that go along with technology, distance and culture.