Senior Management Course

Certificate Program Provided by Impact Factory This two day Public Senior Management Course is suitable for those who have held a management role for some time - as a line manager or team leader - and who are now being asked to step up to senior management. This is an experiential course and participants will find themselves involved in recreating and re-running real interpersonal situations using the learning of each day to create more positive outcomes.

Senior Management Course Senior Management Course Objectives
* To define what it means to be a senior manager in a company
* To gain an understanding of different management styles
* To develop an awareness of personal style and how to shift it
* To explore ways of holding and implementing the company vision and values
* To improve delegates decision making abilities
* The importance of developing the full potential of staff
* How to go about developing the full potential of staff
* To improve delegates abilities to hold effective meetings
* To develop delegate's communication skills - both up and down the management chain
Senior Management Course Preparation
Complete the attached style assessment sheet and ask three colleagues to complete one for you too. Try to select someone above you in the management chain, someone below you and someone alongside.
Think of two difficult management situations
One where you felt you were managed poorly
One where you managed someone else poorly
Make a list of your values, things that are important to you as an individual both inside work and out
If your company has a list of values find them and bring them with you
Senior Management Course - Programme for Day One
Introduction by Impact Factory on our style of working

Welcome by Impact Factory

A brief description of how we work.

Icebreaker

A simple game to get people to interact and learn more about each other
What makes a manager 'Senior'?
We begin with a look at how the role of a senior manager differs from other management roles - such as line manager or team leader. We will discuss issues such as people management, business management, budgets, P&L responsibility and KPIs.
What am I now?
Delegates will identify and discuss different management styles - including directive, facilitative, consultative, autocratic, democratic, disengaged, laissez-faire. We will be looking at the characteristics and the pros and cons of each style.

Using the prep delegates will discuss what sort of manager they are in small groups.
Bringing it all together
The delegates will then present their findings, including the areas they most want to and need to develop, and what specific skills would be useful to go away with at the end of the two days.
Accepting the mantle
In this exercise delegates have a visceral experience of speaking from both sides of the management divide, in particular as part of the senior management team accepting the company ethos, vision and values and accepting responsibility for management decisions.
Building a Reputation for Yourself
A reputation is not built overnight but some people seem to be more prominent than others. Delegates will practice consciously building their reputation in a simple, authentic and subtle way.
With Respect
We begin this exercise by looking at how managers gain respect and how they lose it. As a follow on each individual will explore how they can modify their behaviour to build respect in their colleagues while remaining authentic.
Shaping the company
We'll then build on that to tie in individual and company values, enabling delegates to identify their own core values and how they then negotiate and communicate the team or company values.
Bringing Strategy to Life
Leadership teams often develop a company strategy and expect others to understand it and deliver it as a matter of course. The senior manager is often the missing link between those who conceive the strategy and those who deliver.

So how do you go about making the company vision and strategy accessible to others? And how to you link it to the day-to-day responsibilities of the team?
Chunking up
In the first of these exercises each delegate will take one task or area of responsibility and chunk up to see how it contributes to the big picture.
Chunking down
We'll then take the big picture and see how to break that down to each delegate's area of the business so they have a real idea of how their work contributes to the vision and success of the company.
Unblocking
In this final exercise of this section, delegates will practice techniques for bringing creativity to bear on barriers to making the strategy a reality.
Inspirational thinking
In this exercise delegates take a current situation and think of a reasonable outcome and then think of an outcome that is ten times better than that. They then plot a path from that outcome back to reality.

This exercise takes delegates beyond the reasonable and into the inspirational; opening up new pathways for creative thinking in approaching a situation.
Apples or Pears
Decision making is an essential skill for senior managers - by making the different choices senior managers can bring life and creativity to a strategy or they can continue with the same old, same old because it's safe

As an introduction to this series of exercises on decision making, we have fun with delegates making on the spot decisions on a variety of things, from the trivial to life changing, in a split second.
Making 'good' decisions
How do we know a decision is a good one?
And what makes a 'bad' decision?
What is the impact of making no decision at all?

Delegates explore the idea that sometimes 'suck it and see' is the best decision to make.
Getting it wrong
We investigate the emotional response that delegates have to the idea of making decisions that prove wrong.

Mapping out the worst case scenario and dealing with the consequences.
Empowering self
A simple exercise aimed at empowering delegates to make their own choices and decisions in the workplace. Delegates will work in pairs to define the circumstances under which they feel they should make decisions or act on their own initiative.

These conditions can be used proactively by delegates to agree with their managers when and how they are empowered to make decisions.
Personal Style
The final exercise of the day. Delegates will be asked to acknowledge what it is that they do well and will get feedback from their colleagues on what they see that works about them.


Senior Management Course - Programme for Day Two
Recognising and Developing Potential
In the first part of this exercise delegates will look at all the different types of potential they might want to develop in their teams - including management, technical, specialist, generalist.

Then we'll explore the characteristics of high flyers - how do you spot them? Research has shown that a successful track record is not necessarily an indicator of future success - maybe they just got lucky So what are the things you should look for if you're going to develop the full potential of the team?

Finally delegates will explore all the different avenues of development of potential and when and where different paths might be appropriate.

Taking one team member as an example delegates will consider things like:
The style of management they seem to prefer
Their learning style
Potential barriers to development
Champions and blockers and how to influence them
Goal Setting
Goal setting is something that looks as though it's so straight-forward and yet .

We'll start with an open discussion:

Have you ever been set a goal badly by a line manager? What happened; what were the consequences? How did you feel?

Have you ever set goals for someone else poorly? What were the consequences (if any)?

From there we will look at some techniques to help effective goal setting.
Clarity
A lot of times managers think they're being clear (they know what they mean), but somehow what comes out of their mouth doesn't necessarily get translated into the picture the manager had in the first place.

Here we'll look at who the goal is for (yes, the correct answer is that it's for the person for whom the goal is set), and therefore how important it is to be able to see the situation from their point of view in order to make it manageable and doable.
E-mail
We also look at what can happen when managers set goals via e-mail and how easily that can be easily misunderstood. If possible, we'd like examples of e-mails that seemed clear to the writer but were interpreted by the reader differently.
S-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g Goals
In this exercise we look at how different people react to goals that seem impossible to achieve and then consider how that might impact on different people in the team - from the high flyers to the steady plodders.
Creative Goal-Setting
Here we look at left and right brain function and how to link both in order to make goals setting come alive for people.
Styles
Everyone has their own style of doing things. This is another chance to look at some of the difficult styles you might have to manage and different options you could use in helping people achieve their goals.
Pushing Their Buttons
This exercise allows delegates to explore what motivates them and assess, if they can, what motivates members of their team.

We then have a practical exercise aimed at getting the best out of team members by pushing their buttons.
Managing Meetings
The dynamics of 'working the table'

Every meeting goes through its own unique process and no two meetings, even with the same people, are ever the same. In this section of the day we'll help delegates identify and develop a meeting dynamic and find ways of working within it.
Games People Play
Either consciously, or sometimes deliberately, people play games at meetings; anything from an Aggressor to a Pleaser to a Complainer.

The trick to dealing with roles people take on is to first identify what's happening and then defuse the situation. In this exercise delegates will experience and practise a simple but effective technique to move a meeting along.
Working to a Meeting Agenda
The most common thing that gets people off agendas is going off on tangents. Tangents are OK, if they add something, develop an idea or introduce something that needs introducing. However, in our experience, that's rare.

In this process we'll give delegates a quick plan to structure effective meetings and head off problems before they happen.

Here, we'll facilitate an open discussion on things to consider before delegates even call a meeting. Things like:
Meeting Anyone? - When do we need a meeting?
Moderator - Who will facilitate?
Group - Who really needs to attend?
Agenda items - What will be discussed, presented or proposed?
Rules - Who will speak, when and for how long?
Brainstorm - Is there going to be an opportunity for idea sharing?
Action plans - What needs to be done as a result of the meeting and by whom?
Follow up - Who will support and follow up the actions?
Presenting a Case
As a senior manager delegates may well be called on to present a case for a change they want to make or an investment decision - from sending someone on a training course to reorganising a business stream. So how do you go about it?

Delegates will construct the essential elements and make a case of their own for a decision they have made or need to make in their business.
Mushrooms or Leaky Colanders
We have probably all been in the dark at one time or another in our working lives. Building on the work of day one where we looked at accepting the mantle, delegates will now play with how much to say, what to say and what not to say when cascading information.

We'll compare several different approaches
TMI - Too Much Information
Mushroom Syndrome
Fluffing it
Telling it like it is
We can make it work
Most of the rest of the day will be looking at people's difficult scenarios and replaying them using the material covered in the two days. This will give delegates opportunities to use the techniques in real situations and will give them a chance to see what (if anything) they could do differently to effect a more positive outcome.
Action Plan
In the final exercise of the senior management course delegates will consider all the learning of the two days and commit to one or two actions that they will take within seven days.
Senior Management Course Handouts
We will distribute a number of relevant documents, USB sticks and web cards that will give everybody access to our extensive library of documents and hints and tips.

About The Training Provider: Impact Factory

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