Training Programs

The Craft of Leadership Series

High-Performance Management

Building a Productive Work Culture

Managerial Power and Influence
(Uses the new The Power Relationship Instrument)

Ethics in the Workplace
(Uses the new Praxis Business Ethics Inventory)

The Employment Process

Productive Teams

Dealing with Critical and Serious Personnel Problems

Enhancing Customer Service

Managing the Experienced Employee

Making Oral Presentations Successfully

Advanced Business Writing and Reading Skills

Team Meetings for Productivity

Effective Feedback Skills

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High-Performance Management

This three day workshop uniquely addresses the two primary ingredients of High-Performance Management ­ building the climate and work processes that promote productive, quality performance in the unit/department (which we call a workscape), and implementing that workscape through effective managerial functions and skills.

In the first half of the workshop participant managers learn and practice how to integrate into their own units/departments the elements of quality, productivity, organizational climate, and employee satisfaction. The second half then develops the skills and functions that allow the manager to implement high performance on a daily basis with his/her employees. Some key skills covered include: designing efficient, motivating work processes, using effective leadership styles, setting/negotiating goals and objectives, coaching and feedback, performance monitoring, performance analysis and improvement, and performance appraising.

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Building a Productive Work Culture

This workshop shows managers how to develop and maintain a work environment which is both productive and oriented to quality.

Participant managers are taught how to use proven techniques of people and workflow management to achieve high levels of productivity, quality, and employee satisfaction. This program has been utilized by firms that have installed a Quality program based on the models of Crosby and Conway (Deming derivatives). While these statistical, problem centered approaches provide the firm with valuable techniques for identifying and correcting quality problems, they do not inculcate management with the thinking processes nor total approach to managing quality as an on-going part of the regular manager's job. This program orients managers to the meaning of quality as it interrelates with the corporate culture, work design, productivity, and employee work satisfaction. Managers are shown how to design, maintain, and develop work environments we call "workscapes" which achieve efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation by utilizing the full potential of the work force.

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Managerial Power and Influence

The purpose of this workshop is to help participants effectively and appropriately use power and influence in the workplace with employees, project team members, their managers, and peers across functional and divisional lines.

Specific skills taught include conflict resolution techniques, negotiating win/win agreement tactics, consensus decision making, and establishing and maintaining preferred power relationships in the workplace.

In addition to skill development, participants leave the workshop with specific strategies to improve inter-unit cooperation and a personal plan to influence others toward cooperation on ones' projects.

AREAS COVERED:

• Your Power Relationship Style For more information click The Power Relationship Instrument
  
• Influencing downward styles and tactics
  
• Influencing upward styles and tactics
  
• Influencing peers styles and tactics
  
• Negotiating win/win consensual agreements
  
• Project planning and application
  

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The Employment Process

This workshop trains the hiring manager in all the skills necessary to identify, interview, and select the type of person who is most able and motivated to do the job.

• Develops relevant, manageable, job-related criteria useful in evaluating resumes and interviewing candidates.
• Meets the most rigid application of EEO/AA regulations.
• Ties together the skills of position and organizational analysis with those of resume evaluation and selection interviewing.
• Allows participants to do real time job analysis of actual positions they seek to hire.
• Builds and sharpens participants' skills using videotape, peer, and instructor feedback.

At the conclusion of the workshop, managers leave with both the skills needed to do effective, smart hiring and an actual plan for hiring to fill a real open position.

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Productive Teams

More and more today modern organizations are moving toward the use of teams for managing their productive processes ­ departmental teams, project teams, interdepartmental teams. There is the growing realization that the social capital harnessed by having the right people working together highly complements the effectiveness of the traditional functional division of work

This two to three day workshop is designed to help those teams become the highly effective resources for productivity they are capable of. The workshop has three primary parts:

• An exposition of the key ingredients and processes that are crucial for effective teamwork along with a diagnostic guide for assessing the teams current status against these ingredients.
• Skill development in key skill areas for productive functioning teams.
  
• Real work planning for improvement in one's own team.

This workshop can be adapted for three different audiences: individuals who wish to sharpen their skills in leading/facilitating teamwork; intact teams who wish to take the workshop together as a real time team building experience; and, for a single department/division of an organization that wishes to improve their teamwork and plan actual back home initiatives

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Dealing Effectively with Critical and Serious Personnel Problems

The incidence of substance abuse, stress related illness, and aberrant behavioral incidents is on the rise in the American workplace. Today it is important that managers know how to deal with serious personnel problems and the critical incidents they often generate in a humane and effective manner.

The workshop enables managers to deal with two related types of personnel events: the Critical Personnel Incident and the Serious Personnel Problem.

Critical Personnel Incidents involve outbreaks of hostility, violence, injury, and stress related breakdowns. They normally pose direct threats to the health, safety, and welfare of the work force. Moreover, in the long run such incidents can result in extensive litigation, loss of good employees and destruction of a productive work climate. Examples of critical incidents covered are: fighting, threatened violence, severe accidents, intoxication, and stress related mental breakdowns.

Serious Personnel Problems involve persistent conditions that often demand careful management attention over periods of time and a thorough knowledge of how to deal with each type of problem. Examples of issues covered are: substance abuse, sexual harassment, theft investigation, AIDS and working with the disabled and handicapped on the job.

THIS WORKSHOP PROVIDES MANAGERS WITH THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL TO:

• Resolve critical personnel incidents so as to limit long range adverse consequences stemming from such incidents.
• Diagnose and take effective remedial action to resolve serious personnel problems.
• To follow the firm's policies and use the firm's resources in achieving these goals.

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Enhancing Customer Service

This one day workshop:

• Introduces participants to the basis of quality service - service that not only delivers but does so in a way that results in maximum customer satisfaction.
• Shows participants how to organize, manage and deliver super service.
• Has participants apply what they learned to analyzing and finding solutions to their own customer service problems

The workshop comprises two segments:

In the morning, the basic concepts of customer service are introduced and discussed. A variety of methods are used ranging from brief presentations to demonstrations and cases. The emphasis, however, is always on the relation of the ideas discussed to the participants' own situations.

 

In the afternoon, participants are divided into coaching teams which analyze and develop strategies to resolve actual customer service problems each person faces at work.

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Managing the Experienced Employee

One of the most valuable but often under utilized resources in any firm is its long term, experienced employees - personnel who have years of experience, talent, history, and insight. Knowing how to motivate and manage such employees increasingly is a valuable skill all managers must know. This focused workshop develops that skill.

TOPICS COVERED:

• Our Expectations Of Experienced Employees
  
• Research About Long Term Employees
  
• Creating a Motivational Environment
  
• Supervisory Guidelines
  
• Participant Problem Solving and Action Planning
  

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Making Oral Presentations Successfully

This workshop focuses on improving the effectiveness of the oral briefing or presentation as a method of communicating information within the organization or outside to customers.

TOPICS COVERED:

• The Communication Process and Audience Analysis
  
• Preparation and Organization in the Speaking and Briefing Situation
  
• Uses of Audio-Visual Aids: Techniques, Equipment, Facilities
  
• Practice Presentations and Feedback
  

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Advanced Business Writing and Reading Skills

This workshop focuses on the development of technical reading skills (one half day) and business writing skills (one and one-half day).

TOPICS COVERED:

READING:

• Test and Evaluate Reading Skills
  
• Identify Individual Reading Handicaps
  
• Assistance in Overcoming Bad Habits
  

WRITING:

• Organization of the Written Memo, Letter, Report, and Document:

  Purpose
  Scope
  Audience Analysis
  Research: Creative-Judgmental
  Outlining
  

• Writing, Revising/Editing, Polishing, and Producing the Written Report
  

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Team Meetings for Productivity

We spend a great deal of our working time in meetings; some would say too much time. But more important than the time we spend having meetings is the question of how well that time is spent.

This two day workshop focuses on how to plan, design, conduct, and attend compact, productive, positive meetings.

IT COVERS:

• When to Have and Not Have a Meeting
  
• Preparation and Planning
  
• Leading, Controlling, and Participating
  
• Skill Practice in Designing and Conducting
  

ATTENDEES LEARN HOW TO DESIGN AND LEAD:

• Informational Meetings
  
• Persuasive Meetings
  
• Decision-Making Meetings
  
• Problem-Solving Meetings
  

This two day workshop is a dynamic, participative learning experience with ample opportunity for "hands-on" experience including problem-solving on attendees issues and concerns.

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Effective Feedback Skills

In business as in life we are in constant communication with others who are giving us feedback and to whom we must do likewise: telling an employee about his/her performance; letting our manager know "how things are going"; hearing customer problems and needs; telling fellow employees why we disagree with their ideas; thanking someone for their help. All of these occasions are examples of feedback. How well do we and others communicate this feedback? Are we comfortable in effectively communicating on these occasions? Do we find it difficult to tell someone we don't like what they did?

This one day workshop teaches participants how to give effective non-judgmental feedback that respects the other person while accurately saying what you wish to communicate.

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For more information on any of these programs including learning goals, agenda, fuller outlines and client references, please contact us at email: jma@praxisgroup.biz

or Call: (508) 877-0591; address: Praxis Consulting Group, 659 Edmands Rd., Framingham,MA 01701.

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