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Deciding on Leadership Training
08.24.08 (11:33 pm)   [edit]

Being a leader isn’t always easy. It is especially hard if you were thrown into a leadership role out of necessity without formal training. Reviewing the following questions will help you decide whether leadership training will be a priority in your professional development plan .

Does Your Team Respect You?
If you have the feeling that there is discontent and a lack of respect, it could be simply because you do not have to tools to earn respect. Leadership training can provide models of best practice that you can then adopt into your leadership style to prove to your team that you do know what you are doing.

Does Performance Review Time Make You Panic?
If you dread giving performance reviews, take training on coaching and delivering feedback. Role playing and learning techniques such as active listening can dramatically increase your confidence.

Do You Feel Like You Need Fresh Ideas And Techniques?
Leadership training will give you insight into the latest leadership theories. Times change and so do employee populations. Leadership methods that may have worked for baby boomers may not be effective with Gen X or Gen Y employee groups.

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Management
07.30.08 (5:18 am)   [edit]
Management in business and human organization activity, in simple terms means the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, resourcing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management. http://www.mast.co.uk Source: wikipedia
 
Difference Between Leadership and Management?
07.16.08 (6:07 am)   [edit]
There are distinct differences between leadership and management. Sometimes you are able to keep them separate, and sometimes you must act as both manager and leader. Here are the differences between leadership and management, as well as some tips on integrating the two. Leadership and management are two different concepts and actions. In many organizations, leaders and managers are the same people. The difference is in how you, as a leader and manager, separate the tasks of the two realms - and try to find a way to integrate them at the same time. In general terms, leadership can be defined as setting a vision and providing a goal or direction. On the other hand, management is the execution of the vision or the goal. If you are a manager and leader, you must balance the two. If you lead with no management, you'll provide direction with no concept of how to get to the ultimate result. But if you manage with no leadership, you'll find people in your organization wondering why they're doing what they're doing. Granted, in some organizations, the senior or executive level management can truly lead, that is, set the direction, while middle or line managers execute. Let's take a look at the true differences between management and leadership, and then find out how to integrate them. For more http://www.mast.co.uk
 
Change management: The more things change
07.04.08 (5:57 am)   [edit]
Change management is near the top of many training agendas. Why so, and how should it be addressed? To say that change has become the only constant in business has already become something of a cliché, but managing a constant flow of change presents challenges to UK employers and trainers. Research by our sister publication, Employment Review, released in November 2007, shows the major role HR plays in change management. It polled 114 HR professionals on change management, and 93 reported their organisations had undergone major change in the previous two years. Indeed, they each averaged seven major changes in two years – that's 651 in total. The survey found that HR was most involved in change management at the planning stage and took a leading role in assessing the likely impact of change on staff. Some eight out of 10 respondents said they prepared information for staff to help them cope with change. As for L&D, 67% of respondents said HR was responsible for developing training programmes to support change. Vanessa Robinson, an adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), says change management training is becoming more important. "It’s important that senior leaders have the right training and guidance on how to manage change, with two–way communication absolutely vital." Gill Homan, a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, says that change is accepted as a constant now, and although employers are investing in skills training, many have been slow to recognise the different types of change. "Managers are becoming much better but there are areas where even the most obvious things are neglected – not willingly but because of a lack of understanding of the process of change," she says. Harvest ideas Homan adds that training is a key part of any change management programme and that managers should learn to support people and develop techniques for harvesting ideas. "Managers need to have the ability to understand what skills should be applied to a particular change process. I think people are often surprised at how a few basic steps can improve things dramatically," she says. John Freshney, a programme co–ordinator at training firm Righttrack, says the growth in demand for change management training is due to organisations realising that proactive management of change is far more effective and less costly than simply implementing change, and then taking action to deal with it. "In organisations, change can cause great uncertainty and so investing in change management training will ensure the smoothest possible transition in behaviour, processes and systems. This will help minimise the loss of productivity, resulting in the organisation saving time and resources," he says. His training focuses on communication, influencing and planning skills, while encouraging delegates to understand how people respond to change. "From a practical perspective, the focus is on strategies for managing emotions and behaviours driven by enforced change, both for stakeholders and the change manager themselves," he adds. Judging how people will react and using training to help staff cope is one area that is being neglected, according to Dan Redland, from change consultants Getfeedback. "The biggest failing is that organisations are trying to enforce change without thinking about the people. This should be one of the biggest considerations but it is currently the main reason why many change programmes fail. "The key training challenge is around helping staff deliver the change and then cope with the consequences. To make it work, you also need a properly trained leadership team," he says. Trixie Rawlinson, a partner with training firm Impact Factory, agrees that learning to empathise and support people through change is one of the key functions of training in this area. "We try to focus on the overall reaction to change. Everybody reacts differently to change and it's about understanding the patterns and trying to get buy’in. You need to learn how to communicate with all people in a way that’s accepted," she says. The firm runs a course that helps individuals and teams become more aware of how to approach uncertainty in their work environments. Motivating force The company has an exercise called silent graffiti, which explores how people behave when they don’t know what to do. This helps managers understand more about facilitating change and looking at what motivates people. "People like patterns, and change means uncertainly. Everybody needs to be learning how to cope and it‘s essential that the message gets through to all parties," Rawlinson adds. She says that communication skills are vital and managers need to be trained to keep talking – even if there is no news, it should be communicated that there’s nothing more to report because people often assume the worst. In fact, change is now such a common feature of the workplace, the skills needed to manage it should be part of a range of training courses. Helen Hill, lead consultant on change at development firm Mast, includes change management skills in several more general management courses. She thinks training should focus on transformational and persuasion skills, with a real emphasis on dealing with people’s fears and anxieties. "I think people are good at recognising the business challenges but not so great at managing people through change," Hill adds. Gary Miles, principal consultant at management college Roffey Park, thinks many organisations try and push through too much change without building up a long–term psychological resistance. "A key factor is that there is often no leadership to keep the momentum going as senior managers lose interest once the change starts to happen. Change management is so hard to get right because most people are anxious about change. Organisations must build a psychology to deal with this negative attitude towards change a psychology that says ‘change is business as usual’," he says. Ongoing training and a strategy to help smooth change when it happens are important to making it a success, although many organisations leave it too late then panic when things go wrong. Miles adds: "Organisations should adopt a gradual and incremental attitude to change. Make it a long–term strategy, rather than trying to address everything all at once and at the same time. Organisations often fail to realise that change needs to happen before you change." At Roffey Park, change management training is seen as a psychological process and Miles says this consideration must be at the forefront of any change strategy. People make the change process work and it’s vital that managers and staff alike are properly developed to cope in an ever–changing world. "It’s crucial to involve employees in the change process. Our research into high–performance organisations found that the most effective change management strategies are bottom up, rather than top down," he says. Case study: Alliance & Leicester When financial services group Alliance & Leicester decided to review its overall business strategy, it embarked on a major change programme that would see training for more than 4,000 staff. The change programme was designed to ‘capture the hearts and minds’ of employees and, as a result, drive up the experience for the customers. The firm launched its people change agenda in a bid to make excellent customer services the factor that would make it stand out from competitors. This meant launching a massive change management training programme for staff, which was handled by Advance Performance. The training involved workshops, conferences and courses to help create a common organisational language and change the way the whole company interacted with consumers. Shaun Astley, distribution director at Alliance &Leicester, says the learning had really helped drive change through the entire group. "We knew that gaining our people’s commitment was pivotal if we were to stand out from the competition, and that is where Advance helped. Right from the boardroom to every customer–facing operation, we use the programme at every opportunity to try to influence those customer interfaces," he explains. Since the course was introduced, Alliance & Leicester has also reported increased staff satisfaction rates, recorded by employee opinion surveys. For Management Development Learning Methods Check http://www.mast.co.uk/pages/l... For Mast Client Relationships Check http://www.mast.co.uk/pages/c...
 
Organizational Leadership Training
06.30.08 (6:43 am)   [edit]

Every organization has various kinds of people working for it. Almost each employee possesses an individual nature, behavior, character that makes him/her unique. In fact, no two people would ever have exactly the same characteristics. It is no surprise that for any organization to be successful, it has to learn to manage and lead its employees effectively. However, school or college education itself is not enough to equip one with these very important leadership skills.

This is because what one encounters at on the job is usually quite different from what he/she has studied in school. It is for this reason that leadership training is a must for any individual who wishes to perform to his optimum capacity in an organization. Organizational leadership training is a specialized branch that deals with training leaders in the art of effective people-management in any organization. Organizational leadership training has various objectives, the main one of which is being able to align individual objectives with organizational objectives. To achieve this, knowledge and skills are imparted to individuals.

The course structure mainly includes analysis and discussion on the nature of leadership and management ; expanding awareness and understanding of the various facets of the business; learning and developing organizational values, skills, thoughts and qualities that are necessary to effectively lead and manage people and projects; becoming familiar with resources that help in this development, learning methods to apply positive leadership practices in their personal and professional lives, learning to make sound decisions based on organizational leadership theory , analyzing and laying out critical paths for correction of dysfunction within an organization and finally bringing it to profitability. Leaders are also taught how to effectively recruit, motivate, train, and then evaluate people for their organizations. Check http://www.mast.co.uk" title="http://www.mast.co.uk" target="_blank"http://www.mast.co.uk

 
Managers fail to learn from their mistakes, research reveals
06.23.08 (6:04 am)   [edit]

Common myths about leadership indicate a need to demystify the concept of leadership by introducing managers early on to practical steps that will help them start their transition towards becoming an excellent leader. Jennie Kettlewell, executive coach with MaST International, a learning and development consultancy, says the focus of development should be on what actually in practice

‘Leadership ’ is all too often a concept that strikes fear into the hearts of those expected to lead. It is not surprising really, especially when we hear a potential leader told by her boss to: "go and be inspiring".

Having coached many executives who have been tasked with becoming better leaders, I notice that their challenge is to understand exactly what this means and what they should be doing differently. Many find it just too hard to make the link between what they perceive of great leaders and the practical steps business leaders need to take to help their followers see a better future and rally them towards it.

This confusion often shows itself as a reluctance to lead, so that HR professionals in the UK claim it is hard to find senior leaders from within their companies, resulting in a huge cost for external recruitment.

The starting point is to dispel some common leadership myths.

  • Leadership is something you just step into with a new role.
  • It’s only top management that needs to lead (my boss, not me...).
  • Following one of the leadership models will be sufficient to become an excellent leader.

Transition not transplant
Becoming a leader is a transition, rather than something one achieves overnight. It doesn’t come complete with a new title or role. In fact, some leadership skills are required from junior manager level upwards and the transition to being an excellent leader happens as new skills are learned and honed by experience. It frequently comes as a welcome surprise to reluctant leaders to find that they are already employing leadership skills and they just haven’t noticed.

In a business with a clear vision and set of strategic priorities, the energy for success comes from the middle of the company. The board cannot do it all themselves. So organisations need leaders at all levels to help their teams identify with the big picture and motivate them to align their work with the corporate strategy. This can be for direct report teams, project teams or virtual teams. Some of the best leaders I have encountered have had no team at all but have lead with a great idea, rallying people to support it so that it comes to fruition.

Practical tip
A good coach will help the leader reframe their beliefs about their right to lead, wherever they sit in the organisation. A ‘trim tab’ is a useful metaphor to get managers thinking about how their relatively small leadership efforts can make a big difference. Think about what makes a big tanker start to turn. It’s the rudder. But the water creates strong resistance, so there’s this device called a trim tab set into the rudder. It is like a miniature rudder which doesn’t create much resistance so it pulls the whole rudder around. It creates all that effect with relatively little effort. So it is helpful to suggest managers think of themselves as ‘trim tab leaders’, which is a small step with appeal because it is something managers believe they can do.

Personal brand as a leader
One of the most depressing comments I have heard was: "I don’t want to learn leadership skills because I have my own style. I don’t want to be turned into a ‘jelly mould’ type of leader, where we all have the same style."

Fortunately, the unique combination of experience, personal values and skills mean that each leader is different, with their own personal brand of leadership. It does not mean that they shouldn’t learn new skills but, by consciously creating their own personal brand as a leader, they can be both authentic and credible. Coaching can help leaders to understand how their brand is made up and how they can make it clear exactly what they stand for.

Practical tip
A personal value is an enduring belief about the way things should be done or about ends we desire. Values are principles that are intrinsically important to us and guide all our decisions and actions. They tend to remain relatively stable though may shift at different stages in our life. To be truly credible, a leader needs to make it clear exactly what he or she stands for and then demonstrate it consistently. When we act and think consistently with our values, others see us as demonstrating credibility, honesty and integrity.

A budding leader can explore the answers to the following questions:

  • What do you most care about?
  • What are your strongly held beliefs about yourself and your work?
  • What are you discontent about?
  • What brings you suffering?
  • What makes you jump for joy?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • What keeps you awake at night?
  • What do you want from your life?
  • Just what is it you really care about?

Building blocks
Once the myths have been dispelled and the potential leader sees that leadership is achievable through a number of very practical building blocks, the reluctance disappears and leadership becomes quite an appealing prospect. The building blocks will be different for each person.

Two of the building blocks worth mentioning are ‘emotional intelligence’ and bringing the big picture alive for the team.

We know, because we are told so often, that we need to understand ourselves before we can seek to create positive relationships with others. What makes us tick, what makes us default to one style of leadership over another? When we understand more about that, we can choose to learn and use other styles, as appropriate for the situation.

Practical tip
Experience shows that one of the more practical sets of styles is the one outlined by Daniel Goleman, psychologist and corporate consultant. The six styles are clearly described, explaining the associated behaviours and the types of business situations each style is best suited for. Each style springs from different aspects of emotional intelligence. They are easy to understand and allow managers to identify with what they can learn now to start their transition to leadership.

The leaders who get the most positive results are able to use any of the six styles. Goleman maintains that, with practise, leaders can switch among leadership styles to produce powerful results, thus turning the mysterious art of leadership into a practical science. The style names and brief descriptions will resonate with anyone who is learning to lead.

  • Directive leaders demand immediate compliance.
  • Visionary leaders mobilise people toward a vision.
  • Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony.
  • Participative leaders build consensus through participation.
  • Pacesetting leaders expect excellence and self-direction.
  • Coaching leaders develop people for the future.

An experiec nced coach can help someone understand their default style or styles and the resulting impact on followers. The next stage is to start learning the styles that are less natural to the manager and therefore used less often.

What does a leader do?
So now our leader has a pretty good idea how to behave as a leader but, back in the workplace, what does a leader actually do?

Many employees, at some level, have insecurities about the future and the unknown and this is fuelled by constant change and the uncertainties of modern business life. Effective leaders are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future even when they cannot themselves be sure of what that future will be. By providing an island of clarity in the midst of chaos, leaders enable their teams to focus on getting the job done.

The role of a leader is to help people see a better future and assist them towards it. How often have you seen that ‘better future’, or vision, written as a rather uninspiring set of words? It may mean something logically, but it has no real meaning or appeal for the individuals who are supposed to work towards it.

Practical Tip
Excellent leaders bring the vision alive for the teams through appealing to all the senses and making it vivid, memorable, motivating and engaging. They use words or pictures to create an image people can carry round in their heads: storytelling, metaphors, graphics, symbols, examples, humour, sound, quotes.

We can all recognise a situation where there is a big subject team members feel it is important to discuss. Each person hopes someone else will raise the matter, but does not say anything for fear of upsetting someone, causing embarrassment or being made to look stupid. This can happen even when the topic is critical to the success of the team or organisation. The financial results are poor, but it’s explained away as a ‘blip’ in performance. It can happen in small teams, large teams or indeed boards of directors.

Excellent leaders don’t wait until a ‘difficult subject’ turns into a major problem. They raise it early and deal with it. Handled constructively, without blame, these undiscussables can be a real source of learning.

 

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Does your performance management process deliver?
06.10.08 (6:41 am)   [edit]
Wednesday 11 June 2008 MaST International, Maidenhead Most companies have performance management processes, but do they deliver to expectations? All the elements should be in place and interdependent but often they are not and the results are disappointing. During this forum we will examine why performance management processes disappoint and the key elements that need to be in place to ensure success. Your opportunity During this Forum we will explore:– * Problems with performance management * How your staff view the process * Trends in performance management * The elements of a good performance management process * Auditing your own process * Action planning Join us for a facilitated session at our Head Office where, weather permitting, you will be able to enjoy the gardens during your networking time. Registration for the Forum is from 9.30am. We will start at 10.00am and close at 12.30pm. To confirm your place and/or bring along a colleague, please email us at ldforum@mast.co.uk. Should you have any other questions, please call Nikki Knight on 01628 504904. If you are not familiar with our L&D Forums, you can find out more here.
 
Managing diversity
05.29.08 (2:14 am)   [edit]

What is Diversity? Diversity is an attempt to recognise the strengths and potential of each and every individual. It is an attempt to broaden a working culture so that all creative thinking styles, approaches and life patterns can be accommodated for the benefit of the individuals and the organisation. Why is diversity important? There are three important reasons for looking at diversity – legal, ethical and business practice. Legal: Anyone with management responsibility needs to be aware of their legal duties. Claims for discrimination often lead to large awards and take up much HR time, as well as giving bad publicity for the employer. Ethical: Many organisations have developed values that require ethical behaviour from all staff. Many potential recruits look closely at the culture of an organisation before they make a final career decision. Business practice: An organisation must recognise the changes occurring within its customer base or catchment area and capitalise on them. 50% of the ethnic minority population in the UK is under 25 and last year 79% of those joining the European job market were women. Companies that take advantage of these changes will have the opportunity for increased sales, new ideas and a better future. Some early signs of future problems in this area include difficulties with recruitment, failure to win certain contracts, a rise in use of grievance procedures or an imbalance in the ethnic, gender, age or disability mix of applicants for a job or promotion. However, forward-looking organisations will act on these issues now, not wait for problems to occur. Diagnosis before cure… Companies seeing such problems will often want to change very quickly before their business suffers. They look to ’positive action’, ‘targeted groups development’ or other ‘miracle’ cures. However, the challenges may be deeper rooted than they think and some ‘solutions’ may exacerbate a situation by alienating the majority with what looks like preferential treatment. Employers must assess very carefully what is happening in the organisation, and why the issues are arising. Organisations will often require an audit to see this bigger picture. An audit measures the employer’s intentions and procedures as well as the perceptions of employees and other stakeholders. The audit will reveal strengths as well as dangers within the organisation. Although in larger companies the audit can be carried out using internal resources, given the sensitivity of the issues it is usually better that the auditor is seen to be independent. Anecdotal evidence is as valuable as statistics, and our experience has shown that the perceptions and feelings of the workforce are more readily given to strangers rather than colleagues. Part of the audit may also be legal and will involve checking company procedures against latest UK legislation and EC directives. People are the common factor Common to all Diversity strategies is the move from system-based thinking, where process is everything, to people-based thinking, where individuals are celebrated. Diversity is not about the largely unhelpful groupings that dominated Equal Opportunities thinking in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s when success was measured in terms of percentages rather than the development of individuals. Diversity is about capitalising on individual approaches to life and styles of work. It is about developing personal creativity and bringing the mixture together for the benefit of all. It aims to realise the potential of each individual. Diversity programmes examine the value of existing stereotypes, questioning unhelpful grouping and assertions such as ‘What women think is…’, ‘What black people want is…’ and ‘What older people feel is…’. They encourage individuality while recognising the effects of different cultural backgrounds. This contradiction is at the heart of Diversity. We are all products of our individual upbringings. These influences need to be understood in order for managers to manage effectively, but once they begin to dominate then we are in the realm of stereotyping and what ensues is prejudice and resentment. The first step of a solution may well be identifying under-represented sections of the community, and may even involve setting agreed targets for recruitment and promotion, but these must never become an end in themselves. Indeed they can be counterproductive if employees sense an element of favouritism.

Management Development, Leadership & Personal Development Training, Management skills Development training, UK & International

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Leadership training