The 12-week Essentials of Effective Supervision course provides a strong knowledge base for first-line supervisors, managers and team leaders. This series is designed to provide new supervisors, and those aspiring to become supervisors, with a unique blend of knowledge, skills and strategies in the areas needed to effectively and efficiently supervise others. Participants will immediately put their new skills into practice. The topics covered each week are core issues proven to be the keys for supervisory success. Supervisors at all levels need to handle these areas with confidence and authority to effectively deal with and manage the employees they supervise.

1. The Changing Role of the First-Line Supervisor – What happened to motivation and the “work ethic?” Don’t worry it’s still here! How to enrich jobs, deal with organizational change and how to manage employees through it for positive performance. A comparison of the traditional role to contemporary demands for supervising today’s worker.

2. Managing Diversity in the Workplace –Understanding the changes of the American workforce will provide awareness for increased communication and a more cohesive work team.

3. Leadership and Motivation – What is leadership vs. management? Review your leadership style and how to apply leadership in today’s workplace to increase and maintain employee motivation.

4. Legal Responsibilities of the Supervisor – State and federal laws pertaining to employment, sexual harassment, workers’ compensation, discrimination and the supervisor’s role in preventing adverse consequences.

5. Effective Communication –Learn how to communicate to build trust, teamwork, consensus and meet performance objectives. Self assessments will help you uncover your communication style and potential barriers your style may be creating.

6. Orienting & Training New Workers – What to include in the orientation of new workers, how to structure OJT to achieve maximum results.

7. The Supervisors Role in Performance Appraisals – Gain specific steps and guidelines in developing and using job-related work performance objectives, standards and performance plans. Understand how you can positively impact your employee’s formal appraisals.

8. Dealing with Conflict & Disciplinary Procedures – Understand the positives and negatives of conflict, how to work effectively within both and steps to defuse. Uncover your personal conflict style. Also learn the keys to conducting proper discipline and documentation.

9. Planning for Results & Problem Solving – Establishing a vision, setting goals, overcoming obstacles, developing an action plan, controlling and evaluating.

10. Dealing with Stress, Time Management & Delegation – Learn how to manage interruptions, set clear goals, eliminate the 7 most deadly time-wasters and the cure to procrastination.

11. Safety and Security Issues – The supervisor’s responsibility in OSHA, record keeping, and safety and security issues for the new millennium; ergonomics and work place violence.

12. Creating High-Performance Teams – Identify strategies in teambuilding skills and maintaining effective team communications.

Successful retention and succession planning requires a development plan for your people. Especially early in someone’s career it is important to have a plan for how they will grow. Many leave this to chance and take a strategy of hope when it comes to skill development. Join us to learn how to take an intentional approach to identifying competencies and a plan to develop them.

Objectives
After completing this course participants will be able to:
• Understand the principles of rapid skill development
• Learn the process of career mapping
• Recognize the link between generalized knowledge and specific skills
• Take ownership for their own skill development
• Understand how development can lead to greater engagement and retention

According to Clifton Taulbert, long before he heard the words ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET . . .he encountered the word GUMPTION. While growing up on the Mississippi Delta under the watchful eye of his Great-Uncle Cleve, who owned the local Icehouse, little did he know then that he was being prepared for the 21st century. According to Taulbert, he sees both words (Gumption & Entrepreneurial Thinking) as a clarion call to individual and corporate action–to imaging beyond what we know and see. This is the human journey. All that we see around us was first a question that ignited our imagination and from there …off to the innovation laboratories where the Pyramid of Africa would emerge, and Steve Jobs “iPhones” would define our daily lives.

Taulbert-a TIME MAGAZINE recognized entrepreneur will take us on a “MINDSET” journey from his Mississippi Icehouse to the fitness centers around the world where the STAIRMASTER EXERCISE SYSTEM maintains fitness prominence. According to Taulbert, “Once upon a time, Stairmaster was simply an inquisitive conversation—one that ignited the imagination of one man.” Read Taulbert’s complete bio here https://www.cliftontaulbert.com/about-clifton-taulbert/

Please join the efactory, Missouri SBDC at MSU, SCORE, Springfield-Greene County Library District, and the Multicultural Business Association for this very intriguing journey into entrepreneurship!

This event will be held in the efactory’s Jay Wasson Idea Loft. There is no fee to attend this session, but pre-registration is required.

Does conflict sometimes interfere with the day-to-day operations of your organization? Actually, conflict is a natural and even beneficial fact of life in the business environment. However, when not managed well it can result in low morale, decreased productivity, high stress levels, and the loss of good employees, all of which detract from the organization’s performance. The inability to deal with conflict can undermine a supervisor’s or manager’s effectiveness. Learn how to manage conflict situations to produce positive outcomes.

Key Information:
The Nature of Interpersonal Communication

•Learn how you can tell when someone is displaying confidence, awareness, defensiveness, or insecurity through body language

•Dealing with interpersonal conflict constructively while seeking solutions to problems

•Communicate more effectively by listening for understanding

Factors influencing conflict at work (structural and personal)

•Learn the nature of emotional reactions and the mindset for managing emotions

•Understand the levels of conflict and how to prevent escalation

•Complete the “Conflict Style Inventory” to identify your style

Communication skills for successfully addressing conflict

•Learn the role of listening in conflict resolution and how to do it

•Develop a more accurate vocabulary of words that express feelings

•Understand how to listen and reflect to gain understanding

Approaches to dealing with conflict and when they apply

•Learn why no conflict is as unhealthy as too much

•Discover the eight-step procedure for confronting conflict

•Learn how to identify your own real needs

Benefits of Attending: You will be able to identify the source of a conflict and know the most appropriate corrective action for that source. You will understand the different approaches for dealing with difficult people and which is the most effective approach for a given situation. You also will learn communication skills that will enable you to confront conflict constructively, and you will recognize and be able to address factors in your organization that may be contributing to unproductive conflict.

Increasingly, organizations are realizing the need for leadership at all levels. Because people want to be led, not managed, managers need to develop as leaders in addition to being highly competent in functional management areas. There is an impressive body of knowledge regarding leadership, and the skills needed to be an effective leader. The Effective Leader/Manager will address the following 5 key areas of managerial effectiveness.

This course is designed around the Management Competency Model based on The Leadership Challenge model by Kouzes and Posner.

Key Information:

Model the Way
• Find your voice by clarifying your personal values
• Set the example by aligning actions with shared values
• Improving Communication (written, verbal, electronic, web, PR)
Inspire a Shared Vision
• Envision the Future by imagining exciting ennobling possibilities
• Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations

Challenge the Process
• Search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to change, grow and improve
• Experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from mistakes
• Keep the Lines Open – Practice “engaged listening” to ensure two-way communication throughout your team and the organization.
• Exude Competence – Generate a personal development plan based on the four lessons of self-knowledge to continually increase your competence as a leader/manager.

Enable Others to Act
• Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust
• Strengthen others by sharing power and discretion
• Building Collaboration / Delegation / Trust

Encouraging the Heart
• Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence
• Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community

Every day employees are spending more and more time working in team and group situations. But few of them have ever received any training in how to succeed in these situations. Many employees are even threatened by the process.

During this program, you will learn and practice the fundamentals of building effective and productive work groups. You will walk away from this program with tools and techniques that can help you turn low-performance groups into high-performance teams.

You will take a self-assessment in advance of this training to learn your top 34 strengths and how you can work better and more productively in a team environment.

Key Information:
• Discover and identify your personal talents and strengths through a self-assessment and guidance from a certified coach
• Learn how to leverage and aim your talents and strengths effectively and successfully on any task
• Identify your unique and valuable contribution to the team and learn to lead others in doing the same
• Learn to identify what your need from the team and the workplace and lead others to do the same • Learn how to better understand yourself and others in a team environment
• Discover how you gather information and come to conclusions, and how that may differ from others
• Discover how your strengths may also be your greatest liabilities under certain conditions
• Tap into the quantum power of learning styles, intelligence, personality types, and emotional intelligence
• How to use personality styles to your group’s advantages
• Put your group to work solving problems
• Explore why teams succeed and why they fail

Coaching can close the gap between acceptable and superior performance. Attend this seminar to learn the skills that professional coaches use to cultivate responsibility, innovation, energy, and commitment. This seminar will equip you with coaching and mentoring methods that will transform a team or individual to new heights of improved performance. In addition, you also will learn how to deal with confronting problem employees.

Key Information:
Creating a Climate for Success
• Improve performance through training and coaching
• How to develop coaching and mentoring relationships
• Building self-esteem
• Teaching others to lead
• Coaching as a two-way process

How to Be a Championship Coach
• Strategies for increasing employee commitment
• Involve employees in decision making
• Reinforce learning on the job
• The challenges and criticisms involved in coaching
• Tapping into employees’ individual strengths
• Coaching versus mentoring

“Enjoy the Journey” Of Coaching
• Learn to spot the “coachable” moments – golden opportunities
• Increase job satisfaction and work output
• Inform, delegate, and motivate to achieve your objectives
• Learn how to get valuable feedback from your team

Leadership is a delicate balance of results and relationships. A recent Gallop poll found only 30% of employees say they are engaged and inspired at work. Perks, pay raises and promotions alone don’t do the job. What does create high job satisfaction is culture, teamwork and leadership. In this one day session you’ll learn how Pirate Captains faced the same challenges and overcame them aboard their ships.

Key Information:

• Your personal leadership style
• How to create a collective vision and values
• What makes a strong work culture
• How a team centered focus can improve productivity and improve attitudes
• What other organizations are doing that is working to attract and retain young workers

Managers are constantly called upon to manage projects or to be part of a project team. The effective management of projects – completion within a deadline and a budget, subject to performance criteria – is the cornerstone for business success. All projects are undertaken to achieve specific results and need a framework to help accomplish an important new objective; face new challenges and organizational structures, define objectives, communicate and instruct.

Day 1
What is a “Project”?
What is a “successful” project?
Why do projects fail?

The Project Lifecycle
•Initiation
•Planning
•Execution
•Closeout

The Triple Constraints to Projects—Scope, Time, Cost

Processes and Practices
•Scope, Time, Cost, Quality Management
•Risk management
•Communications management

Managing the Scope
•Defining the objectives of the project
•Defining the work to be done
•Work Breakdown Structure
•Managing scope changes

Managing Project Time
•Estimating time to complete project tasks
•Resource loading and leveling
•Controlling project costs

Day 2
Managing Project Quality
•Project specifications
•Quality assurance and control

Managing Risk Management
•Risk identification
•Planning for risks
•Responding to risks

Managing Project Communications
•Who needs what, when, how, etc.?
•Reporting project status
•Measurement metrics
•Earned Value

Managing Multiple Small Concurrent Projects
•Managing multiple independent projects
•Small concurrent projects

Organizing for Project Management
•Traditional and matrix organizations
•Project office

The Successful Project Manager
•Roles and responsibilities
•Qualities for success

Project Infrastructure
•Change management system
•Project management information system

The Project Team
•Reasons teams fail
•Situational leadership
•Creating shared commitment
•Instilling team values
•Stages of team development

Project Closeout
•Overcoming the “90% complete” phenomenon
•Exit reviews

Methodology – Putting it all together