Making Projects Work
As a result of this workshop, you will learn to initiate a project correctly and improve people management within projects. You will improve project results by fine-tuning involvement strategies, and getting the right people involved at the right time in the right way.
We also work on understanding your style of influence and fine tuning the people skills necessary to be successful. This session may be supported by an electronic meeting systems provided by Group Solutions.
This workshop can be modularized into a one day Project Team Start-Up and a second segment focusing on Influencing and Selling Skills.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will:
• Learn how to initiate a project correctly.
• Establish a project goal/mission statement along with critical success drivers.
• Analyze key customer/constituent areas and identify the specific players who will determine the successes or failure of your project.
• Identify pockets of project resistance and support, as well as develop strategies to influence when you do not have authority.
• Facilitate a session to gain commitment to a high-level project plan and define roles and responsibilities.
• Understand your influencing style.
• Package and sell requests in such a way that project constituents and team members see you as responsive to their concerns.
• Contract and negotiate in the context of resolving a project issue.
• Design meetings to get project customers’ and team members’ support on as well as to resolve dissatisfaction.
Task Force Mastery
“The large business 20 years hence is more likely to resemble a hospital or a symphony than a typical manufacturing company… Work will be done differently. Traditional departments will serve as guardians or standards, centers of training and the assignment of specialists. Work will occur in temporary task focused teams.”
–Peter Drucker, Harvard Business Review
This workshop maps a step by step approach to successful startup and management of a task force or special project team. You will create a plan and practice the skills necessary to turn a “good idea” into reality. This session may be supported by an electronic meeting systems provided by Group Solutions.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop, you will be able to:
• Describe what to do to start a task force quickly and correctly.
• Turn a task force charge into a goal and scope statement supported by operating assumptions and guidelines.
• Analyze cross-functional areas to identify the appropriate sponsors and specific players who will determine the success or failure of the recommendation.
• Identify specific agreements from key players in order to front-load the task force for a successful, high quality implementation.
• Highlight issues faced early on, midway through and late in the life of a task force and practice a time-tested problem resolution process.
• Understand the basics of using a simple project management PC tool to assist in task force planning and progress reporting.
• Facilitate a session to gain commitment to a high-level plan.
Groupware Supported Project Start-Up
This session combines the best of traditional facilitation techniques with electronic meeting technology to initiate the start-up of a complex project. Anonymity of responses, quick list building and prioritization, immediate documentation and other features allow your team to move quickly to the point of negotiating the core project initiation issues. Strong team building and a clear decision tree are the outputs of this session.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will have:
• Translated the sponsor’s charge into a project goal/mission supported by scope definition and success criteria.
• Prioritized key project issues.
• Analyzed key customer/constituent areas and identified the specific players who will determine the success or failure of your project.
• Identified pockets of project support and resistance and developed strategies for influencing in areas where the team does not have direct authority.
• Clarified each organization’s role and the appropriate influencing and communication vehicles for players who are affected by the project but are not on the core project team.
• Created a project plan which identifies activities, required skill sets and individuals who will have primary and back-up responsibility
• Build a decision tree of all key decisions facing the team and how they will be resolved and by whom.
Groupware Facilitator Skills Training
This workshop is designed to prepare meeting leaders to plan for and hold productive meetings by utilizing the power of electronic groupware. The course introduces several advanced facilitation techniques designed to manage difficult group situations. There is special emphasis on the skills required to effectively use electronic groupware for facilitating a team’s work.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will have the ability to:
• Enhance meeting planning and management skills in an electronic meeting setting.
• Effectively manage the most frequent forms of resistance to the use of electronic support in meetings.
• Understand the dynamics of team growth in the electronic environment.
• Improve your mapping skills as a session leader.
• Learn and apply electronic process maps for missioning, project planning, customer/supplier mapping, brainstorming and complex list manipulation.
• Consider new uses for groupware tools.
• Understand the stages of team growth and development and how they impact group meetings.
Self-Directed Teams
This workshop is designed for organizations making the transition from formal hierarchically oriented structures to customer-responsive work teams.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will:
• Know how self-directed teams differ from other types of teams.
• Explore barriers to self-directed teams.
• Receive a checklist to assess your organization’s readiness for self-directed teams.
• Differentiate when self-directed teams are and are not appropriate.
• Know how to start up a self-directed team.
• Understand the impact of selection, training, work design, rewards, manager role and senior management support in the success of self-directed teams.
• Understand empowerment and how to make it work!
Negotiation Skills
This workshop focuses on influencing skills for sales and marketing professionals and for all managers who are regularly involved in negotiating contracts or who find themselves in high conflict situations.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will:
• Learn an effective model for designing and planning and successful negotiations.
• Increase the success of your negotiations.
• Learn strategies for long term relationship building.
• Learn specific techniques that help you avoid negotiations.
• Understand communication strategies for decision making and rapport building.
Meeting Facilitation Skills
The goal of this workshop is to prepare meeting leaders to plan for and hold more productive meetings by practicing techniques that will build on existing skill sets. The course introduces several advanced facilitation techniques designed to manage difficult group situations. During the class, all students have an opportunity to practice the techniques and receive feedback to reinforce strengths and help them with areas of difficulty. Facilitation skills are critical to organizations as they emphasize teamwork and quality management. By enhancing existing skills, confidence in effectively leading groups increase.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop you will:
• Understand how facilitation skills are used to provide focus in a meeting.
• Be able to structure effective meeting agendas.
• Know how to intervene effectively in difficult meeting situations such as when a group is experiencing conflict.
• Be prepared to facilitate “from your chair” to positively influence a meeting even when you are not the formal meeting leader.
• Select and use process tools to organize a group’s efforts around a task
• Receive detailed feedback on your strengths and development areas as a meeting facilitator.
After Restructure .. Managing Teams Through Change
This workshop is designed for a work group which has been re-structured or re-engineered. Transition to a smoothly operating organization should not be left to chance. It is imperative that your team do the right things in the right way to meet customer needs and identify skill gaps and plans to resolve these gaps as quickly as possible.
During the session, we integrate the re-engineering results and establish the new framework for the organization, inside of which members are empowered to work. A united team, prepared to work toward mission critical goals, results from this session. Improvement projects are identified. Employee development plans are drafted. The graphic attached illustrated the template filled in by work group members and validated by managers and above.
Objectives
Upon completion of this session, team members will have:
• Created a clear, compelling mission supported by objectives, decision making criteria (driving principles), core work processes, and required skill sets.
• Identified key customers & suppliers, products and services.
• Prioritized key issues and improvements projects.
• Defined where individuals fit and created development plans.
• Defined the role of Senior Management and negotiated the role of team manager in support of the charge.
• Created a transition plan to take the team from what it is today to what it needs to become.
Winning Presentations
Why make someone sit through a dull presentation? Whenever you make a presentation you are trying to persuade, but most presentation are flat at best, and even sleep inducing in some cases. How do you stand out as someone whose presentations are dynamic and convincing, resulting in the action or reaction you are shooting for? “Winning Presentations” will show you how.
Objectives
At the close of the workshop you will have learned how to:
• Avoid common, but deadly presentation mistakes
• Use nervousness to your advantage
• Properly use eye contact to the benefit of both the audience and the presenter
• Capture and organize your information for the most persuasive presentation
• Incorporate powerful visuals that will be remembered by your audience
• Stage the presentation and position yourself for maximum impact
• Prompt group involvement and interact effectively with your audience
Sexual Harassment/Gender Awareness
The human toll sexual harassment takes is very great: decreased feelings of competence and confidence, increased feelings of anger and frustration, even depression and anxiety that severely affect morale and productivity. An employer is responsible for acts of sexual harassment in the workplace where the employer knows of should have known of the conduct, unless it can show that it took immediate and appropriate corrective action. Preventing sexual harassment and enforcing sexual harassment policies require the active involvement of all employees. Training will help prepare them for this important responsibility.
Objectives
Upon completion of this workshop, students will:
• Clearly understand the organization’s sexual harassment policy, their responsibilities under the policy and how to implement it
• Be aware of the channels for reporting sexual harassment and the sanctions for different types and degrees of violation of the sexual harassment policy
• Have gained insight into the way their behavior affects or may affect others
• Have investigated ways of treating colleagues and direct reports in a manner which shows true respect for gender differences