Management Information |
How to Manage Your People Well: Tips for Managers of Training
As a training manager, there are two important aspects to managing your people well: hiring, supervising, and motivating (managing with your people) and building up corporate support for your department (managing for your people). Unfortunately, training is not well understood by some executives, and its benefits can be hard to assess. Even a good training manager's department risks cuts by cost-conscious administrators convinced that training is an unnecessary expense. In The Secret of My Success, a cinematic fairy tale about life in corporate America, Michael J. Fox gets scolded his first day on the job for speaking to a senior executive: "Never consort with a suit unless the suit consorts with you first." As a training manager, however, you had better be prepared to consort with "the suits" from Day One. Managing for your people is a pro-active strategy that constantly demands selling your department's services and widening the base of organizational support for the training function. All of our experts agree that the actions of the manager of training are critical to the department's survival, and important for the long-term health and continuity of the organization itself. In an era of cost cutting and corporate mergers/takeovers, a training manager must make sure his or her department is 1) visible, 2) credible and 3) perceived to be as integral to the organization's growth as it really is. This can be accomplished by means of two different approaches that boil down to either response or outreach. Some managers find it effective to combine some of each into a very personal brew. For example, Mary Belle GrosJacques, Trainer Coordinator at CH2M HILL, characterizes her department's approach as essentially "reactive .[We] satisfy needs brought to us" .Yet she also notes that "[we] try to think of needs they didn't bring to us," indicating that it is possible to respond creatively by anticipating future needs, and using the feedback from existing programs to extrapolate new directions. Susan Warshauer, Manager of Training and Development Programs, at M.I.T., acts on the premise that building up organizational support "...takes a conscious strategy. Cultivate relationships with senior people, find out what they perceive as needs, and have a yearly process of needs assessment. Keep in touch with your community and be responsive to them." Copyright AE Schwartz & Associates All rights reserved. For additional presentation materials and resources: ReadySetPresent and for a Free listing as a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker, Vendor/Organization: TrainingConsortium CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
6 Steps To Effective Management During Change Take the pain out of gain and decrease the upheaval surrounding change by following six commonsense steps to effective management.Step 1: Establish ObjectivesThe process must begin with a clear and detailed statement of objectives and move from there to goal design. Does Your State Like To Keep Your Workers Compensation Secrets Hidden? Workers compensation secrets are hidden deep within piles and piles of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. They are sometimes used as high priced paper weights for over worked government workers who may or may not be totally interested in seeing that you find the exact information that you are looking for. Organizational Structure, Creativity, Innovation Organizational structure can inhibit or foster creativity and innovation. The problem with organizational structure though, is that it is resultant of many factors, including history, organic growth, strategy, operational design, product diversity, logistics, marketing, client base, supplier base and so forth. Creativity Management - The Value of Being Prolific When asked his secret to success, the author Graham Green said that it was down to his always writing 500 words a day. There are real reasons why this philosophy rings true:a) The single best creative product tends to appear at that point in the career when the creator is being most prolific - quality of output is closely related to quantity. Knowledge Management - Leadership Behaviours Which Encourage Knowledge-Sharing The concept of knowledge management or knowledge sharing makes intellectual sense to the leadership teams in most organisations. Why wouldn't we want to learn from our successes and failures, and translate that learning into value?However, there is often a gap between the conceptual understanding, and their own behaviours as leaders - and that can be a problem?How do you engage leaders both intellectually and emotionally, in a way which will make a difference to their day-to-day behaviours? It requires more than a set of competency frameworks!The examples below are taken from the bestselling fieldbook "Learning to Fly ? Practical knowledge management from leading and learning organisations", written by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell. Project Heroes Project heroes. We've all heard of them. A Sense of Humor in the Workplace ... Is it Me? Or, was that not funny? When I was first initiated into Corporate America, I had a sense of humor that went unmatched by any mortal soul. I was quick-witted, smart, sharp, and knew every gag and joke available to humanity. Performance Appraisals: Questions for Smarties and Dummies In numerous programs I've conducted on performance appraisals, with Human Resource people (who are responsible for developing and implementing programs) and with line managers (who actually conduct the reviews) are often foggy about performance appraisal procedures. Here are some frequently asked questions. Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Have SMART Goals The first step in planning an agenda is to identify the goals for the meeting. Properly done, goals have five S M A R T characteristics. Building Shareholder Value Through Your People Increasing shareholder value is the most important driver for organisations in the modern business world. Shareholder value is built through growing profit and building confidence in the organisation, which moves share prices upwards. Top 10 Things Every Business Should Provide for Every Worker - Including the Boss! Doing business and meeting the needs of workers is increasingly complex. Employees and managers often prefer a cafeteria-list of fringe benefits (a "flexible spending account") so they can choose increased health care, child care or more time off as their individual preferences dictate. Plan for Business Success - 6 Reasons to Succession Plan Succession Planning provides many valuable assets to your business. Yet it is easy to do, with a game plan. Accountability Equals Meeting Success Leslie was the new manager of the group. She was replacing Tom, a well respected manager who was retiring. Business Innovation - the Value of Work Processes Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas. Do the People in Your Organisation Dress For Success? What really amazes me, with all the personal and professional development seminars people attend, from executives in corporate world, business owners and employees alike, very little investment has been made into the way they look .. Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Training is in the Eye of the Beholder This article relates to the Training competency, commonly evaluated in employee surveys. It comments on the value of training to both the company and its workforce. I Am Not A Number - Why Too Many Change Projects Fail Many of you will recognise this quote from the 1960s TV show, "The Prisoner". Patrick McGoohan used the phrase to describe his frustration at not being treated as an individual, and being kept in the dark about what his superiors were up to in a very confusing environment. Develop Your People and Make More Money What is the no. 1 asset in your business beside yourself? It's your people. You Didnt Use Brainstorming to Select Your Measures, Did You? IntroductionWhen Alex Osborn invented the creativity technique called brainstorming, I wonder if he had any idea just how extensively business would apply it. Almost every meeting employs some kind of brainstorming event, but there's one meeting that really should leave it off the agenda: the performance measure selection meeting. Top 7 Methods to Empower Employees How many times have you asked someone to do something like "draw up a plan for such and such project"? Your employee completes the plan, but then you say, "That is not what I wanted" or "That is not how you do it". And so the employee thinks: you didn't tell me exactly how you wanted it done. |
home | site map | contact us |