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Team Builders Plus offers the Vital Learning's Leadership Essentials, which teaches your leaders how to bring teams together - to improve productivity - to focus on behavior and not attitudes - to deal with facts and not opinions - to create a climate of open communication.

Vital Learning has been at the forefront of leader/manager training for over 20 years. Millions of people have benefited from this training. Our training is effective because participants see the new skills, practice the new skills, and most importantly, transfer the new skills to their work and apply them to their job.

All modules include pre-test, post-tests and skill practices. Each can also be customized to reflect your specific business or industry. New videos in all new modules represent today's workplace environments and scenarios.

Prepare your team leaders today to deal with the challenges of tomorrow with Vital Learning's Leadership Essentials.

Delivery options and a blended learning solution include: Classroom, Online, or CD-ROM. Team Builders Plus also offers train-the-trainer programs.

Modules and objectives include:

 

Essential Skills of Leadership:

  • Deal with team members on a day-to-day basis in such a way as to maintain and enhance their self-esteem.
  • Base discussions about performance and work habits on behavior rather than on personalities and attitudes.
  • Involve team members in goal setting, problem solving and decision-making.

Essential Skills of Communicating:

  • See that communication is a two-way process.
  • Construct clear, concise messages in the interest of the listener.
  • Manage nonverbal behaviors to reinforce the intent of messages.
  • Listen actively to improve communication.
  • Create a climate of open communication, which increases team members' motivation and commitment.

Coaching Job Skills:

  • Understand what coaching is, why it is important, and how it supports individual and company goals.
  • Prepare for a coaching session by using observation and analysis to build a plan for a successful dialog.
  • Hold a coaching conversation that improves an individual's performance and increases productivity.
  • Use coaching as a way to build a valuable sense of teamwork between the team leader and team member through communication, shared goals and collaboration.

Improving Work Habits:

  • Recognize the difference between job performance and work habits.
  • Managers will understand that a work habits discussion is not coaching and requires different skills for successful resolution.
  • Understand that unsatisfactory work habits must be dealt with quickly and effectively before they require disciplinary action.
  • Explain clearly and specifically the nature of the team member's unsatisfactory work habit while focusing on behaviors rather than attitude.
  • Use an action plan and ongoing reviews to help team members improve work habits and demonstrate personal accountability.

Resolving Conflicts:

  • Accept conflict as an inevitable part of all work situations and deal with it in order to maintain individual and team focus and productivity.
  • Recognize the positive and negative impacts of conflicts and leverage conflict to everyone's advantage.
  • Distinguish between the two major sources of conflict so that they it can be resolved fairly and effectively.
  • Establish a cooperative atmosphere to resolve conflicts when they arise.

Supporting Change:

  • Understand why change happens, how people react to it, and how to support team member's struggles with change.
  • Involve team members in a change initiative by promoting their understanding and ownership of the change and its benefits.
  • Plan for individual or group follow-up sessions that support the change process and reinforce personal and organizational goals.

Effective Discipline:

  • Use the techniques of effective discipline to eliminate problem behavior.
  • Communicate concerns in terms of behavior rather than perception or opinion.
  • Minimize defensiveness and focus on solutions.
  • Reduce conflict avoidance behaviors that undermine team morale, impact perceived fairness and impede overall productivity.
  • Review performance to make sure the problem is resolved.
  • Recognize the importance of team member participation in defining the problems and solutions.

Delegating:

  • Understand the role of delegation in time management, resource utilization, job satisfaction and overall team productivity.
  • Use a delegation process that ensures team member participation, involvement, and success so that what needs to be done gets done - properly and on time.
  • Establish a team member's responsibility and authority for a delegated task - creating a framework for accountability and personal growth.

Communicating Up:

  • Understand the importance of framing all communication with their manager in terms of his/her self-interest.
  • Enter meetings with their manager armed with a well-thought-out and clearly stated objective.
  • Clearly link their objective with facts that support their plans and goals.Work with their manager to uncover any questions or reservations he/she may have concerning their message.
  • Move conversations toward agreement with questions that focus on the benefits to be gained when the objective is reached.
  • Clearly and concisely restate the decisions that results from Communicating Up and insure that those decisions are mutually understood.

Managing Complaints:

  • Understand why all team member complaints must be dealt with rather than ignored or dismissed.
  • Be sensitive to all the problems-minor or trivial, real or imagined-that can lie behind complaints.
  • Understand techniques used to determine underlying problems, which are not always the same as those the team member thinks are responsible for his/her difficulties.
  • Use various techniques to solve such problems while maintaining a positive relationship with the team member.

Developing Performance Goals and Standards:

  • Define goals, objectives, and performance standards. Identify and set performance standards that are specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time-framed, using concrete active language.
  • Establish time limits for all performance standards.
  • Involve team members in creating their own individual performance standards.
  • Negotiate to develop performance standards for team members that address both desired results and team members' capabilities.
  • Monitor team members' progress toward their goals by holding individual review meetings.

Providing Performance Feedback:

  • Base assessments on facts and behavior.
  • Assess performance.
  • Use positive feedback to motivate team members.
  • Gain team member participation in assessment.
  • Gain team member agreement with the assessment.
  • Gain team member commitment to the change needed to improve performance.

Leading Successful Projects:

  • Understand the four phases that every project goes through.
  • Assess the probable impact of a project on business goals.
  • Determine the roles, tasks and activities needed to complete any project.
  • Ask the right questions in each phase of a project.
  • Use a clear system to track project progress and update stakeholders.
  • Motivate project team members to maintain their commitment and support.

Hiring Winning Talent*:

  • Establish an efficient process that reduces the time it takes to interview and select a qualified candidate.
  • Maximize new hires' productivity by ensuring that candidates are a good fit for the job.
  • Ensure team cohesion and support for new hires by involving team members in the process.
  • Increase the retention of all new hires and reduce turnover during their first year on the job.

Retaining Winning Talent*:

  • Describe the scope, severity, and cost of attrition.
  • Determine the risk of attrition for each team member.
  • Identify which retention factors motivate each team member.
  • Increase each team member’s engagement and commitment.

Motivating Team Members :

  • Understand what motivation is and is not, and discover how leaders can influence motivation.
  • Assess their own Motivation Index to become more aware of strengths and gaps in their approach to motivation.
  • Develop a plan of action to implement when they return to the workplace.

Solving Workplace Problems:

  • Follow an orderly, step-by-step problem-solving process.
  • Write a problem statement that clearly defines the workplace problem.
  • Assess the context of the problem and analyze and identify the root causes.
  • Involve team members in evaluation of root causes and possible solutions.
  • Create plans to implement the solution.
  • Get agreement and support for implementation.

Developing and Coaching Others (Leadership & Senior Manager versions available):

  • Develop skills and strategies to guide people through a learning process, with specific tactics to help them “before,” “during,” and “after” training to ensure that behavior change is achieved.
  • Discover the “coaching moments” model to help their teams gain understanding and insight about their actions in a way that supports self-awareness with opportunities to learn and improve.

 

*This is a Leadership Plus course.

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