Senior Manager Development – blended leadership development

The Challenge
With budget constraints the client was struggling to find a way to provide the skills and competence their managers and team leaders needed to function in the rapidly changing organization and its markets. Not only that, the managers and supervisors were becoming disgruntled at the lack of attention, learning and development the organization seemed to be offering them. There was a danger of losing some of their most valuable people but there was a clear directive from Head Office to spend 50% less than previous years on learning and development. The mixed message of “people are our greatest asset” and not doing anything to develop them was bringing the whole organisation’s motives into doubt. The year was already half over and nothing had yet been done to address this.
The Design
We agreed with the client that their primary objective was to provide their managers and team leaders with the skills and confidence to cope with the constant change and then need to do more with less. They recognized that their budget would only allow for about 20 people to be trained in the current financial year. They agreed that, for the price of higher initial development costs, we could design a programme with a major online element (five modules over 10 weeks) with a short face-to-face workshop. This would then allow them to run the programme for more people in future years – because the development had already been paid for. We were able to design and deliver the online element within 8 weeks of the agreement.
Blended Leadership Development
We set them up with an online classroom and populated the modules with the five key topics that would be covered at the workshop. We created 4 different types of learning materials. Skills and techniques to be learned and practised before the workshops. Theory presentations. Interactive assignments to embed the theory and preparation assignments which involved interacting with the other participants.
Number of participants
Residential Days
We asked: “What were the most valuable parts of the course for you?”
Better Negotiator
“The seven habits of the Complex Influencing is really going to help me not only be a better negotiator holistically, but I think a better communicator, even in family life”
Project Leader
“When I speak to my team, I’ll be able to make sure that I’m concise and succinct when I speak with them, and that way there’s no miscommunication there”.
Contract Manager
“One of the things I really found important is to step back and ask the right questions to further help the team”