Introduction

How to Use This Book

What’s in This Chapter

Why Is Management Development Training Important?

Good managers are the center of their team. Great managers are the heart of their team. Assuming a management role is a conscious decision to accept one of the most challenging positions in an organization. Yet, effective managers have an opportunity to make a direct and positive impact on the professional lives of each member of their team. Frontline managers are at the very first level of management of other employees (“people managers”) across a company’s business operations and functions. Managers are important to the overall health of an organization because their behavior often sets the tone for their teams. Travis Bradberry, co-founder and president of TalentSmart, explains that those in leadership positions often “feel that they are no longer held to the same standard of treating people well and responding to people’s needs. They feel like that’s no longer required of them. When in reality it’s actually more of a requirement, because they are priming the emotional state of not only people who directly report to them but everyone that it trickles down to” (ATD 2016).

Management development training is a central function for an organization to provide the skills necessary for developing managers and all their employees. So why is manager training so important?

Data collected in a 2016 ATD study of 847 talent development professionals found that nearly a third of the respondents believed their organization did “not reward frontline managers in any way for successfully developing their direct reports.” Other key findings from the study included:

These findings were detailed in the ATD research report Skills That Make a Winning Manager (2016), which set out to examine the development of five specific skills—accountability, collaboration, communication, engagement, and listening and assessing—that are crucial to managerial success. These five key skills comprise the ACCEL Model, ATD’s framework for helping new and experienced managers develop the skills they need to be successful in their roles. Let’s look closer at each element:

When we look at each key skill individually, none of them seems remarkable. But integrating these practices into daily activities in a balanced way is key to a person’s overall success as a leader. As we dig into each of these skills, we’ll talk about practical ways to develop and practice each one individually and consider how they interrelate to form the foundation of management success. Accountability is the anchor to the ACCEL Model. A manager establishes the culture of the department by setting the expectation that each team member has equal responsibility for the department’s success. Frank Satterthwaite, author and professor of organizational leadership at Johnson & Wales University, offers this perspective: “What you need in an organization isn’t individual, but mutual, accountability. The concept of mutual accountability is extraordinarily important in a culture. A formula for team success is when everybody feels mutually accountable. I think that’s where more of the coaching and culture building should be focused” (ATD 2016).

The years of evolving management theory and practice provide a template for the consistent application of tested practices. Even the most seasoned manager will find that no single approach or method is effective for all employees. People who are committed to their work are in many ways a product of the way their manager has engaged with them as a leader.

There is broad agreement among management practitioners, HR professionals, and organization development experts that the five skills that make up the ACCEL Model are critical to an individual leader’s success. The ATD report, however, showed a clear gap—fewer than a third of those who responded thought the managers in their organization demonstrated those core competencies to a high extent. To close that gap, we need to examine each practice in detail and understand how they all come together.

There are many reasons for an organization to invest in a development course for managers who are new to the role and to reinforce effective management practices for more seasoned managers. The volatile nature of the business environment requires leadership that can anticipate the impact of change on their team to achieve the goals of their department. This volume of the ATD Workshop Series provides direction for your department or organization to set or reset professional development for managers.

Workshop Development

A well-designed workshop takes into account the audience, the length of the program, and the level of energy needed to concentrate from the participants and the facilitator. Multi-day workshops require balancing the content with various interactive activities, presentations, individual reflection, small- and large-group discussions, and breaks. Reading your audience and knowing the course materials well enough to adjust is critical for a course that maintains the interest of the participants.

Two-Day and Three-Day Workshop Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

What Do I Need to Know About Training?

The ATD Workshop Series is designed to be adaptable for many levels of both training facilitation and topic expertise. Circle the answers in this quick assessment that most closely align with your level of expertise (Table I-1).

Table I-1. Quick Assessment: Level of Expertise

If you chose novice, your best bet is to follow the materials as they are designed. Spend extra time with the content to learn as much as possible about it. Read the examples and sample stories, and plan examples of your own to share. Also, closely read chapter 5 on training delivery and consider practicing with a colleague before delivering the program. Take comfort in the tested materials you are holding and have confidence in your ability to apply them!

If you chose developing your expertise in one or both areas, logical choices for you may include starting out with the outline and materials, and then including anything you have developed that is relevant to the topic and your participants’ workplace needs. Or, taking the core content of the materials and adapting the learning techniques with interactive approaches you have used successfully in the past. Play to your strengths and develop your growth areas using the resources in this volume that complement your existing skills.

If you chose authority, feel free to adapt the agendas and materials as you see fit and use anything you have already developed. Or, you could simply incorporate training activities, handouts, and other materials from this volume into your own agenda. Enjoy the benefits of ready-to-use processes and support tools and have fun tailoring them to your preferences and organizational needs.

How Much Time Will Preparation Take?

Putting together and facilitating a training workshop, even when the agendas, activities, tools, and assessments are created for you, can be time consuming. For planning purposes, estimate about three to four days of preparation time for a two-day course, or about four hours per module.

What Are the Important Features of This Book?

Section I includes the two workshop formats (two-day and three-day format) with agendas and thumbnails from presentation slides as well as a chapter on customizing the workshop for your circumstances. The chapters are:

The workshop chapters include advice, instructions, objectives, and workshop-at-a-glance tables, as well as full program agendas.

Section II is standard from book to book in the ATD Workshop Series as a way to provide a consistent foundation of training principles. This section’s chapters follow the ADDIE model—the classic instructional design model named after its steps (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation). The chapters are based on best practices and crafted with input from experienced training practitioners. They are meant to help you get up to speed as quickly as possible. Each one includes several additional recurring features to help you understand the concepts and ideas presented. The Bare Minimum gives you the basics of what you need to know about the topic. Key Points summarize the most important points of each chapter. What to Do Next guides you to your next action steps. And, finally, the Additional Resources and References sections at the end of each chapter give you options for further reading to broaden your understanding of training design and delivery. Section II chapters include:

Section III covers information about post-workshop learning:

Section IV includes all the supporting documents and online guidance:

The book includes everything you need to prepare for and deliver your workshop:

All the program materials are available for download, customization, and duplication. See chapter 13 for instructions on how to access the materials.

How Are the Agendas Laid Out?

The following agenda is a sample from the two-day workshop.

How Do I Use This Book?

Determine your degree of comfort relative to the level of preparation you will need to do to be ready to deliver this content in a two-day or a three-day format. The quick assessment in Table I-1 described three levels of expertise, which are listed below with guidance on what to expect to do to fully prepare to facilitate a successful workshop:

Once you have a general sense of the material, organize your workshop plan. Select the appropriate agenda and then modify the times and training activities as needed for your client.

Key Points

What to Do Next