Manager and Team Leadership Skills Coaching Program

For a High Performance Business

This page is to assist the manager and team leadership skills program facilitator to set the scene for the program.

For the Program Leader

Often people managers are promoted due to their technical skills rather than for their team leadership skills, in which case the new manager will have a work preference for solving technical or customer problems rather than for leading people.

Classroom training in topics associated with the management of staff will provide team leaders with foundational knowledge for good leadership.

Training will not provide these leaders with the motivation to change their leadership style, which evolved from their technical skills work preference.

In many cases these team leaders have not made the “value shift” or “attitude leap” from technical leadership to people leadership, which will be reflected in their behaviour.

This manager and team leadership skills coaching program is a behaviour change program; it is based on the premise that attitude change follows behaviour change. The motivation elements are based on the Antecedent – Behaviour – Response behaviour modification theory: this program supplements previous training by coaching and mentoring team leaders through the transition from technical to people leadership).

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Leadership and Mentoring

Many companies utilise mentoring programs as part of their program to develop high potential employees into good leaders.

Traditionally these relationships are established for the medium term and place responsibility for managing the relationship with the participants.

This manager and team leadership skills program creates a three-way coaching/mentoring relationship between the manager, participating leaders and a specialist human resource practitioner.

Unlike traditional mentoring this relationship is not optional and needs to be driven by the mentors in the early stages to ensure the adoption of the required team leadership skills. (The participants may initially resist the change – hence the need for the mentors to drive the forming of a relationship).

When to run this program

Clear the deck – make sure when you start something you can commit to finishing it.

With this in mind only run the Manager and Team Leadership skills Coaching Program at a time when you have NO OTHER activities that may distract you from seeing it through.

If any participants or facilitators have a more important meeting to go to other than this coaching/mentoring program then you have picked the wrong time to run the program.

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What is required?

What is required from the Human Resource Professionals and Middle Managers that run this program?

• An understanding of behaviour change theory & practice

• Willingness to adopt a hands on leadership style

• A vision for your team leadership

Sample: Vision for team leadership

• Each employee gets a meaningful one on one coaching session each month

• There is a full team meeting once per fortnight

• The team metrics are clear, agreed and the teams score is visible in the work area

• Team leaders are in the business of “employee service” willing to give a lot of themself to ensure every employee has every opportunity to be successful

• Actively manages poor performance and undesirable behaviours

• Find a reason to speak to their employees everyday

• Takes personal responsibility, is committed to achieving high employee satisfaction scores

How to get it wrong

• Take a short cut

• Roll out the program to a group of more than 6 team leaders in one go

• For your second group skip the planning stage
  
  

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