Strategic Management offers onsite training programs designed to support your business goals and build confidence and competence of supervisory personnel. Nora provides individual training sessions and builds a series of sessions based on your identified needs. She often recommends starting with her series titled “What All Supervisors Should Know.”

What All Supervisors Should Know

These 6, 2-hour interactive classes are designed for first-time, front-line supervisors to understand how their role differs from a sole contributor.

Session I…about discrimination
  • Participants will gain a practical understanding of Title VII and learn what measures supervisors must take to protect the rights of all employees
  • Practice how to respond to potentially litigious statements and questions
Session II…about recruitment and onboarding
  • Participants will have a broad understanding of the recruitment process from verifying and clarifying the need, to developing interview questions and selecting the right fit
  • Develop an onboarding plan for one position to expedite the productivity and improve retention
Session III…about connecting with staff
  • Participants will learn the importance of establishing rapport and understand professional boundaries with the people they supervise
  • Identify and use different communication styles; monitor interactions with direct reports
Session IV…about role clarity and accountability
  • Participants will be introduced to performance management principles that involve everything except the employee’s skills and abilities
  • Learn to clarify group and individual expectations; obtain commitment and inspect expectations
Session V…about other employment laws
  • Participants will gain a general understanding of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Laws, Unemployment Compensation, Americans with Disabilities and the National Labor Relations Act.
  • Homework includes identifying and evaluating references to these laws in employee handbooks.
Session VI…about counseling and disciplining
  • Participants will learn the difference between coaching, counseling and discipline, as well as when termination is the correct action.
  • Practice dialogues of coaching, counseling and discipline
Establishing Personal Credibility
Trust is the foundation of teamwork. People, who cannot trust each other, cannot effectively work toward a mutual purpose. Learn how to strengthen your personal credibility and how that impacts the level of trust within your team.
Clarifying and Communicating Expectations
Before you can tell people what you want, you need to have a clear idea of what “the what” is, where it came from and why it’s important. When you understand where expectations originate, you can communicate expectations with confidence.
Coaching for Improvement and Growth
Coaching is in the moment, honest, direct feedback. Learn how to address performance issues before they become serious performance gaps. Understand “fundamental attribution error” and how to put your understanding to work.
Correcting Performance and Behaviors
The goose who laid the golden egg taught us true effectiveness is enhancing our production capability. Evaluate how you inspect work and determine whether it has a positive impact on long term effectiveness. Management by exception and correction erode relationships. Learn how to work together to support people and improve performance
Eliminate Drama and Other Non-Productive Behaviors
Stop rescuing and start coaching to eliminate gossip, back-stabbing, and negative cliques. Practice having these conversations in a safe environment. Learn how to demonstrate respect and end with a mutual agreement.
Hire Right!
A fast-paced program that starts by identifying staffing needs to develop a recruitment plan and ends with basic interviewing and background checking techniques. Learn how to weed out potentially toxic candidates and find the best fit.
Just Say No
People fail to say no because they don’t want to stress the relationship they have with others. Instead, many sacrifice their own interests and accommodate. Continued accommodation may build resentment and result in a NO that is hurtful. For many, avoidance is the answer until problems rise to a crisis level. Supervisors will learn how to master their ability to communicate a NO that strengthens relationships
Responsible Communication
Are you approachable? Do you focus your energy in areas you can influence? This program offers you an opportunity to reflect on how others may perceive you. Understand how your perception of others is influencing their behavior toward you.
Conflict and Confrontations
Based on Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Paterson, Grenny, McMillian and Switzer’s Crucial Confrontations, this program can be a one-hour overview or a forty-hour workshop. Learn how to redirect personal conflict and find out what the real issue is. Well-designed confrontations can improve trust, morale, and performance.
Meaningful Defensible Documentation
Follow 10 rules to ensure your documentation will have a positive effect on the recipient and hold up in court. Plus gain an understanding of why documenting is so hard to encourage a consistent new business practice.
Dealing with Different People
Different personalities and different communication styles provide value. Learn to identify and respond to different styles to support an environment of trust. This is a fun presentation that allows everyone to identify their own communication style, including its strengths and weaknesses
Preparing and Conducting Performance Appraisals
Annual performance appraisals can be a big waste of time and cause a lot of anxiety. People seldom enjoy grading others and people don’t like be graded. Turn this annual event into a mutual understanding of the position’s purpose and establish long and short term goals to support the person’s and position’s development.
Disciplinary Action
Sometimes behavior is so out of bounds that disciplinary measures must take place. Other times when coaching and correcting don’t produce desired results; managers need to move to disciplinary action. Learn how to prepare for and conduct disciplinary action discussions.
Fire Right!
Learn the value of leveling with employees about performance and behavioral deficiencies. Learn how to document those interactions prior to termination. This program walks you through the preparation and execution of an employee termination dialogue. Learn how to conduct exit interviews and use turnover statistics to determine if you are winning the war on talent.
The Value of Recognition
Increase engagement and satisfaction of employees by increasing the frequency and quality of recognition. Supervisors’ recognition of employee’s efforts has a tremendous impact on all aspects of management. Learn the Carrot Principles’ approach to specific and timely positive employee interactions.
Time Management at Work
Structure your time at work by understanding your position’s purpose, and supervisor’s values. Learn how to create space and how to respond to interruptions. Based on Covey’s First Things First and David Allen’s, Getting Things Done, this fast-paced program provides procedures to follow to gain control.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
The “Official Five Dysfunctions Workshop” by Patrick Lencioni can be provided in a two-day, one-day or half-day formats. The model includes the absence of trust; fear of conflict; lack of commitment; avoidance of accountability; and inattention to results.
Manage Right! (Keynote)
Develop and maintain a positive, productive relationship with direct reports. This program is a perfect introduction to management and a great refresher. Learn about the 5C’s of management.
Ten Rules to Reduce Liability (Keynote)
Learn to challenge your employees to create a culture of accountability. 10 Rules to keep your company productive and out of trouble.
The Supervisor Game (Keynote)
This is a highly interactive training session designed to give supervisors the opportunity to practice responding to employee comments and concerns about work conditions. Prior to participating in this session, supervisors should have a basic understanding of Equal Employment Opportunity, discrimination, and harassment. Several objectives can be met in this fast-paced session. Participants will be advised that:
  1. Supervisors’ job is to create a fair work environment
  2. Supervisors make employment decisions
  3. Employment decisions can create liability for their company
  4. Supervisors’ words and actions can create liability
  5. Supervisors should never act alone with potentially litigious matters
  6. Supervisors must inform Human Resources about matters that impact an employee’s entitlements
  7. Neutral responses to employee concerns are the first step to open communication about the concern.
Practice responding to employees’ concerns about work conditions in a safe environment will create a basic communication skill and increase participants’ confidence when dealing with these concerns.

Aligning People with Purpose