Line Management Course

Line Management Course Preparation

• Identify three skills or qualities that have led to you taking a line management role
• Make a list of the things that are important to you - the values you hold
• Make a note of the things you find difficult in line management

Day One Line Management Course Programme

We tailor all our courses to reflect the needs of the delegates on the day. The course content may include many of the exercises listed below, and any additional material that the trainers feel is relevant.

Introduction to Impact Factory style or working

• There is no right way, only what works for you
• We build and develop strengths; we don't point out weaknesses
• We are not into wholesale change (personality transplants)
• We look for the smallest change for the biggest impact
• Change yourself to change others and/or the situation
• Staying in charge of the situation
• Recovering from getting wrong-footed
• Miscommunication is the norm
• Moving things forward
• Knowing you have something else to try
• Having fun

Line Management

Opening discussion on Line Management A brief discussion on the line management role to set the scope for the day.

The Line Management Journey

Building on this, in small groups, delegates discuss the times and places in their lives when they have managed things successfully and the skills and resources they used.

What has changed - managed to manager

As a group delegates offer their thoughts on the differences between being managed and managing.

Stepping up to Line Management

What qualities or resources do you need to step up to the line management role? Delegates work in pairs on flip charts and then highlight three qualities they already have and acknowledge their best quality to the room.

All the things they didn't tell you...

Here we take a look at all the things the line manager is responsible for including all the extra things that come with the role but aren't necessarily in the job description! Important things like Key Performance Indicators, Health and Safety, Quality and Environmental Responsibility.

It's all these extra things that can make promotion to line manager seem more of a curse than a blessing.

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

Just to put things in perspective, delegates will construct a 'change curve' showing the sort of emotional journey they might experience from being first given a line management role, through the feeling of overwhelm, to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel - in other words being a confident, competent manager.

Coping with change

Delegates think of changes they have been through in recent years and label them as easy/hard/impossible or imposed. We then consider what it might be like for those who are being managed when a new line manager is appointed - again based on delegates own experience.

Authority as a Line Manager

What is it? How do you get it? We will have a bit of fun turning up and down authority, from none upwards - just to show it can be done and the effect it has.

Attitudes

Building on the last exercise we look at how all sorts of other attitudes can be projected. Everyone can change their behaviour quickly and easily and in this exercise, delegates get a chance to practise projecting a number of different attitudes and seeing the impact they have.

Ownership of Responsibility

In this exercise, we compare the 'Teflon' approach to responsibility with owning it and the effect of each.

Time Management and Delegation

We will play with different ways of asking people to do things - being fluffy or vague versus being clear and concise and the Do-Tell-Coach cycle.

Management Communication Cycle

Delegates create their view of the Communications Cycle and then we discuss the different stages and how to make them work for you. So often we assume that having delegated something to someone, we will be clearly understood, and can turn our attention to our next task. How wrong we are. More often than not, what we say and what we mean and what someone hears and what they do are actually quite different. We use a simple model to follow through a communication cycle, showing how easily we can be misunderstood but how with care, we can put our attention where it is needed so that everyone is clear i.e.; what I say is what you heard and we both understand what I meant.

Trust and Risk in Line Management

We believe that creating trust is a key skill for anyone managing others. Too often, however, many managers expect their team members to trust them without making the requisite effort needed for people to feel safe. This is an exercise that looks at the difference between trust and risk. How to engender trust in someone else. How easy it is to lose it and the effect that has on delegation.

The Art of Saying No/Yes

A look at the language people use when they have to deliver tough messages, introduce a new idea they are not sure the other person is going to like, ask someone to do something for them or say no. Turning people down without actually saying 'No'.

Empowering others to deliver / Saying 'Yes' while not giving away too much or taking on too much / Giving the Good News first

Eating elephants

Ever felt a sense of bewilderment and overwhelm when faced with a seemingly impossible task? Here's a practical exercise for eating that elephant.

Decision making

A practical and fun exercise that explores the emotional side of decision making - a kind of push-me / pull-you analysis of the journey towards a decision.

Line Management Training Course Personal Take Out

• What are you individually taking away?
• What are you going to work on before the next session?

Practice / Preparation for Line Management Day Two

Delegates will be asked to think of two difficult line management situations.

One where they felt they were managed poorly

One where they themselves managed someone else poorly (either they knew it or were given feedback later that they didn't handle the situation so well).

Day Two Line Management Training Course Programme

Persuasion, Motivation and Inspiration

We ask the participants: What motivates/de-motivates you? What motivates others in your team?

This is a pairs/threes exercise on flipcharts, which examines the differences in what motivates and de-motivates each delegate and the people they manage. It is an awareness exercise, which then asks the question "Are you doing everything you could do to motivate your team?"

Empowering Others: Stonewall, Hijack, Encourage

An exercise to look at what happens when a line manager stonewalls, hijacks or encourages ideas. We will look at the motivating or de-motivating effect different approaches can have.

Bringing Values to Life

We provide a model to help people cascade the process of personalising the company values to make them more meaningful. The idea here is to help make your company's values more than good words, to make them rather a foundation for people's behaviour and commitment.

Setting Line Management Targets

Line management targets can motivate or de-motivate. Here we will look at how setting clear objectives, targets and expectations can motivate the team to want to achieve them all and more! We compare aspirational targets with a baseline approach and how they translate into a sense of success or failure.

What message do you, as a line manager, want to send? And about what? What is important?

Managing Performance

The Best Surprise - is no surprise

This line management exercise looks at some of the feelings that get in the way of people managing poor performance effectively and where that leads us.

I Noticed That...

A simple model that pre-empts difficulties and patterns of behaviour.

Blame vs Effect of Behaviour

This exercise shows how good line management can avoid finger-pointing and blame in order to more comprehensively resolve a difficulty.

Feedback Finesse

This exercise looks at how to give effective feedback by asking the questions: What am I feeding? What feelings do I want to leave? Is this feedback helping the problem or creating new ones?

Acknowledgement

Building on the last exercise we look at the useful line management tool of giving acknowledgement and the effect it has. We explore the difference between praise, recognition and acknowledgement and how to avoid coming across as patronising.

Managing Poor Performers

And at the other end of the scale, we look at the much-feared line management process of giving difficult messages to people who are performing below par.

Handling Conflict

The other much avoided line management responsibility; Dealing with Conflict. We look at a series of short exercises for use when communication has got difficult and tensions are mounting. Many of these techniques can also be used to pre-empt difficulties before they escalate.

Emotion vs Objectivity: So what you're saying is

A technique that helps to calm the situation down and pinpoint exactly what the problem is.

Listening with Empathy: Using Agreement

Here we use a line management technique that finds common ground when you are in the midst of an argument and need to have a calm discussion. Agreement is used to diffuse tensions and to allow people to feel heard and acknowledged.

Internal Boundaries

Looking for the signals as to when internal boundaries have been crossed.

Deliberate Misunderstanding

This is a fun exercise for dealing with obtuse or difficult people! It demonstrates how hard it can be to get your point across in the face of other people either misunderstanding you or choosing to make it difficult for you.

Shouting up the Management Hierarchy

A fun look at how difficult it is to get our message heard up the line and the pressure we put people under down the line. How can we make ourselves clear so that we are able to prioritise successfully?

Giving bad news

As in life, so in line management, things can't always go as well as we'd like, and when they go awry we are sometimes reluctant to let people know. This is a practical technique that owns up to a problem in a way that comes across as professional and in control.

Personal Line Management Style

The final exercise of the day. Delegates will be asked to acknowledge what it is that they do well and will get feedback from their colleagues on what they see what works about them.

All delegates will be issued with relevant hand-outs to remind them of the Line Management Coursework, including our memorable visual cue cards.

They also have access to a course web page containing

• Handouts used during the course
• New supportive material
• Impact Factory PDF documents
• Recommended reading
• Links to our favourite videos
• Photos of the day

to help further their progress.

Line Management Course