Introduction / Background Until recently, I worked in a School District in the Supportive Services department as part of Human Resources. Working in a school district it is very common to see people in line management without a degree in management or experience. As a minimum a Masters degree and Management certification only is required at the Assistant Superintendent and above levels. In the school District where I was employed most people managing the HR department are previous school teachers who only have degrees in education, with no business or HR experience / certification. Our team consisted of six people including our department supervisor. The department was constantly experiencing issues with team work and unhappy employees. There was not much communication or cooperation in the department between employees. There was very little communication between the supervisor and the employees with the exception of one or two employees which created internal friction. The workers didn’t view themselves as part of a team; instead they had a mentality more like: I am on my own and I can’t trust anybody. There was many times where group members would get in verbal fights and accuse each other of sabotaging each other’s job. The supervisor of the department could be categorized as a laissez fair leader who did not provide much guidance and who allowed complete freedom for his employees to make decisions and to solve their own problems. Unfortunately in this case a hands off approach proved to be unsuccessful in an organization with a highly dysfunctional team with too much conflict. There were issues with certain employees feeling they were empowered to make decisions that should have been made by the supervisor or they would attempt to assume the role of coordinating other employee work assignments even though these employees were capable and available. Whenever there is an environment of self directed work there needs to be clear lines of work assignments, responsibilities and any implied reporting hierarchy. With this supervisor there was no documented direction. Any verbal direction was contradicted many times over because of supervisor inconsistencies and the lack of documented approved processes. All of this inflamed the conflict and confusion of the employees. There was no avenue for correction because the employees did not have an established conflict resolution chain that was effective. The manager over this supervisor was also hands off.
Workshop Objective:
The overall objective of this workshop is for managers to learn how to be clear, effective, and empowering in order to address control and trust issues among managers direct reports.
Overall Guidelines:
The Presenter must be aware that all three sections will be comprised of these same outlines: * Objective - This is meant to be used as a way to broadly introduce the topic and what material the audience can expect to be covered. * Estimate of Time - This is the set length of time that the Presenter will have before needing to move to the next section. * Principles to Teach - This is the main body of the presentation where the Presenter will be able to go into depth on the section topic and make a clear presentation to the audience. * Activities - This will provide instruction the group activity that the audience will participate in. * Closing Discussion - This is the time of each section where the audience will have an opportunity to seek any more information or answer any lingering question they may have. * Key Takeaways - This will again summarize the key points in which the Presenter covered during the allotted time.
Section I: Understanding Different Leadership Styles
Objective:
The objective of this section is for the audience to understand the different types of leadership styles to ultimately apply some of the skills into their current leadership style.
Estimate of Time: 30 Min
Principles to Teach:
Effective