Cultivating Leadership Excellence: A Transformational Manager Training Program for Lasting Organizational Growth

Situation:

A premier California winemaker is one of the largest in the Napa/Sanoma region. None of their managers had formal training in developing teams, nurturing individual skills, or creating a culture of psychological safety. Many forms of leadership exist. Some managers were intuitively good at achieving their team’s goals, while others were not.

The client wanted to create a shared understanding of the expectations and key skill sets that would propel teams and the organization forward into its following stages of growth.

Eighteen participants were invited to participate in a two-day, multi-module offsite.

Action:

TrainSMART was asked to design, develop, and deliver 10 modules of must-have skills for new and mid-level managers. TrainSMART worked closely with the senior lead in the Leadership and Development department to select and sequence the content modules that fit the needs of managers in their organization.

Manager training topics included:

Discovering Innate Managerial Competencies

Developing a Team

• Creating a Group Values Contract
• The Stages of Team Development
• Taking the team from good to great

Effective Communication

• Discovering individual communication and behavioral styles (DiSC)
• Building Emotional Intelligence

Resolving Conflict

• Managing conflict
• Building consensus

Problem-Solving

Operational Productivity

A blended design was used to deliver the training, including:

• Prework reflection and participant self-assessment on some key leadership behaviors
• Short, highly interactive modules providing hands-on practice
• Video tutorials
• Employee scenarios (involving typical conflicts and roadblocks to consensus building)
• Direct facilitation
• Experiential initiatives
• Assessments
• Templates, worksheets
• Personal journaling

While the initial training would deliver these managerial essentials over two days, each module was designed to be a stand-alone content block, allowing the client to select only those modules that managers needed to build competency in and sequence into any desired learning journey.

Results:

Participants:

• Developed the skills needed to manage others effectively
• Identified the current  personal behaviors that add value to the management of others
• Evaluated the behaviors they needed to improve or acquire
• Learned to communicate in a way that meets the other person’s expectations
• Practiced gaining consensus under challenging situations
• Used various strategies for making conflict constructive
• Employed Emotional Intelligence to read and motivate others
• Gained insights into the cross-functional power of managers across the organization
• Personalized action plans
• A third day was added to this engagement to train the client’s senior lead in L&D to deliver this training
• This program will cascade from senior leadership down to other cohorts of managers
• It provided an aligned set of manager competencies and behavioral standards  within the organization

What participants are saying:

• “Very well put together. It had a good flow. Lots of useful activities.”
• “A must-have for any manager.”
• “The content was very relevant. It was delivered in a digestible and actionable way.”
• “The program kept me very engaged. It certainly motivated me.”
• “I think there was a great mix of information and ways to apply it.”
• “The facilitator did a great job of explaining the ‘why’ behind the content and engaging the class.”