Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Communication
Overview/ Description
As a manager, you’re responsible for ensuring that your team is focused on priorities – the goals that further your organization. But you can’t achieve this without effective communication. You must convey to your employees what the priorities are, why they are priorities, and what their role is in advancing those priorities. Otherwise your team will be pulling in different directions rather than being united by a common sense of purpose. This course explains the elements of effective communication specific to laying out priorities. It gives you guidelines on preparing and developing a message that will resonate with your team. And it teaches you delivery and listening techniques to help you engage your employees in the priorities to motivate them to take action as a team with a clear focus.
Target Audience
Team leads, supervisors, managers, directors, and strategic planners who manage organizational priorities to drive organizational success
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Communication
- prepare to communicate priorities to employees
- recognize guidelines for communicating a priorities message to an employee
- recognize how to listen effectively when discussing priorities with an employee
- communicate priorities effectively in a given scenario
Course Number:
lead_11_a04_bs_enus
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Motivation
Overview/ Description
Harnessed properly, personal motivators can become the driving force for action on your department’s priorities. As a first step to energizing your team to take action on the priority tasks and issues, you need to understand the values and rewards that motivate you and your team members. This enables you to get the most from your team. This course shows the impact that motivation has on your team’s approach to its work. You’ll learn about the importance of motivation for performance on priorities and some basic principles for taking actions to address team members’ higher needs. You’ll learn a technique for assessing your own motivational drivers and discover time management skills to help you stay motivated on priorities. And you’ll see how to relate team priorities to individual team members to tap their full potential and focus their energy and enthusiasm toward action on your department’s priorities.
Target Audience
Team leads, supervisors, managers, directors, and strategic planners who manage organizational priorities to drive organizational success
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Motivation
- recognize management actions that appeal to employees’ higher level needs
- recognize the connection between motivators and goal priorities
- recognize how to manage your time wisely to further organizational priorities
- recognize how to keep your team motivated on the right priorities
Course Number:
lead_11_a03_bs_enus
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Deciphering Priorities
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Deciphering Priorities
Overview/ Description
As a manager, you need to be able to determine the difference between what has to be done and what has to be done first. By establishing clear priorities, you provide your team with the focus it needs to take the most effective action and achieve its goals more quickly. If the department’s priorities aren’t deciphered and defined, the team may lose sight of what’s most important and fall behind on objectives and performance. This course helps you set priorities for your departmental team. It begins by explaining the importance of managing priorities appropriately and the dangers of failing to do so. Next, it shows you how to use the Eisenhower principle to rank tasks in terms of importance and urgency. It then walks you through a detailed Pareto technique for deciding how to prioritize among problems in a given scenario and gives you an opportunity to practice this method. Finally, it teaches you some best practice principles for measuring performance on priorities.
Target Audience
Team leads, supervisors, managers, directors, and strategic planners who manage organizational priorities to drive organizational success
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Deciphering Priorities
- recognize benefits of effective team priority management
- recognize true statements about priorities and prioritizing
- use the Eisenhower hierarchy to deal effectively with priorities in a given scenario
- use the Pareto technique to prioritize problem groups in a given scenario
- recognize how to follow best practice for measuring performance on priorities
Course Number:
lead_11_a02_bs_enus
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Mission and Goals
Overview/ Description
Getting your priorities straight, no matter where you are in your organization, is about keeping a focus on your goals. It requires you to think about the bigger picture to ensure your department’s work supports the strategic objectives of your organization as effectively as possible. This course helps you establish priorities for your group by ensuring that its goals are properly aligned with the company-wide goals and mission. It begins by clarifying the distinction between strategic, tactical, and operational goals. It then shows you how to create effective goals. Next it takes you through a step-by-step process for ensuring that the departmental goals you create are suitably aligned with the strategic objectives of the organization. This includes helping you identify imperatives for action that keep you focused and on track to meet your objectives and ensure your team is working effectively through properly identified priorities.
Target Audience
Team leads, supervisors, managers, directors, and strategic planners who manage organizational priorities to drive organizational success
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Setting and Managing Priorities within the Organization: Mission and Goals
- distinguish different kinds of business goals
- recognize the benefits of setting goals
- recognize how to set effective goals for organizational units
- align unit goals with company-wide goals and mission
- derive imperatives from unit goals
Course Number:
lead_11_a01_bs_enus
Managing Internal Dynamics in a Cross-functional Team
Overview/ Description
One of the greatest benefits of cross-functional teams is the diversity of viewpoints, experience, and backgrounds among team members. But this can also prove to be their biggest weakness if not managed properly. Negative interpersonal dynamics can steer the work of a cross-functional team off-track quickly and irreversibly, jeopardizing its great potential. This course explains how to head off interpersonal problems by facilitating open communication and handling meetings effectively. It also outlines how to resolve conflicts when they do arise in a cross-functional team.
Target Audience
Anyone who wants to develop or refine skills for developing, utilizing, managing, and leading cross-functional teams within their organization
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Managing Internal Dynamics in a Cross-functional Team
- recognize statements that illustrate the principles of open communication
- match examples of problems regarding cross-functional team meetings with possible solutions
- use techniques to make a cross-functional team meeting more effective
- recognize how to perform the steps for resolving a conflict in a cross-functional team
- facilitate resolution of a conflict in a cross-functional team
Course Number:
lead_10_a03_bs_enus
Key Strategies for Managing Cross-functional Teams
Overview/ Description
Managing cross-functional teams can be challenging because you have to unite individuals from different departments and different levels of the organization around a common goal. Each phase of a cross-functional team’s development has associated risks, and steering the team through these phases requires special leadership characteristics and management techniques. This course explains the various development stages of cross-functional teams and the risks at each stage. It also identifies the key abilities a cross-functional leader should have and outlines best practices for cross-functional team success.
Target Audience
Individuals who want to develop or refine their skills for developing, utilizing, managing, and leading cross-functional teams within their organization
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Key Strategies for Managing Cross-functional Teams
- sequence examples of stages in the life of a cross-functional team
- match examples of problems with stages of cross-functional team development
- recognize examples of how to manage cross-functional teams successfully in a scenario
Course Number:
lead_10_a02_bs_enus
Implementing and Assessing a Succession Planning Program
Overview/ Description
Succession planning involves more than just identifying high potentials for key areas and positions. How do you prepare those individuals for future work requirements and performance? And how do you know if your succession planning program is working? You have to systematically close the development gaps between what possible successors can do and what they’ll be required to do for future positions. This involves creating individual development plans that meet professional growth expectations and organizational objectives. Once implemented, you then need to monitor your plans to ensure objectives are being met. In this course, you’ll learn the steps necessary to implement individual development plans, including how to formulate and develop learning objectives that close the gaps between present and future performance. And you’ll explore how to assess your succession planning program and determine its success by using effective measurement criteria.
Target Audience
Managers, business leaders, HR professionals, or individuals needing to initiate, develop, and implement succession planning within an organization
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Implementing and Assessing a Succession Planning Program
- recognize characteristics of effective succession planning program development
- determine effective learning objectives for an individual development plan in a given scenario
- sequence the steps to take to implement an individual development plan
- match assessment methods to examples
- recognize appropriate metrics for assessing a succession program in a given scenario
Course Number:
lead_09_a03_bs_enus
Initiating Succession Planning
Overview/ Description
What if one of your key people suddenly left the position? If this person’s role affects your business ventures, direction, and productivity, could you find the talent you need if you only had very little time to do it? Would you scramble trying to replace that person by placing ads, phoning contacts, and taking the first available suitable replacement? You can eliminate such scenarios through succession planning. This can also help you develop talent for your organization for key roles that impact business initiatives and productivity. An effective succession planning program involves seeking out talent from a broad range of sources, assessing leadership potential, involving others in planning for talent, and using various methods to develop and prepare people for advancement. This course explains the importance of succession planning and building a leadership talent pool from within that motivates employees, increases retention of employees, and fortifies your business against the loss of vital people. It outlines the steps needed to create an effective succession planning program, focusing on the first step of the process, initiating the program. This involves learning how to align it with the business strategy and how to promote it internally to gain commitment throughout the organization.
Target Audience
Managers, business leaders, HR professionals, or individuals needing to initiate, develop, and implement succession planning within an organization
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Initiating Succession Planning
- recognize the characteristics of succession planning
- describe the role of internal promotion in succession planning
- match stages of the succession planning process to examples
- assess whether the succession planning process has been properly initiated
Course Number:
lead_09_a01_bs_enus
Leadership Essentials: Leading Change
Overview/ Description
Change is not an event; it is a process. Change can happen quickly and, in some situations, can be urgent! However, it can take time for individuals to make the transition from one way of working to another. The change process isn’t simply about introducing new systems – it’s about leading people from an old way of working to a new way of working, and it’s vital that you lead the change through to completion! It’s important to recognize that your role is to support individuals through the transition and remove obstacles that can hinder a smooth transition from one process to another. This course provides you with strategies for leading changes within an organization, including effective approaches to introducing and communicating change. It also provides practical strategies for dealing with sources of employee resistance to change, and for removing organizational obstacles to ensure the transition is followed through. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.
Target Audience
Supervisors, managers, directors, and individuals wanting to develop their leadership skills
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Leadership Essentials: Leading Change
recognize various types of change obstacles in an organization
match roots of inertia with actions that help combat and replace them with imperatives
recognize appropriate ways to communicate change
use appropriate techniques as a leader to introduce and follow through with change, in a given scenario
Course Number:
lead_05_a07_bs_enus
Leadership Essentials: Leading Innovation
Overview/ Description
Creativity and innovation are critical components of just about every organization. But innovation doesn’t pertain only to new inventions, products, or reworked designs. It also involves incremental improvements to the way things are done. Knowing how to build and support an innovative culture is an important skill for any leader to master. The impetus for innovation can come from the top of the organization, and it can come from the people engaged in day-to-day production. Building an innovative culture is a responsibility for leaders and employees across organizational hierarchies. This course provides you with an understanding of what an innovative culture is and what qualities a leader needs to best foster innovation. It also provides you with practical techniques for cultivating and leading innovation. Materials designed to support blended learning activities aligned with this course are available from the Resources Page.
Target Audience
Supervisors, managers, directors, and individuals wanting to develop their leadership skills
Expected Duration (hours)
1.0
Lesson Objectives
Leadership Essentials: Leading Innovation
classify examples of questions that can be used to assess characteristics of a business innovation culture
associate the characteristics of an innovation leader with the actions that reflect them
assess an organization’s innovation culture and plan leadership actions to strengthen it in a given scenario
recognize actions that are likely to attract and nurture innovators
Course Number:
lead_05_a06_bs_enus