Leadership Connections™:

A Management Development Process for Engaging Performance™

 “Our research tells us that the single most important determinant of individual performance is a person’s relationship with his or her immediate manager. Without a robust relationship with a manager who sets clear expectations, knows you, trusts you and invests in you, you are less likely to stay and perform.”

Having effective managers who can lead and engage their employees is critical to the success of any organization.  But the current research is clear; too many organizations fail at turning their managers into effective leaders, and too many organizations fail at engaging their employees.  This results in a tremendous blow to the bottom line.  If organizations could increase the effectiveness of their managers, they could increase their organization’s potential dramatically!

Many organizations are scrambling to place their managers in all sorts of development programs.  These range from 1 and 2 day events, to sending them off for a full week of training.  The problem with both of these approaches is that they try to deliver too much information to the participants at one time.  This results in overload, almost insuring that little of what has been delivered is actually learned, and that even less will be applied when the manager gets back to their workplace.

But Leadership Connections™ overcomes all of those problems precisely because it is a long-term, well-planned process, designed to provide just the right amount of learning at the right time, coupled with application exercises that the manager conducts with their employees back at the work site.  Our program also provides the worksheets, action planners, and other tools that provide support for applying the lessons learned and putting them into action.

As a result, managers learn and apply those skills and at the same time begin to Build Trust with their employees.  Trust is the foundation for creating a relationship with employees that leads to increased employee engagement which leads to increased productivity, customer satisfaction, and organizational performance. 

Leadership Connections™

Achieves Real Results!

Our original management development process was initially developed to address the key reasons why most management and leadership programs don’t achieve any long-term results. Most management development courses are short term… anything from 2 or 3 days, and in the rare case, a 2 to 3-week residential program at a business school. This creates two problems. First, too much information being delivered at one time, and second, without follow-up training and on-the-job reinforcement, the effect of the training will wear off.

That is precisely why most managers who are sent off to training have the experience that training does not work!

If training is going to achieve high levels of retention and transfer into the workplace, there are two things that must be done:

²        Training needs to be delivered in such a way as to ensure that participants can apply what was learned…before they learn anything else.

²        The environment at work must not only support the training, but also require that it be applied and measured against pre-agreed training objectives and outcomes.  

In other words, people need to absorb and apply the first piece of information, before they learn the next piece of information and have the support of their manager and their organization in applying what they have learned.  

That is why Leadership Connections™: A Management Development Process for Engaging Performance™ was developed; to address these specific issues. It consists of a series of four Units made up of four learning Modules each, focused on building skills over an approximately 6 to 12 month time frame… with on-the-job application exercises between each learning unit.  This program has been designed around the development needs of managers in their current work environment as we move towards fewer layers of managers, more empowered workforces and a need for greater personal responsibility and employee engagement.

All at about the same per person cost as sending your managers off to a two-day program!

Manage the Environment not People!

The primary role of managers is to manage the environment! We cannot really manage people… they do either what they want to do, or what they believe they have to do. What we want managers to do is to create an environment where people want to, and can excel… where they can, and do, perform at their best!  So any development program for managers must focus on developing the knowledge and skills needed to manage the work environment in order to engage employees.

In their efforts to improve productivity, many managers over-control people, and use the fear of negative consequences to obtain compliance or obedience. The result is a highly toxic environment in which talented people refuse to work… they leave. And those who do stay are more focused on staying out of trouble than they are on being productive. The end result is that this kind of manager achieves the exact opposite of what they are intending… lower productivity. And of course they blame it on their people.

Leadership Connections™: A Management Development Process for Engaging Performance™ is specifically designed to help managers learn how to create the kind of environment where their people can excel.

Distributive Learning: Managers are not the only ones that are learning. As part of the process, they take what they have learned in the classroom back to their employees, engaging them in various activities and discussions. Not only do the manager’s of your organization receive learning from the process, but everyone in your organization learns! And the application exercises insure that what gets learned gets put into action, not left on a shelf.

Leadership Connections™ is based on the 7 Elements of High Performance™ model developed by RDS and adopted by the US Navy for use at their Center for Naval Leadership.

The Following is a Learning Overview for Each Module in Leadership Connections™

 Download our Leadership Connections™ Brochure

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Last Modified:  25 February 2008