Mitchell Phoenix - Leadership and Management Training

Over 20 years of client work, Mitchell Phoenix' approach has been constantly refined in the pursuit of a single goal: the creation of results in the client's business. This principle is the foundation on which our programs are built, and it is in the light of this principle that all other decisions about course content and structure are taken. 

But once the overarching purpose is established, what other principles are invoked to ensure every course produces real, practical results? Click to read how we build leadership and management training.

GOVERNING CHANGE DATES

Structure: Six full day seminars, one day each month for six months

Seminar 1 Wednesday 25 January, 2012
Seminar 2 Wednesday 29 February, 2012
Seminar 3 Wednesday 28 March, 2012
Seminar 4 Wednesday 25 April, 2012
Seminar 5 Wednesday 23 May, 2012
Seminar 6 Wednesday 20 June, 2012



Principal Focus: Leading, directing and mobilizing staff

Key themes:

Seminar One - Key and Fundamental Principles of Management
Seminar Two - Improving the Contribution of Staff and Others
Seminar Three - Leadership in Management
Seminar Four - Improving the Quality of Leadership Influence
Seminar Five - Dominating Change
Seminar Six - Managing into the Future

Course fees: £3650.00 exc VAT

Who will benefit? The Managers of Managers (Senior Level)

"Governing Change" is for managers and management teams who wish to capitalize on their experience and advance their leadership and management abilities. The focus is on the critical area of high quality communication and the management of relationships which take up a substantial part of every manager's time.

Click here to make a booking on this program

What is covered on this course? Click here for course outline

What results do delegates create when attending this course? Click here for sample results

You’ve decided to do some management training with your people. The business case is clear and the necessary budget has been secured. If you don’t spend the money in the next couple of months it will disappear, so you sit down to make your choice.

You think that with stronger management skills you and your people will behave more effectively on an individual, team and organizational basis. This would be a fantastic business result. You search the internet for management training companies which can deliver business results… and to your surprise, everyone can. Every provider you look at shouts back at you about the “results” they create for their clients, like a flock of parrots that has learned to say just one word.

In fact, in the world of management development “results” has a range of meanings:

1. At the basic level, the “result” is that everyone who attended a day of training rated it highly on a feedback sheet – eg. as “very good” or “outstanding”. People had a good time, nobody tried to climb out of the windows.

2. The next type of “result” is that everybody learned something on the course. They learned what personality type they are, or that they annoy a colleague when they don’t turn on their out of office message. The link between the learning and the workplace is hazy, or based on firm promises to put an action plan in place one delegates get back to the their desks. Six months down the line, people are still annoying their colleagues by not turning on their out of office messages. Perhaps unexpectedly, much of the input on MBA courses falls into this category: interesting but not used.

3. Short-term behavioural change is the next category of “result”. Here, people adopt a new behaviour and stick to it for a while. For situations where longevity of application is not a factor, “results” in this area are useful.

4. Long-term behavioural change is the pinnacle of “business results”. This is rare, requiring all of the other three preceding “results” to be in place (no one will change their behaviour if the course designed to do this is making them want to climb out of the window). Along with these, any course operating at this level will create a deep understanding of management principles, such that they can be applied to any situation a manager faces. Managers take decisions with this new frame of reference in mind, and choose new, more effective behaviour now and in the long-term.

Next month: the clues that show which of the four types of result above a provider can deliver.

We’re going through a period of change, and my people need to do something on change management - what have you got on that?

Although everyone has their own idea of what “change management” means – from charming resistant employees, to implementing a full-blown project-management-style methodology – it is possible to identify some common characteristics:

• A coherent vision of what the desired future should look like
• A well constructed plan of how we are to get there
• An understanding of the present situation – current capability, resources, strengths, areas for improvement, etc
• The ability to set goals and manage progress towards their achievement
• The ability to overcome unexpected setbacks
• The ability to persuade others to support change, especially when this means they will have to change something about how they operate

If the managers in an organisation are not capable of doing these things already, what are they doing? To what extent are we looking at a company where managers have been able to get away with only having:

• A partial vision of what the desired future should look like (“we’ve set ourselves a few financial objectives that sound good”)
• A vague idea of how we are to get there (“more or less do what we’ve always been doing, with some rationalisation and one or two tweaks”)
• A vague understanding of the present situation (“we’re pretty much ok, although I’ve never liked him…”)
• Only partial ability to set goals and manage progress towards their achievement (“the secret is to not set anything too stretching”)
• Variable success in overcoming unexpected setbacks
• Little ability to persuade others to support change (“you should see some of the people in my department – these people don’t want to change”)

Lurking under the idea that change management is different from “normal” management, we can detect the assumption that management is a passive activity. A manager’s role is primarily concerned with preserving the status quo, ensuring people behave as they have always behaved and safeguarding processes, procedures and expectations laid down some considerable time ago. A passive manager of this type could not be expected to possess the “change management” skills outlined above.

An active manager, fully aware of the organisation’s purpose, ambitions and aims, would view change somewhat differently. For this person, change is at the heart of their responsibility, and the ability to create and manage change is central to their role. The organisation will only fulfil its aims through change: depending solely on what worked in the past will not serve us in the future. Further, if we do not have the skills to initiate and manage change, our options are severely limited, because all we can draw upon is precedent.

The difference between “change management” and “management” is the difference between behaving actively and passively. Why wait for a large, externally imposed change before attempting to equip yourself and your people with the skills to manage it, when you could actively decide to acquire those capabilities now – and create some changes of your own?