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

In 2010 - 11 Mitchell Phoenix have been working closely with Alderley Dubai, running bespoke in-house programs for senior and fast track managers both in the UK and Dubai. 

“The management team of Alderley Dubai were especially rewarding to work with. Their enthusiasm, diligence and application of ideas created the results that Nick and the senior team envisaged. In addition they made use of all the available strategies in Mitchell Phoenix projects, supporting each other, building team results and spurring each other on to deliver the maximum - a great group of people!” 
Kevin Yates, Managing Director, Mitchell Phoenix

Click here to read the case study

If one defines organizational culture as the collective values and behaviors of every individual within a business, what influence does this have on overall performance?

When we overlay culture, whatever form it may take, onto strategy, leadership, communication, customer focus, continuous improvement and sustainability, to name but a few core business competencies, we can immediately sense the influence that culture will have on output. Organizational culture will determine levels of efficiency, teamwork, quality, speed of decision making, employee engagement, innovation and reputation. It will block or embrace change, it will build legacy or stagnate, it will inspire or depress. Ultimately it drives the results.

How much attention does business pay to organizational culture? What connections does it make to some of the symptoms of a strong or weak culture?

When any organization examines its levels of employee churn, absenteeism, sick leave, internal promotions, overtime, its value of appraisal, effectiveness of meetings, its customer relationships, the willingness of its workforce to contribute freely, it can gain a measure of how healthy its culture is. How does any business ensure a healthy culture?

There is a clue for all of us in the purpose of management, which is ‘to secure the future’. A healthy culture is a leadership responsibility. When we hear about setting a good example it is actually about exhibiting the culture of the business. Feedback, good and bad, is indicative of what is important to the organization. If the strategic outlook is customer focused or bottom-line oriented it will drive out decisions and actions accordingly. Culture can be built with consistent management style, common language, shared best-practice and guiding principles. Any company can achieve a strong platform for growth if it invests in it and has the buy-in of senior executives.

Rockerfeller once said that he would pay ten times the salary to someone who could influence people who were smarter than they were. That is the importance he placed on being able to influence. Culture is influence over the ability to deliver strategy through people and it is vital.

What is the impact of organizational culture on performance? Whatever you decide.

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.

In discussion with a client the other day, he remarked on how many of Mitchell Phoenix's long-standing relationships are with companies in high growth; some of which have become household names during the 20 years we have been doing business with them. What is it about our approach and the results we create that suits organizations experiencing rapid change so well? Here is the answer.... click to read on

Business is on the edge of a new economic age that is already increasingly complex and unpredictable. Economic power shifts, emerging markets, natural disasters, scarcity of resources, population explosion, regulation, fear of double-dip recession all compound the challenges around growth and sustainability.

The pressures on business have seldom been as intense as they are today. Companies are under pressure, more than ever, to manage and maintain their reputation, manage their talent and keep pace with emerging technologies.

In 2004 Hewlett Packard embarked on further development of its excellence culture which was already highly focused on continuous improvement. It built on its existing culture by integrating continuous improvement with ‘continuous learning’.

Expert Facilitation is not Facilitation by Experts

When choosing a leadership development programme, one may encounter courses which promise “facilitation by experts.” The experts will have a background in a particular industry, and will draw on this background as they develop managers from the same industry on their programme.

Mitchell Phoenix MD Kevin
Yates working with executives
at Alderley Dubai

In this way, ex civil-servants will train other civil servants, ex manufacturing directors will instil leadership and management disciplines in those working in manufacturing, ex-lawyers will develop other lawyers, and ex IT professionals will inculcate “soft skills” in current IT professionals. 

When the development focuses around technical information, it is easy to understand why those with a background in a similar industry might be preferable. Non-lawyers will have no grasp of technical aspects of law, non-IT professionals will know little about the technical issues facing those working at the front line of IT.

Where leadership and management attitudes and skills are to be developed, it is less clear why those with a particular industry background will be a useful choice. An impressive track record working in a certain industry only suggests that a person is expert at working in that particular field, rather than in developing others to do so. Further, the more impressive the track record, the stronger the hold it will exert over the person’s thinking. Hard-won experience is even harder to relinquish. Yet anyone who wishes to develop wider understanding must do just that: let go of the particular, loosen their grip on their individual insights and begin to see further than their own autobiography.

Developing and inspiring others is not the same as doing oneself, as footballers who turn to management often discover. Who had a better track record than Sir Bobby Charlton? In terms of industry experience, of “been there, done it, got the medals to prove it,” at one stage he was peerless in the English game. His management career underlined the gap between doing oneself and mobilising others. For some this gap is easily bridged - Charlton’s peer Franz Beckenbauer managed the German World Cup winning team of 1990. For others it proves impossible to cross. (Charlton’s choice of subsequent activities shows how fast he learned this, and how shrewd and adaptable he is.)

What qualifications should one look for from those involved in management development? Kevin Yates, Managing Director of Mitchell Phoenix, has become convinced that there are four key factors: expert facilitation - by those who are skilled at mobilising others; robust course content; a unique day a month structure which places the emphasis on delegate output rather than trainer input; and an unwavering focus on the creation of concrete business results. When choosing a development programme, it is a strong track record in these areas which gives the clearest indicator of future performance.

Few CEO’s Cite Paint-Balling as their Chief Leadership Influence

Rare quotations:

“I paint-balled my way to the top”

For comedians training is one of the most fertile areas of business life. The tenuous links made between a host of activities – from actors’ trust games to orienteering – and our working practices are funny because we can all recognise the scenario. Whether it is making the accounts team go through an army assault course or asking the production division to do a karaoke for leadership programme, everyone knows someone who has done something ridiculous in the name of development, or – worse still – has had to take part in something ridiculous themselves.

If you want a development activity which is useful, rather than simply entertaining, what should you look for? After more than 25 years in development, Mitchell Phoenix’ Kevin Yates concludes that there are four pillars of successful development programmes. “Look for expert facilitation, an unwavering focus on the creation of results, a structure which will allow the creation of results, and tried and proven content,” he says.

What should this content consist of? First of all it should be usable in the workplace. Under pressure in a real life work situation, anything overly complicated, such as a theoretical ‘model’, will be difficult to bring to mind or use. Second, content should be useful, so that when it is applied it will solve a problem and/or generate concrete results. This means the content should focus on how to conduct the key activities managers and leaders undertake. Whether the focus is delegation, persuasion, motivation or anything else, concrete detail on how to do each of these things is vital. It is not enough to define the problem, the content must take us towards the solution and then prompt us to take action back in the workplace.

“Perhaps most important,” says Yates, “is that the content is based on strong, ethical business principles which senior managers can relate to, and on which they can build. They must see clearly how what is being suggested to them fits with the business principles they already hold, or with principles they aspire to and are likely to adopt.”