Management Excellence Seminar.

For the next few weeks on Fridays I’m attending a management seminar at Champlain College in Burlington.  Today was the first session, wanted to post some thoughts.

It was a nice mix of people – a lot of managers from northern Vermont companies, with some companies  like Dealer.com and the Vermont Credit Union sending a bunch of their people, and smaller firms sending 1 or 2.  Today’s seminar was led by Sean Collins, Ph.D., who is currently working in organizational development for Dealer.com.

There were a lot of great things to takeaway, some of which I’ll share here.

I enjoyed Sean’s facilitation style. He was intentional about setting ground rules that everyone could live with and establishing a structured presentation style that made fairly clear how he intended to proceed with the class.  He did a nice ice-breaker early in the session, asking participants to tell something about themselves that no one would guess about them, without knowing them really well.

We covered our company, group/team, and personal dynamics first, discussing how Dyadic systems (pairs of people) in the workplace frequently occur, and how that can be a force for good or bad, depending on the specifics.  Not everyone in a dyad knows they are in one, or perceived to be in one, and not all dyad arrangements are peaceful.  These and other structures form the basis for reinforcing behaviors that we will want to emphasize and celebrate when they produce great work.  When they get in the way, sometimes just a nudge to the parties can make visible what is causing the conflict.

There was a great discussion on Situational Leadership.  The types of issues that managers face with the different staff maturity levels of their teams requires flexibility – there is no single perfect style. By understanding the level of commitment and competence of the team, you can support and direct to the degree that is needed.

Next the topic moved to Emotional Intelligence.  I had recently read this article by Daniel Goleman, and so was well prepared for this discussion. EQ is about motivating oneself, persisting in the face of frustration, controlling impulses, delaying gratification, regulating mood without letting people hijack it, and providing empathy and hope to others.

Lastly we covered the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and they presented us with our results from the tests we took online earlier in the week. I was a little bit surprised by my result – I’ve shifted a little since the last time I took this test in 2005.

I left with some insights on how to approach the week until the next class. Going to look at some of the organizational structure of our shop and my team this week, to see how I can leverage my own personality structure in a positive way.  Stay tuned.