Enliven Your Staff Meetings, Engage Your Staff, Strengthen Your Team and Cement Positive Skills — Easily!
The Managers Discussion Guide Program can accomplish all of that! And with only a minimal effort on your part! We’ve provided all the tools and the brief, live, just-in-time training you need to make sure your staff meetings are an event your team looks forward to, rather than a mandatory purgatory. By engaging your staff in thoughtful, professionally designed structured discussions you not only engage them in improving their own processes, but encourage them to help each other problem solve. Your team members will be more motivated and take ownership in the team’s goals and solving team problems.
Read on to understand how this can work for you — with a minimal time investment.
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“Nothing can succeed and last without teamwork.” –Garry Shandling, Comedian
If you’re like most managers nowadays, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to send your team members to training. But they need to keep their skills sharp. E-learning is one time-condensed solution, but we have created another we think is even better, as it involves your whole team in a half-hour discussion on a key issue.
The Missing Link in Nearly All Team Development Efforts
In 20+ years of providing people-development tools, we’ve noticed a void in nearly all team development efforts. The void is any regular discussion about key issues, delivered at the team level. When a manager sees a developmental need, s/he either sends individuals to specific training, or has training delivered to the whole team. These are typically only one-shot trainings, and the individual gets some new ideas and perhaps begins to integrate these into his/her practices.
When we’ve conducted longer-term, multi-part programs, the results were phenomenal. But most departments don’t have the budget to bring in a professional like us on a regular basis to conduct a training or discussion on key ideas. So how could we provide the ongoing conversations that spawned increased awareness–and ultimately behavior shifts–that resulted in improved effectiveness?
That’s when the Managers Discussion Guide Program was born.
This program, which includes brief, monthly manager-led structured Discussion Guides, fits the bill perfectly. They are short: 20- to 30-minute discussions that can easily fit in a staff meeting or brown bag lunch session. They are structured, so the manager doesn’t have to create the questions and flow. Even possible staff responses are included, so the manager can prime the pump if the staff is shy about answering.
Each module includes reproducible handout masters to duplicate for the team. And, each month the manager gets a walk-through training via a conference call so s/he knows what to discuss with their group. Since the modules are not designed to be a traditional training, the manager need not worry about having all the answers–s/he is merely leading a discussion with their staff.
This Managers Discussion Guide Program is the perfect solution for long-lasting, ongoing improvement in a manager’s staff’s awareness and sensitivity to common issues. The first set of twelve Discussion Guides focus on key concepts around internal or external customers, and apply to working better with teammates, as well.
Enable real team development — at your staff meetings
You know:
- It’s important to give your staff opportunities for development, but know that sending them to one-day trainings doesn’t have a lot of ROI.
- Real change happens through ongoing reminders and discussions with your staff, not once-in-a-while events.
- Having conversations with your staff has a higher value than having someone outside your group, like a trainer, lead key discussions, but you don’t have the time or inclination to put together a training session.
- It’s important to keep your staff members growing and developing, but realistically can only put in minimal effort to make this happen.
A tool to retain your best staff
Recent research by the Gallup Corp.** showed that the best employees said:
- My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
- Someone at work encourages my development.
- My opinions seem to count at work.
- I had opportunities at work to learn and grow this last year.
The Managers Discussion Guide Program is designed so your best employees will agree with these statements once this program is underway. What better way to show you care about them and their development than to provide an opportunity to grow and learn every month? You will provide ongoing staff development in 1/2-hour chunks via monthly structured staff meeting discussions. It’s a new concept–one we don’t know of anyone else offering.
** First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).
To recap, this program is two-pronged:
- Twelve structured discussion guides for manager-led monthly meetings (staff meetings or brown bag lunch discussions). Each guide includes a simple script to follow, including what questions to ask the staff as well as possible staff responses. The guides are designed to fit into a 20-30 minute time frame. Each module has reproducible handout masters for the staff. There is a preface which covers how to best use the guides, how to lead effective discussions, and how these discussions are different than a training.
- A monthly half-hour conference call for all subscriber managers, to walk through the month’s module before they lead their discussion with their staff. Each month everyone will be discussing the same module. This conference call will be conducted by bestselling author and customer service expert Rebecca Morgan or one of her senior consultants. The subscriber manager will be emailed the conference call times and dates and they must register for their preferred one.
The manager is invited to attend an initial briefing conference call to go over the preface before his/her first monthly conference call. The preface discusses how to facilitate effective discussions, and other details of the program.
This program is for you if…
The more we work with this unique program for high-performing teams and managers, the better we understand who the Managers Discussion Guide Program is a great fit for — and who doesn’t have the right characteristics to make the program work. This is a fit for you if you:
- Are truly committed to having a high-performance team, not just give the concept lip service.
- Know it is your job to be personally involved with developing your people.
- Are willing to take a stand for monthly, regular development of your team.
- Have the courage to commit a budget to getting started with a turn-key program.
- Have the power to authorize the minimal investment.
- Are action-oriented enough to say “yes” to moving your team forward.
- Are visionary enough to be a pioneer even if no one else in your company is on board.
- Understand that long-term behavior improvement happens over time, not in a one- or two-day session.
If the above describes you, then we’d love to have you attend a half-hour conference call to see how our Managers Discussion Guide Program works — as our guest. And you’re welcomed to invite others to be our guest at one of the conference call trainings.
