Foundations' Skill-Building Modules

By design, FEL is highly flexible and easily tailored to each organization’s unique business needs. Organizations can enhance their managers’ skills through individual modules or through customized one to six day programs.

Personal Effectiveness

Communication Skills

Teaming Skills

Setting Direction, Monitoring Performance

Thinking Skills

Personal Effectiveness


SEEING YOURSELF AS OTHERS SEE YOU - 360-DEGREE FEEDBACK

This module represents one of the most important learning opportunities of any of the Foundations for Effective LeadershipSM modules. Prior to the training, participants receive assessments to be completed by their peers, subordinates, boss, and others who can provide feedback regarding their managerial and leadership behaviors. During the training, participants receive a detailed written report along with interpretation assistance that will assist them in identifying managerial strengths and weaknesses. This will prepare them for writing a developmental plan.


PERSONALITY AND LEADERSHIP

Understanding oneself and others is key to success in managing and leading others. Prior to attending the Foundations for Effective LeadershipSM training module entitled Personality and Leadership, participants complete the ASSESS® personality assessment. During the program each participant receives his or her unique report, feedback and interpretive assistance, and learns how individual differences in personality affect individuals and teams.


USING YOUR STRENGTHS TO CREATE GREATNESS

In the world of management development, conventional wisdom suggests that the best way to become a better leader is to identify areas of managerial and leadership weaknesses and to improve in those areas. However, recent research has shown that conventional wisdom is only partially correct. While improving areas of weakness can yield significant benefit, leaders must also discover their areas of strength and learn to operate out of those areas. In addition to becoming more effective leaders, those that draw upon their strengths when leading will find that they are highly energized and motivated. By studying their past achievements, leaders can discover a pattern of energizing strengths that they can use in the future.


WRITING YOUR PERSONAL MISSION

In many ways, this module serves as the hub of Foundations for Effective LeadershipSM. Participants will explore some of their most heartfelt values and define their Personal Mission as they consider the various life roles they play. Many participants will consider this module the most personally meaningful of all of the FEL modules. Some who commit themselves to implementing the learning from this module, report that the experience is life-changing.


CREATING A DEVELOPMENTAL PLAN

This module is designed to be used after participants have completed the Foundations for Effective LeadershipSM modules entitled: Seeing Yourself as Others See You, Writing Your Personal Mission, Personality and Leadership, and Goals, The Foundation of Performance.


Communication Skills


LEADERSHIP LISTENING

Perhaps no other management skill garners less skill-building attention than listening. This is particularly unfortunate given its great importance to leading others effectively. Through assessment and skill practice, participants will learn about their current listening performance and how to improve listening through active listening techniques, and better use of their message sensing, interpreting, evaluating, and responding abilities.


EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATING CHANGE

Never before has so much change occurred at such a rapid pace. Effectively managing change is no longer a strategy to thrive, but rather a requirement for survival.


PUZZLE: A COMMUNICATIONS EXPERIMENT (Experiential Exercise)

This module provides participants with an opportunity to study the dynamics involved in planning a task to be carried out by others and to accomplish a task planned by others. Participants also explore both helpful and hindering communication behaviors in assigning and carrying out a task.


Teaming Skills


BUILDING HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS

The Building High Performance Teams module allows participants to understand how teams develop and to identify five key elements that enhance teaming performance. Participants will complete two assessments of their "back home" team's performance and create an action plan for enhancing that performance.


CREATING COMMITMENT THROUGH HIGH INVOLVEMENT MEETINGS

This module's content will certainly prepare participants to run effective meetings. However, the processes contained in this module also serve as powerful tools for improving team performance and team members' commitment to each other and the team's objectives. High involvement meetings capitalize upon the fact that people support what they help create. Participants can immediately apply the lessons learned in this module with their "back home" teams; and they will immediately improve their team's current performance.


BOUNDARIES: (Experiential Exercise)

Hopefully participants will recognize during the course of this experiential module that the only way to "win" in this exercise is to function as an entire organization or large team. However, some participant groups are so competitive that they fail to recognize this solution.


THE CHALLENGE: (Experiential Exercise)

The Challenge serves as a good reminder as to the power of effective communication and clarity of mission. In this experiential module, participants face a challenge that requires innovation, cooperation and leadership "listening."


CROSSING THE RIVER: (Experiential Exercise)

This experiential module requires participants to think creatively and collectively in order to solve a challenging problem.


Setting Direction, Monitoring Performance


GOALS, THE FOUNDATION OF PERFORMANCE

Participants will consider the value of turning their dreams for a different tomorrow into specific, measurable and realistic written goals. The module presents a practical straightforward approach to writing goals.


COACHING FOR PERFORMANCE

Participants learn to focus their coaching efforts on the "how" of performance rather than the "what." They will learn to balance the personal and task sides of the performance equation and a practical six-step process for coaching others. Participants spend the majority of this session engaged in skill practice. Case studies, role-plays, and written exercises prepare participants to return to their home organizations ready to coach others towards improved performance.


Thinking Skills


SITUATION ANALYSIS

Situation Analysis is part of the four modules collectively referred to as Systematic Solutions. Systematic Solutions is made of two major phases. Phase 1 is Situation Analysis. Phase 2 is called Decide and Act. In Phase 2, one of three resolution methods is applied: Problem Solving, Decision Making, or Planning. In this Situation Analysis module, Participants will learn a basic four-step approach to analyzing somewhat complex situations in order to identify significant issues that need resolution. Situation Analysis is the first process within Systematic Solutions that should be applied prior to moving to the selecting of one of the three resolution methods.


PROBLEM SOLVING

Participants will learn a basic four-step problem-solving process that will assist them in clearly defining problems, exploring the cause of the problem, evaluating information in order to determine the most likely cause, and then checking or testing this most likely cause to determine if it is the problem's true cause.


DECISION MAKING

Each day presents managers and their teams with the challenge of making the best choice from among various alternatives. This task is seldom easy and the choice very often contains significant long-term implications for the business. Add the complexity of dealing with a number of different people who each possess somewhat different expectations regarding the decision's outcome, and managers and their teams indeed face a very difficult job. This module will provide participants with the tools necessary to define the relevant criteria, evaluate various choices, and make well-founded choices from among alternatives.


PLANNING

Once a problem is solved or a decision is made, managers must move their teams into another important process: planning. This module will assist managers in learning how to identify the critical path to success, how to sequence project tasks, assign tasks, and monitor progress.


A DECISION MAKING EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE

Participants will learn a basic four-step problem-solving process that will assist them in clearly defining problems, exploring the cause of the problem, evaluating information in order to determine the most likely cause, and then checking or testing this most likely cause to determine if it is the problem's true cause.