The Maximum Performance Management Development Programme
This ILM-recognised 10-day management development programme covers 17 essential subject areas and includes two individual coaching sessions to support your growth. A stronger manager means a less stressed, more motivated team.
You’ll begin with a Facet 5 personal profile and coaching to understand your own behaviours before focusing on leading others. Through bite-sized modules, practical tools, and real-world challenges (with input from guest specialists and professional actors), you’ll gain the confidence and strategies to handle everyday management issues. A final coaching session helps you set clear next steps for your career.
This management development programme is designed for groups of 12–13, making it interactive and supportive. It’s primarily aimed at those stepping into management for the first time — from soon-to-be managers to those with a couple of years’ experience. But it’s never too late to benefit, as feedback from recent participants shows…
Sessions usually run monthly, virtually or face-to-face, as you prefer. Simply click the boxes for the detailed content of each session.
- Your management development programme
- The content and context
- Why invest in managers?
- Expectations
- 1:1 coaching to support you
- The reflective cycle
- Your personal profile
- The desire to lead – a questionnaire
- What makes a manager?
- A fun interactive session on identifying the key attributes of effective managers
- The Facet5 profile
- An introduction
- What it is and what it does
- General characteristics
- Your value to the organisation
- Checklist for communicating with you
- How to adapt your communication style
- Know your ideal working environment
- How others may perceive you
- Your motivations
- How your manager can get the best from you
- Your development areas
- Crucial conversations
- What stops us from giving and receiving feedback? A look at the barriers that stop us giving feedback
- Skills needed to be confident: Identifying the skills and demonstrating them
- Observations and inferences: Think before you talk!
- Hold an honest conversation: Have a go from one of our scenarios!
- Effective delegation
- The 4 steps to successful delegation
- Your delegation log
- What is the task?
- Identify the right person
- Now have the conversation
- Managing through change
- Identifying changes within organisational / team levels (pre-work): What changes are happening that we need to be aware of as managers?
- What do we need to be an effective change agent? Identifying the right skills, knowledge and behaviours
- The change transition curve: Managing your team through change
- The forcefield analysis: Using the model to manage change effectively
- Influencing and negotiating
- Influencing power bases: What power base do you use to influence those around you? Does it work?
- Push v Pull
- Your personal network: Who is in your network? How much do you invest in it?
- Win-win negotiation: Using Covey’s negotiation matrix to choose your strategy
- Influencing others in meetings: Practical exercise using a range of influencing styles
- Running effective meetings
- Your experiences of meetings: What contributes to a successful meeting and why do they cause frustration and so much pain?
- The role of the chair
- Before / during / after
- Managing the process and the people!
- Skills required
- Dealing with challenging situations: 7 challenging situations
- A strong opening: Setting the scene
- Clarity in communication
- Problem-solving and decision-making
- 5 Top tips: How your mind functions when making decisions
- Cause and Effect: Using the model to solve a problem
- The SCAMPER model: 7 thinking techniques
- Managing working relationships
- Managing upwards: How you can get the most from your manager
- The Emotional Bank Account: Are your relationships in credit?
- Trust is the key
- The Trust questionnaire
- The Reina Trust model
- Transactional Analysis: How this approach can help you strive for adult to adult conversations
Facet 5 – your personal report (with feedback in your first coaching session)
- Creating the environment for success
- Your experiences of being managed
- Team stages: Managing your team through stages of transition
- Your expectations: Be clear about what you want
- Shadow of a Leader: Being aware of the shadow that you cast
- Time and priority management
- Where does your time go? What are your time stealers and how you can either control or eliminate them. A time trap questionnaire
- How others see me spending my time: Are you focusing on the right things?
- Prioritising and to-do lists: How you plan and structure your tasks
- The urgent / important matrix: Transferring your lists to find out what is important and what is urgent and the difference between the two
- Managing performance reviews
- The performance conversation: Make those end of year conversations useful and interesting
- The appraisal agenda: Does your scheme work for everyone?
- Setting SMART goals: An underrated skill. Practice by pulling apart some example objectives
- Performance management – be creative! Avoid just a conversation about what they have / haven’t done. Make it interactive! Focus on the wheel!
- Objectives: Quantifiable v Behavioural
- Assessing performance: What does good / poor performance look like? It needs to be articulated
- Coaching skills to develop others
- Spectrum of skills: Identifying the skills required to hold an effective coaching conversation
- Listening skills: How good are you?
- The coaching approach: Have a go at a conversation
- Know All, Tell Not: Try this approach!
- Practical coaching session using the GROW model: A chance to put theory into practice
- Communicating and presenting with impact
- What’s it all about?
- Introduction to the spoken word
- Understanding the needs of the listener
- Finding the story in complex content
- Motivating activity
- Analysing memorable messages
- The Six Principles of Sticky Ideas (Dan and Chip Heath)
- Making it personal
- Analogies and metaphors
- Keeping it simple
- Pictures and props
- Communication clarity
- Emotional intelligence and your personal brand
- What is EI and why is it important?
- Understanding EI and the link to great management and leadership
- What is empathy? Empathy v sympathy
- Your personal brand: What do you stand for and do others see the same brand as you?
- The Johari Window: Self-perception v Others’ perception of you
- EI questionnaire: Sharing outcomes and perceptions
- Leadership styles
- The management v leadership debate: Is there a clear difference, or are we expected to carry out elements of both roles?
- Transactional v Transformational Leadership: What they are and when to use them
- Different management styles – traditional v modern: Choosing what’s right for you
- Managing the generations: Understanding the generation gap!
- Programme review
- Your values: Knowing what’s important to you
- Career questions interview: Following a set of questions to enable you to think about your next steps in your management journey
- Know your WHY: Understanding your why can help you understand others’
- Your manager canvas review: Are you the same manager as when you started this programme?
- Application of your learning: It’s not what you know, but what you do!
- Your MDP review and feedback: Sharing your experiences
- Celebrate success! Time to celebrate and move forward
Two one-to-one coaching sessions (usually after days 1 and 10)
This is a very flexible management development programme. Some clients choose to run it ‘as is’, others prefer to have us tweak it for them, and for others we take it just as a starting point for a conversation before designing a completely bespoke package for them.
Tried-and-tested, the MDP can be run ‘as is’, as an ‘off-the-shelf’ programme.
Or you might want to make a few tweaks.
For example, everyone has their favoured psychometric. We love Facet 5. It’s so easy to use and understand that we think of it as the Apple Mac of the psychometrics world (if you haven’t come across it before, give us a call and we’ll set you up with a free trial). But if you’d prefer a different tool, that’s fine – we’re perfectly flexible.
You might also want to use a 360, for ‘pre and post’ evaluation.
You might want to think about a launch event, involving key stakeholders. A completion event, perhaps with team presentations to senior managers, can also work really well. We can help with a business project exercise to run alongside the programme too.
Or you might want to add a session on finance, for example, or project management, or commercial awareness, or cross-cultural communication, or sales and marketing, or the customer journey. Through our sister company, The In-House Training Company, we have access to a very wide range of subject matter experts, so adding modules is easy.
Equally, you might want to cut a couple of sessions if you don’t think they’re relevant to your managers. That’s fine too.
We can also build in social learning opportunities, so that participants learn from each others’ experiences as well as benefiting from the practical advice and guidance of some inspirational trainers.
Or you might want to make more use of the actors.
These are all simple changes to make.
Give us a call and we can talk through the options with you.
Some clients prefer virtual delivery, particularly for dispersed or hybrid teams. That’s fine. We usually deliver the sessions on Zoom but we can use Teams if you prefer. Sessions are generally run as two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, to ensure that everyone can maintain focus and energy levels throughout (you will participate!).
Other clients prefer the advantages that in-person delivery gives. A full day means that we can cover a little more ground, there’s more opportunity for participants to learn from each other, it’s better for team-building and networking.
The choice is yours. This management development programme works perfectly either way.
And either way, there’s pre-work for each module, with permanently shared learning resources on Padlet (or via our own website, if you prefer).
Our programmes and materials are designed with inclusivity in mind from the outset, but if there are any specific issues of which we should be aware, please give us a call to talk them through.
Looking for something a bit different?
We’ve been designing bespoke management development programmes for 25 years.
Perhaps you need something tailored to your values or competency framework? Perhaps you need a programme to help support a culture change?
Perhaps you’re ‘just looking for something a bit different’?
Perhaps you’ve got some ideas already and simply need a like-minded partner with whom to co-create and even co-deliver?
Give us a call and we can talk through what approach might work best for you, your managers, your organisation. We always welcome an opportunity to get creative!
Whether ‘as is’ or bespoke, we deliver programmes on a global basis, using our international network of more than 140 associate trainers in more than 60 countries around the world.
So far, we’ve delivered this management development programme in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese. Other languages available on request.
Global delivery sometimes means accommodating different cultures, different languages, different delivery styles. Give us a call to talk it through and we can discuss the logistics for your particular project.
