First Line Manager Training Course - 2 Days

The role of the first line manager has many aspects because they act as the pivot-point between the senior managers, the front-line workers, the suppliers and the customers. The role of front-line manager is essential to the success of the organisation as a whole. Therefore, the front-line manager needs to be highly motivated and skilled. The purpose of this course is to help your managers by developing their essential skills and abilities.

If you are a first line manager, then you need to:

1. Provide a clear goal - a sense of direction
2. Communicate clearly - explain yourself accurately
3. Manage time, prioritise and delegate tasks
4. Handle disagreements and conflicts
5. Inspire yourself
6. Motivate others

The first line managers’ first skill is to master how to communicate goals and standards. Since everything we do is intended to achieve a goal, the first task is to ensure that everyone knows what the goals are. Any confusion is bound to create errors and inefficiencies. So, we learn how to clearly establish and communicate a SMART goal.

The ability to effectively communicate is essential. First line managers need to be clear, specific, convincing and motivational. We will study how to communicate with greater clarity by defining our terms and making our language more quantitative, affirmative and specific.

1. The use of accurate language
2. How to speak and write more clearly
3. Give affirmative instructions
4. Questioning skills

A cynic thinks nothing will work and then tries to figure-out WHY it won’t.
Cynics are negative personality types. You may know a few cynics at your place of work.

On the other hand, a critical thinker knows things do work, BUT ONLY IF they are done correctly! Critical thinkers are highly valuable members of the team. Even though they sometimes seem “negative”, they have the right intentions and are valuable assets.
It is important that we develop our critical thinkers, and we do not accept cynicism. We will show you how to change a cynic into a critical thinker.

Some first line managers are afraid to handle conflict and poor performance issues, simply because they do not know how to do it properly.
Sometimes they make their criticism sound like a reprimand.
First line managers should make criticism sound more like guidance.

1. Protect their ego
2. Tell them what they are doing wrong
3. Be objective and specific
4. Tell them what you want instead
5. Discover why and decide if that is a reason or excuse
6. Learn when to negotiate and when not to
7. Notes on proper timing
8. Notes on body language and voice tone

There are many motivators, some are tangible, and some are intangible.

Tangible motivators include monday, holidays and other benefits.
Intangible motivators are things like, thanks, appreciation and praise.

Many managers neglect to thank, appreciate and praise their colleagues because they think, “money is the motivator”. But they are wrong to neglect appreciation and praise. We will discuss how to harness the power of praise.

It is important to practice these skills so you can use them in real life. So, we will give you the option of practicing these skills by working through five work-based scenarios that we all have to deal with: Inappropriate humour, lateness, lack of respect, aggressiveness, and a difficult boss. At the end of the course, you will know how to handle these common problems, as well as how to apply the principles to every other case of conflict you will ever encounter. You will be glad you came.

At the end of the first day you will be astounded by how much valuable information you have learned. We will ask you to review the notes and pick out which ideas are the most relevant to you, and how you will you apply these points to your own work practice.

Time management is the art of making the best possible progress in the minimum amount of time, by means of proper prioritisation, planning, preparation and delegation.

First time managers prioritise according to two major criteria, value and deadline pressure. There are four types of activity:

1. Crisis zone – emergency, all hands-on deck, stressful
2. Productive zone - preparation and planning
3. Busy zone – occupied, but not productive
4. Fruitless zone - waste of time, counter-productive

It is important to understand the difference between two concepts, Busy, and Productive.

Many people are too busy, and yet NOT as productive as they could be. They have “busy but non-productive days”.

First line managers must NOT mistake activity for achievement. We need to get out of the busy zone and into the productive zone.

We are NOT paid for our busyness; we are paid for our productivity, In order to increase our Productivity, we need to develop our P list activities.

P-List activities all begin with the letter P, and all contribute to productivity: Purpose, planning, preparation, prevention, problem solving and prioritisation. We will master the P list.

First line managers must identify and eliminate unnecessary time wasters. They fall under three main headings that we call: SOS:

1. Self – your own bad habits
2. Others – other peoples’ bad habits
3. Systems – inefficient work systems

We will analyse this list and understand how we can improve in all three areas.

Emails can be a distraction. We will analyse how you can best manage them to minimise the problem.

The manager is not paid to do it all. Their major role is to get it done, by delegating the right task to the right person at the right time.
We will reuse SMART targets to help us delegate properly.

We will discuss why some managers do not delegate, as they should.

They do not know how. They think it is quicker to do it themselves. They think they are the only ones to be trusted with that task. They are afraid to “let go”. They do not like to impose on others.

We will eliminate these errors. It is important you understand how much you can achieve if only you harness the power of delegation.

Since you cannot do everything simultaneously, you will need to prioritise. You can prioritise according to two criteria, “by value” and “by logical sequence”.

We will show you exactly how to do this and provide you with a prioritisation app for your mobile, so you are always doing the most valuable things, in the most logical order.

The morning session was very logical, but what about people’s emotions and feelings? They are important too. We learn about emotional management; how to inspire yourself and others.

We start with self-motivation, because it is impossible to inspire others if you are depressed yourself. You will discover how to develop your own mind so that you can always create and sustain a positive mental attitude.

Sometimes managers say the wrong things and create a negative atmosphere within the team.
Negative atmospheres give rise to anger, fear, worry and resentment.

We will discuss how negative attitudes can only produce negative results.
Eliminate the negative and replace it with the positive.

We look at how our words can positively affect other people. We learn how every word you say has an emotional consequence. Your words can make others feel stronger, no stronger, or weaker, depending on what you say.

We examine this statement and learn how to use words in ways that make people feel stronger. We call this skill conversation control and we discuss its importance

It is important to understand that Success is not an event, but rather a process, based upon only five words: Purpose, plan, action, feedback, change:

PURPOSE = Decide your SMART goal
PLAN = Formulate your best plan in writing
ACTION = Implement your plan
FEEDBACK = Measure and analyse the feedback results of your recent actions.
CHANGE = Continually improve your plans based upon the changing conditions and the recent feedback results.

Recognise that the success formula is a continuous improvement process.
It is important to understand how much you can achieve when you apply the principles of continuous improvement. We show you how.

The success formula contains the concept of negative feedback. Negative feedback is important, but it can be delivered in two ways, constructively or destructively.

We will show you how to avoid demotivating people by using destructive criticism. Instead we will demonstrate how to motivate them by using constructive criticism.

It is vital that first line managers only give constructive criticism.

The first line managers should only give constructive criticism. We will practise changing destructive criticism into constructive criticism.

By the end of the second day you will be astounded at how much we have managed to pack into this course, but because the material is so well structured, it all fits together neatly like a jigsaw.

You will spend some time going over the notes, and picking out your most important learning points and thinking about how you will apply them.

When you return to your workplace, you will be amazed at how effective your new skills are, and how it causes other people to respond to you in new, positive ways.