Course Outcomes

This team management skills course will:

  • Identify the challenges specific to managers working in fluid environments.
  • Highlight the characteristics of an adaptable workforce and the workplace conditions that must exist for people to easily transition from one role to another or one focus to the next.
  • Offer tools to help managers identify trends, obstacles, and changes in the way they do business.
  • Suggest an approach to selling a vision, focusing a team, and reducing uncertainty.
  • Provide a view project team management styles and when each is appropriate.
  • Give solutions to common problems teams face.

Course Overview

In response to changes in regulation, technology, economics, environmental factors, social issues, and a host of other concerns, successful organizations are increasingly interested in building adaptable processes and developing people who can quickly shift their focus from one target to another.  This workshop is designed for managers who want to learn how to lead better in fluid environments. The program focuses primarily on people skills and basic processes for helping others adapt to a culture of rapid change, flux, and transition.

Program Objectives

At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

  • Explain the advantages of an adaptable workforce and the workplace conditions that must exist for people to embrace adaptability.
  • Use a variety of tools to consider the future and what changes may be on the horizon.
  • Craft a vision narrative and “sell” direct reports on the organization’s long and short-term goals.
  • Recognize what management style is most appropriate for different types of projects.
  • Solve basic problems related to working in a fluid environment.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline

The Right Environment: Enabling Adaptability

This course starts with an activity to highlight the essential elements that must exist in order for people to succeed in a nimble environment.  Working in teams, participants will navigate an adaptability challenge. After that exercise, we will talk about factors that helped or hindered the team’s success and the extent to which those conditions occur in the workplace. Next, we will discuss actions managers can take to leverage positive circumstances and minimize those that deter people from performing well.

Change Spotting: Flexibility Training

Great managers know how to spot what’s next on the horizon and prepare their people to handle workplace potholes, roadblocks, and changing expectations. This part of the course offers several techniques for methodically considering possibilities and thinking about “what if.” We will talk about the importance of scenario planning and how to help a team consider a variety of internal and external changes.

Future Painting: Selling the Target

For the time being, people work for people, and a manager’s ability to sell ever-changing targets to their teams is an essential skill.  This part of the workshop focuses on the importance of clarity: how to articulate a vision, paint a picture of the future, and sell people on their place within a new order. During this segment, we’ll look at how reducing uncertainty can mitigate anxiety and quickly give a team a sense of purpose.

Pioneers, Pacers, and Planners: Assembling the Right Team

Like people, projects are unique and require different skill sets depending on their goals and objectives.  In this part of the course, participants will talk about three types of management styles and kinds of tasks for which each makes sense. Next, we’ll look at the conditions and behaviors that must be present in order to quickly build, change, and dismantle teams.

When Times Get Tough: First Aid Skills

Even in the best situations flux and transition rarely occur without a bump or two.  This final module looks at the problems that can occur in adaptive environments and what to do about them.  Working through a series of case studies, participants will develop solutions to each.  They will also identify any actions that could have prevented issues from occurring in the first place.

By the conclusion of this workshop, participants should understand the value of workplace nimbleness and the steps they can take to develop their direct reports to become more adaptable and prepared for change.