Leadership Connections

Leadership Connections: Engaging Performance™

Focus: Managers at any level

Time Frame: 9 to 12 months; usually about one meeting per month, with a total of 8 days.

Price: $4,500 USD per manager participant; includes all participant materials and materials for each manager's direct reports.*

Our research tells us that the single most important determinant of individual performance is a person’s relationship with his or her immediate manager. Without a robust relationship with a manager who sets clear expectations, knows you, trusts you and invests in you, you are less likely to stay and perform.

Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton of the Gallup Organization in Now Discover Your Strengths

Having effective managers who can lead and engage their employees is critical to the success of any organization. But the current research is clear; too many organizations fail at turning their managers into effective leaders, and too many organizations fail at engaging their employees. This results in a tremendous blow to the bottom line. If organizations could increase the effectiveness of their managers, they could increase their organization’s potential dramatically!

Many organizations are scrambling to place their managers in all sorts of development programs. These range from 1 and 2 day events, to sending them off for a full week of training. The problem with both of these approaches is that they try to deliver too much information to the managers at one time. This results in overload, almost insuring that little of what has been delivered is actually learned, and that even less will be applied when the manager gets back to their workplace.

But Leadership Connections™ overcomes all of these problems precisely because it is a long-term, well-planned process, designed to provide just the right amount of learning at the right time, coupled with application exercises that the manager conducts with their employees back at the work site. Our program also provides the individual assessments for both managers and employees, along with worksheets, action planners, and other tools that provide support for applying the lessons learned and putting them into action.

As a result, managers learn and apply those skills and at the same time begin to Build Trust with their employees. Trust is the foundation for creating a relationship with employees that leads to increased employee engagement which leads to increased productivity, customer satisfaction, and organizational performance.

Leadership Connections™

Achieves Real Results!

Manage the Environment not People!

The primary role of managers is to manage the environment! We cannot really manage people… they do either what they want to do, or what they believe they have to do. What we want managers to do is to create an environment where people want to, and can excel… where they can, and do, perform at their best! So any development program for managers must focus on developing the knowledge and skills needed to manage the work environment.

In their efforts to improve productivity, many managers over-control people, and use the fear of negative consequences to obtain compliance or obedience. The result is a highly toxic environment in which talented people refuse to work… they leave. And those who do stay are more focused on staying out of trouble than they are on being productive. The end result is that this kind of manager achieves the exact opposite of what they are intending… lower productivity. And of course they blame it on their people.

Leadership Connections™ is specifically designed to help managers learn how to create the kind of environment where their people can excel.

Here’s Why Our Program Works!

Distributive Learning: Managers are not the only ones that are learning. As part of the process, they take what they have learned in the classroom back to their employees, engaging them in various activities and discussions. Not only do the manager’s of your organization receive learning from the process, but everyone in your organization learns! And the application exercises insure that what gets learned gets put into action, not left on a shelf.

Team Building: As a result of the Distributive Learning approach, managers begin to build Trust with their employees, creating a relationship with them that leads to employee engagement. They also begin to help their employees work together more efficiently and effectively, helping them to understand each other and how they “fit” together. Over the long term of the process we actually are conducting Team Building in a way that no other “team building” training can accomplish. It is real-time and on-going, and results in increased productivity!

Customization: Because of the way Leadership Connections™ has been designed, the implementation is unique in each organization. This means it will work for your organization because it is applied uniquely to your organization.

Leadership Connections: Engaging Performance™ is a Seven Elements of High Performance™ Program.

The US Navy has adopted our model for use at the Center for Naval Leadership in all of their leadership development programs.

*Plus Travel and Expenses. Price includes materials for up to 10 direct reports per manager.

Our Programs

Team Quest^tm
Vision Quest^tm
Leadership Connections: Engaging Performance^tm
Work Engagement Survey^tm
Team DISCovery^tm

Download our Leadership Connections: Engaging Performance^tm one-sheet brochure