Pathfinder – Developing your Core Management Skills

Arming your Leaders Against the Perfect Storm

 

Your Managers, Supervisors and Team Leaders are the “connecting rods” in your business. They effectively power the engine of your business connecting vision and strategy to capability, actions and tasks. They connect company values to behaviours, relationship building to productivity and planning to accountability. They are a vital component for sustainable growth in your business.

Given the often challenging, ambiguous and uncertain nature of the modern workplace, potentially brilliant businesses are often left struggling to keep up. This can result in your management team feeling lost, stressed and overwhelmed as their leadership skills are put to the test.

 

Why You Need Connected Leadership™ in Your Management Teams

• A Connected Leader will focus on the vision you have for your business and translate this into the behaviours and actions required for consistent outcomes and results. This means everyone in your business understands what is expected of them and is empowered and held accountable to deliver it
• A Connected Leader will focus on building relationships so that everyone feels valued and that they have a voice. This means that everyone in your business will feel part of the team and focuses on using their unique skills to deliver consistent outcomes and results
• A Connected Leader understands that barriers to change and growth are rooted in mindsets. They will encourage proactive thinking and shift focus away from what people can’t control towards what they can influence. This means that time will be saved, costs will be controlled, and profitability will improve. Embedding the right habits will future-proof your business

 

 

Where Do I Start?

Strong foundational skills are crucial. Understanding and harnessing diversity of all kinds, strong interpersonal skills, coaching and feedback skills, conflict management, emotional intelligence and agility, planning and organising skills, personal resilience and influencing skills are the bedrock of effective leadership and management capability.

 

Developing these foundational skills in your management teams will:

✔️ Give clarity and direction to maximise productivity

✔️ Provide the right balance of support and challenge for your people

✔️ Develop engaged, consistently performing individuals and teams

✔️ Enable effective management of change

✔️ Translate into a great experience for your customers

 

These are the foundations of a Connected Leader. A leader who can create positive top-down change starting with their own personal development. The culture shift towards Connected Leadership™ will deliver a leadership style that helps all employees, not just at the manager and leader level, to thrive by removing barriers to growth.  

Zentano have developed Pathfinder to deliver these foundational skills and build on the on-job learning available from 26 Steps to Team Leading.

 

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Pathfinder in a Nutshell

 

Pathfinder focuses on developing leadership and management capability in five key areas:

Purpose & Direction – Giving teams a strong sense of direction and ensuring team goals are aligned with company vision and strategy.

Capability – Driving a culture of continual improvement and personal development by embedding the right habits coupled with strong coaching and feedback skills.

Connected – Focus on relationship building and managing those relationships with the appropriate balance of support and challenge.

Productivity – Holding people to account with a focus on productivity.

Mindset – Developing a flexible and adaptive mindset that actively seeks opportunities to learn and develop and helps others do the same.

 

Developing skills in these five key areas removes some of the most prominent barriers to growth:

• Removing silo mentalities
• Promoting ownership and personal responsibility
• Empowerment and the ability to build trust
• Focusing on planning to drive efficiency and productivity
• Improving employee engagement and reducing presenteeism.

 

Ultimately this will result in a culture change led by your leaders, managers and emerging talent which will drive behaviours that deliver better outcomes for you.

 

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Your Pathfinder Programme

 

SHORT MODULES - Each leader or manager embarks on a 6 to 12-month journey to develop the knowledge and skills they need for their role. Pathfinder is delivered in short modules comprising of relevant knowledge and fun, work-related activities and exercises. Pathfinder can be delivered via online or face-to-face workshops. Each module is designed to build upon the previous one in a logical order to create a progressive learning experience. We recommend the modules are delivered monthly with at least 3 weeks between each one (i.e. one module per month). This allows for the learning in each module to become embedded and gives time for any additional supporting activities.

MENTORING AND COACHING INPUT – Pathfinder can be supported by in-house mentoring and coaching or using Zentano’s experienced team of qualified experts. This input is crucial to ensure transfer of learning and helps embed a mentoring and coaching culture throughout your business as well as driving personal responsibility and accountability.

CUSTOMISED CONTENT – Each Pathfinder workshop can be customised to the values and culture of your business so that it uses recognisable language. We work with your Operational Leaders to ensure we understand the typical challenges experienced in your business and align the activities and exercises to scenarios people will recognise.

SELF-DRIVEN LEARNING – Outside of the workshops and coaching conversations, learning is self-driven. This gives people a sense of responsibility, autonomy and accountability that allows for the perfect balance between people flexing their individual creativity, skills and insight whilst maintaining consistency of management practices. Reflective learning activities are encouraged and provided between workshops.

FLEXIBLE TIMING - Our Pathfinder Pathway is entirely flexible to meet your time constraints, deadlines and needs. We can flex our delivery to accommodate how your business works best. However, we do recommend taking one module a month to give time to embed the learning.

 

 

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Module Snapshot

 

Module No	Module Name	Module Description
Workshop 1	Harnessing Thinking Power	Understanding thinking preferences, spotting them and harnessing their power for communication, problem-solving, decision-making and building trust. Embracing the diversity of your team to spark innovation, creativity and productivity.
Workshop 2	Transforming Core Skills	Developing fundamental communications skills – questioning, listening, conveying & presenting information.
Workshop 3	Driving Accountability using Workplace Coaching	Using coaching skills in the workplace to provide challenge, support and actionable feedback.
Workshop 4	Managing Performance Through Quality Conversions	Developing the ability to deliver effective and powerful performance reviews.
Workshop 5	Managing Focus and Time	Taking charge of time, focus and energy to become more productive.
Workshop 6	Understanding Drivers of Workplace Behaviours	Increasing self-awareness of workplace behaviours and how they impact on colleagues, customers and other key stakeholders.
Workshop 7	Building Effective Relationships using Emotional Intelligence	Understanding Emotional Intelligence and developing Emotional Agility to build positive relationships.
Workshop 8	Building Effective Relationships using Emotional Intelligence (2)	Understanding Emotional Intelligence and developing Emotional Agility to build positive relationships 2
Workshop 9	Influencing & Managing Change	Understanding the impact of change and how to manage it.
Workshop 10	Transforming Team Performance	Developing a productive, engaged and consistently performing team.
Workshop 11	Developing Strategic Capability	How to step back from operational tasks and connect the team goals with the vision and strategy of the company.
Workshop 12	Understanding and Embedding Keystone Habits	The 5 keystone habits for a Connected Leader and how to sustain the performance gains made from attending the Pathfinder pathway