Improving Performance
Give your managers the skills and tools to improve their team’s performance.
Influencing your team’s performance is rarely a matter of “just doing it”—it requires your managers to conduct focused performance conversations that actually move the needle.
This program gives your managers the tools to handle key conversations that produce a measurable positive outcome for team members, for customers, and for the company.
We surveyed the 15,000 direct reports of 2,000 managers who participated in the training.
We found that these managers improved significantly on all communication behaviors, and that that improvement was sustained over time.
Move the Needle on Your Team’s Performance
After participating in this program, managers return to their jobs with the skills necessary to achieve their top business goals.
Our clients’ own metrics have documented improvement in critical areas:
Customer-satisfaction scores
Efficiency and performance scores
Coaching scores on the company’s internal coaching survey
People-management skills as measured on the company’s engagement survey
What Participants Learn
The program’s intense practice focuses on improving key conversations that move the needle in a positive direction:
Leverage Critical Conversation Skills: Have the skills, confidence, and commitment to handle key conversations that produce a measurable positive outcome for associates, for customers, and for the company.
Implement Concrete Strategies & Tactics: Use specific, practical skills and strategies for what to say and how to say it to have maximum positive impact.
Communicate Performance Expectations: Help employees understand performance expectations and commit to producing desired outcomes.
Solve Performance Problems: Get performance back on track when it misses the mark and help employees take ownership of solving performance problems.
Meet Key Metrics: Communicate clearly to ensure that employees meet performance targets.
Manage Performance Efficiently: Spend less time correcting the same performance problem repeatedly by creating solutions that stick.
Integrate Corporate Values: Translate abstract corporate values such as inclusion, agility, and collaboration into specific daily actions.
This training really helped enhance the skills of even very experienced managers who thought they had all of the answers.
“This training really helped enhance the skills of even very experienced managers who thought they had all of the answers. We found that our managers giving constructive feedback really did improve the performance metrics of the organization, including customer satisfaction scores. It also enabled our managers to build their leadership skills.
Many of our managers were front-line people promoted out of the individual-contributor ranks, and they needed some formal management training. When you're looking at an organization of 3,000 people, you want to ensure effective and consistent delivery of a message to the organization.”
JOHN BEGLEY
Former Executive Vice President, The National Financial Services Institution
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Targeted Customization
We tailor the program for your specific situations, needs, and organizational culture.
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Focused Skill-Building
Participants experience intensive practice and skill-building rather than only learning concepts and theory.
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Eye-Opening Video Labs
Our proprietary Video Lab process helps participants see themselves as others see them, producing the aha! moment necessary for sustained behavioral change.
Participants learn not only what to do, but also how to do it.
Program Details
Real-Life Practice: Participants create their own practice scenarios based on real-life situations, not off-the-shelf case studies, so that they can begin to use their training immediately.
16 Hours: Typically, Improving Performance is 16 hours, including three video labs.
Video Labs and Feedback: Each participant intensively practices their scenarios with the skilled facilitator. The practice is video-recorded and played back for skilled coaching and focused feedback. Each participant does three video-recorded practices, one for each conversation type. More than 2/3 of total workshop time is spent in these video labs.
12-20 Participants in Groups of 4: This program works best for 12-20 participants in groups of four, and we’ve found that 16 participants is the sweet spot.
4:1 Facilitator Ratio: Each lab group has four participants and one coach/facilitator, ensuring that each participant gets targeted, personalized feedback.
3 Key Conversation Types: Each video lab covers a different kind of coaching conversation—typically a conversation on setting goals and expectations, a progress check/preventive-maintenance conversation, and a performance-problem conversation. However, these types of conversations can be customized to your organization’s needs, in consultation with you, and integrated seamlessly into your organizational culture and existing management processes.
Offered In-Person and Virtually: We offer Improving Performance both in-person at the client’s location of choice and virtually via Zoom. We’ll work with you to weigh the advantages of each and help determine which makes most sense for your organization.
What’s Included
Prior to the workshop, we will survey participants’ direct reports anonymously on their managers’ behaviors. At the workshop, participants will receive the anonymous, aggregated results, plus the aggregated responses of their direct reports. This process provides a starting point for learning.
In addition to the 16 hours of training, participants receive all necessary training materials, including a training manual that will serve as a reference when they return to their jobs.
Participants also receive at least six months of access to our proprietary, app-based follow-up system to help them sustain and further develop skills they learned in the training. Pre- and post-program surveys are also included (more details below).
Sustained Results for Lasting Organizational Change
One of the reasons we promise such amazing results is that we track key metrics to ensure that our programs create sustained, measurable results for our clients:
Pre-Program Survey: Participants’ direct reports take pre-program surveys in which they offer valuable insight about their managers’ coaching, leading, and managing communication behaviors. This online survey provides baseline data regarding how participants’ direct reports perceive their behaviors, and helps us identify high-priority concepts and skills to focus on in the program.
Post-Program Survey: Participants’ direct reports are surveyed on their managers’ communications behaviors again 9-12 months after the training. Comparing the two surveys shows evidence of progress and sustainability of skills over time.
Reporting & Analysis: Each participant receives their individual results on both surveys, and senior management and HR business partners receive group summaries of results, along with our analysis.
Follow-Up: We follow up with participants periodically for 6 to 12 months after the program to refresh them on key concepts, help them identify opportunities to use those skills, and prompt them to reflect on their progress.
Get Started
Want to learn more about how Improving Performance can help your leaders and managers improve performance in their business unit?
Just fill out the form below to let us know, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!