MG84
Course Contents
Module 1 - Mastering People Management & Team Leadership
Session 1 - Understanding Own Role
Key Topics
- Leader or manager? Why does it matter?
- Self-perception
- Emotional Intelligence and its role in leadership
- Balancing conflicting stakeholder demands
- Linking management to strategy
Session 2 - Personal Effectiveness, Time Management and Delegation
Key Topics
- Understanding yourself and your organisational environment
- Outcome orientation
- Setting personal and team objectives
- Finding and using time effectively
- A model for effective delegation
Session 3 - Managing People
Key Topics
- Motivation and reward: busting the myths
- Attracting and retaining talent
- Talent management
- Performance frameworks
- Dealing with disciplinary issues
Session 4 - Building and Motivating Your Team
Key Topics
- How high-performing teams work
- Identifying team roles
- Teams in practice: teambuilding exercise
- Building and sharing a vision for the team
- Different approaches to leadership
Session 5 - Enhancing Team Performance through Coaching & Development
Key Topics
- Coaching for personal and team growth
- Feedback skills
- Linking delegation and development
- Development planning
- Next steps
Module 2 – Brainstorming, Creative Thinking, Innovation and Problem Solving
Session 6- The Anatomy of Brainstorming
On Day Six we look at the necessary components and principles of brainstorming and creativity
Key Topics
- Defining brainstorming and problem solving – what is and what it is not
- Idea conception to tangible execution – de Bono’s influence
- Where do all great ideas come from and mostly end up?
- Where creative thinking can be applied in the workplace
- What are managerial problems, process problems, people problems?
- Problem types, conditions and urgency
- Managers as problem solvers vs. decision makers
Session 7- Applying Brainstorming
On Day Seven we look at how to apply brainstorming and problem solving everyday
Key Topics
- Using the distinct types of mental skill used in brainstorming and creativity: analytical and creative
- Challenging assumptions and overcoming the barriers to creative brainstorming in various situations
- The habits and stages used by creative brainstormers and innovators
- Learning how creative brainstorming works and identifying/understanding the creativity in others
- Problem types and generating alternatives to these using the top five brainstorming techniques used in business today
- Creating options and choosing the most suitable course of action for each problem
Session 8- Innovative Problem Solving
On Day Eight we look at using innovation and problem solving everyday
Key Topics
- Problem-solving skill elements:
- fluency – producing many ideas
- flexibility – producing a broad range of ideas
- originality – producing uncommon ideas
- elaboration – developing ideas.
- Applying Brainstorming and Problem-Solving Strategies (from amongst the following)
- Abstraction: solving the problem in a model of the system before applying it to the real system
- Analogy: using a solution that solves an analogous problem
- Brainstorming: (especially among groups of people) suggesting a large number of solutions or ideas and combining and developing them until an optimum is found
- Divide and conquer: breaking down a large, complex problem into smaller, solvable problems
- Hypothesis testing: assuming a possible explanation to the problem and trying to prove (or, in some contexts, disprove) the assumption
- Lateral thinking: approaching solutions indirectly and creatively.
- Means-ends analysis: choosing an action at each step to move closer to the goal
- Method of focal objects: synthesizing seemingly non-matching characteristics of different objects into something new
- Morphological analysis: assessing the output and interactions of an entire system
- Proof: try to prove that the problem cannot be solved. The point where the proof fails will be the starting point for solving it
- Reduction: transforming the problem into another problem for which solutions exist
- Research: employing existing ideas or adapting existing solutions to similar problems
- Root cause analysis: identifying the cause of a problem
- Trial-and-error: testing possible solutions until the right one is found
Session 9 - Unleashing the Innovative Genius Inside You and Others
On Day Nine we look at practicing personal innovation
Key Topics
- Generating alternatives and evaluation them: Creative thinking game (traffic jam)
- Eight Disciplines Problem Solving
- GROW model
- How to solve it
- KEPNER and FOURIE Incident and Problem Investigation
- Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Making
- PDCA (plan-do-check-act)
- Productive Thinking Model
- RPR Problem Diagnosis (rapid problem resolution)
- Thinking Dimensions – Problem Solving
- Using creative thinking to influence my entire environment
- Using creative thinking in applying organizational and departmental strategy
- How to spot creative talent in others
Session 10 - Approaches to Decision Making and Activating Creativity/Brainstorming
On Day Ten we look at practicing problem solving and decision making.
Key Topics
- Problem solving and decisions (and the process for implementing creative ideas)
- How to make decisions
- Case Study: Using the problem-solving tools
- Plan-Define problem and process
- Plan-Identify possible causes and select the most likely
- Plan-Identify possible solutions and select the best one(s)
- Do-Develop action plan
- Check-Implement plan
