Management Skill Training
Practice your strengths!
Management Skill Training
Practice your strengths!
Management skill training is fundamentally about practice: with practice comes performance. But is practicing and developing strengths a critical shortcut to achieving high performance?
We often associate performance with skill. For example, one definition of performance stresses that it’s about accomplishing something, and often to do so with great skill. Indeed management training should be about doing just that: accomplishing something with great skill.
Behind what we often perceive as effortless performance are hours and hours of practice. Yet practice frequently does not get the priority it deserves. So here are some thoughts based on an insightful quote from Peter Drucker:
“Those who perform love what they’re doing. Pianists have a wonderful expression I heard years ago: ‘I practice until I have my life in my fingers.”
This simple quotation hints at four important tips for management training. Use these to help you think differently about practice:
- Find out what you love doing and practice to get better at it!
- It’s far easier to practice things you are good at.
- Find your strengths and use them to make a contribution.
- Practice, practice, practice – and then perform!
You might like to think about some possible implications of applying some of the above tips:
- Put what you’re good at to good use – preferably in ways that contribute to things that are important to the organization.
- When someone performs, they are doing something worth watching – and learning from. Aspire to be good enough for others to learn from you!
- Apply these lessons on practice to yourself first. Then the real benefit of management skill training is to take what you have learned and teach it to those you manage.
If you are really intent on improving your management skills, you need to practice. Practice and then perform. That is: accomplish something with great skill!
As you can see, this can clearly work for business, but it can also be a perfect way to become better at many other things in your life too. Whether it’s beginning to play a guitar or taking a freediving course, the importance of practice applies as much to leisure as it does to work.
You can find out more about our approach to performance in the workplace in our article How to Motivate Employees to PERFORM. You may also be interested in our series on optimum performance.
Many performance management models have one crucial element missing: motivation. In Motivating Performance we have put motivation back at the heart of performance. In this resource you will find 10 practical tools covering each stage of the performance cycle, designed to help you start improving performance today.
Tools for management skill training
We’re aware that many managers find it helpful to review their own skills, particularly as managing performance is so central to effective management. With this in mind we’ve developed some excellent resources to help you with your performance management skills.
Manage Your Own Performance will help you develop the essential skills you’ll need to improve your own performance as a manager.
Or use another tool-packed guide to help you develop performance management skills. With five essential performance management skills for each stage of the performance management cycle, you can use it to assess your own strengths in each of the five areas:
- Cultivate your goal setting skills
- Improve your action planning
- Develop your coaching skills
- Provide feedback
- Assess performance
Applying our principles of performance management
If you’re interested in applying our principles of performance management turn to our fantastic e-guide bundle. Including a colossal 253 pages and 95 tools, it contains 8 key guides we recommend to help you manage better performance, at half price!
It’s All About Performance (24 pages, 4 diagnostic tools)
Managing Performance and Potential (26 pages, 4 tools)
Conducting a Performance Review (33 pages, 8 tools)
Manage Your Own Performance (28 pages, 6 tools)
Motivating Performance (37 pages, 10 tools)
Performance Management Skills (19 pages, 7 tools)
15 Performance Management Tips (20 pages, 15 tips)
Performance Management Toolkit (66 pages, 41 tools – divided into the seven steps of a performance management process).
