Our Management Training Courses

By introducing our Management Training courses to your staff we help ease the negative effect of change on both managerial and supervisory personnel. The change in job responsibilities, the change in personnel, job duties, and the rising challenge of developing subordinates are specific goals of our learning systems courses. We are highly successful at helping Managers and Supervisors learn and adapt to the necessary skills and proper behaviors to be successful at work as well as in their personal lives.

For more information on our management training courses please contact us.

As a part of our management training courses, Managers and Supervisors will learn how to:

• Minimize the chance of miscommunication by understanding what people are really saying, and why
• Deal with difficult people, manage tense situations, and resolve conflict
• Make use of proven active listening skills to improve your ability to gain helpful information
• Be able to facilitate, guide, and close discussions in one-on-one or group settings
• Improve understanding and communication by giving and receiving good feedback
• Use ideas submitted by a member of the team without causing other members to be defensive
• Develop a comprehensive team building strategy that improves productivity of the whole team
• Emphasize the value of working toward common goals without devaluing individual accomplishment
• Define and set up a method to track staff activities
• Be able to manage time and work assignments effectively
• Conduct team meetings that capture and hold the audience’s attention
• Interview and hire the right person for the right job
• Save time and work more effectively through the use of a clear time management plan
• Understand and comply with proper hiring and managing requirements
• Communicate effectively with both superiors, peers and subordinates
• Become effective coaches for their work team
• Conduct accurate and difficult performance appraisals

 

Too little time, too much to do. Does that adequately describe your CIO job? I don't know about you, but often is the time that I've looked with envy at my peers who are great project management multitaskers and wished that I could be more like them. It turns out that I was wishing for the wrong thing - project management multitaskers actually do a lousy job at just about everything.

The Study
Ruth Pennenaker reports that some researchers at Stanford University have just completed a groundbreaking study on people who multitask. You know who you are - you're talking on the phone even as you are answering emails and zipping off text messages on you iPhone all at the same time. Oh how I have so wanted to be you!

The researchers found that most persistent project management multitaskers actually performed badly in a variety of tasks that they were asked to do. As the researchers dove deeper to find out why the project management multitaskers were doing so badly, what they found was that they don't do a very good job of focusing on what they are trying to do. This also means that they are much more likely to get distracted while they are trying to perform a task. On top of all this, the study showed that they are actually weaker than non-multitaskers at shifting between tasks and organizing the information that they collect.

Results Of The Study
My favorite part of the study is where the researchers discovered that people who are always multitasking are actually worse at multitasking than those of us who ordinarily don't multitask!

When the study was started, the researchers started with the idea that project management multitaskers have some characteristic that makes them better at multitasking than regular folks. What they discovered is that multitaskers are just pretty much lousy at doing everything.

One of the researchers was quoted as saying "We kept looking for multitaskers' advantages in this study. But we kept finding only disadvantages. We thought project management multitaskers were very much in control of information. It turns out, they were just getting it all confused."

However, doesn't it LOOK like multitaskers are always busy? Shouldn't that mean that they must be getting more done than the rest of us who just can't do that much all at the same time? It turns out that high project management multitaskers are "suckers for irrelevancy". Simply put, sure they are doing things, but what they are working on more often than not really doesn't matter.

A Personal Multitasking (Failure) Story
I firmly fall into the "not a good multitasker" camp and I should know it. However, every once in awhile I try my hand at multitasking, generally with disastrous results. Allow me to share my most recent story:

I was late for a doctor's appointment and yet I had a conference call that I needed to participate in (not just listen to). I jumped into the car, programmed the Garmin GPS system with the doctor's office address, stuck my Blackberry headset in my ear, and set the Garmin on "mute" so that it wouldn't interfere with my conference call.

As I hurtled down the highway in the far left lane at about 70 mph jabbering away in an animated conversation on the conference call, I happened to look over at the Garmin and noticed that it was signaling that I needed to be taking the exit that I was just about to pass by (remember that I had been smart enough to mute it so I had no warning). Oh, oh.

A non-multitasking person would have realized that (1) I had already gone too far past the exit to make it, (2) I was in the wrong lane to try to make the exit, (3) I was going too fast to make the exit. In my multitasking state, I realized none of this and I attempted to go for it.

I didn't make it. I was going to fast and I was too far past the exit to have ever had any chance of making it. What I ended up doing was plowing headfirst into the aluminum guardrails which were anchored to solid 4"x4" chunks of wood. I probably hit them going a good 40 mph despite having tried to stand on the breaks once I realized what was going to happen.

Thanks to seatbelts and airbags, I walked away without a scratch. However, the car was a total loss. Oh, and I got a $100+ ticket from the police for basically being a bad driver. I say once again - I can't multitask!

Final Thoughts
CIOs who multitask will perform at a lower level than those who focus on one task at a time. Although this seems to fly in the face of everything that we've seen in our workplace (don't multitaskers get all of the promotions?), you can't argue with research results.

Should you try to convince your friends and peers who are project management multitaskers to stop doing it because it just doesn't work? No. The core of the problem is that not only do multitaskers think they're great at what they do; they've also convinced everybody else they're good at it too.

Ultimately those of us who are not project management multitaskers will be able to show better results for how we've spent our time. If we can make sure that the rules of the game that we're playing are all about results and not appearances, then the non-multitaskers will win every time.

CIOs who can focus on one task at a time and do it well instead of trying to do multiple tasks at the same time poorly will be better at finding ways to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Dr. Jim Anderson Speaks, Trains, Coaches, and Provides Consulting To Help People Become Great Product Managers

Subject: Project Management

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