Unleash your potential

Essential Management Skills

Enable your transition to a management role

Overview

This program is essential for new and developing managers who wish to acquire best practices for success in managing people and handling on-the-job challenges. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of what makes an effective manager, from developing positive relationships or exercising team leadership and motivating people to setting performance expectations and coaching staff to empower growth.

This flagship course boasts thousands of graduates and is a compulsory training step for recently appointed managers in many organizations.

Key Benefits and Takeaways

  • Develop a broad understanding of managerial concepts, techniques, and decision-making skills
  • Practice implementing the key functions of a manager through hands-on exercises
  • Increase your ability to motivate and engage others
  • Examine proven tools to set and manage performance expectations
  • Learn to build and maintain effective collaboration and teamwork
  • Discover ways to work through difficult conversations and discipline issues

Topics covered in this course

  • Program introduction
  • Role of management
  • Transition from doing to managing
  • Leadership – opportunities for future growth
  • Workplace trends and challenges facing managers
  • Define the principles of effective communication
  • Communicate with diplomacy, tact, and credibility
  • Identify and flex your communication style (self-assessment)
  • Apply effective communication strategies and techniques
  • Identify the needs of a diverse workforce
  • Understand factors that influence retention and increase engagement
  • Apply effective talent management strategies on a multi-generational level
  • Share best practices of innovative and productive workplaces
  • Create relationships based on trust, collaboration, and accountability
  • Guide individuals to work toward a common goal
  • Deal with barriers to effective teamwork
  • Help your teams to become self- directed and autonomous
  • Evaluate team performance
  • Plan for performance
  • Align objectives with your company’s business goals
  • Establish performance standards
  • Develop performance objectives and work plans
  • Monitor and review results
  • Provide feedback
  • Diagnose and deal with performance gaps; take corrective action
  • Technologies for giving and receiving feedback
  • Interacting with a diverse and dispersed workforce

Course Leaders

headshot of Jane Reichman Van Toch

Jane Reichman Van Toch

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Jane Reichman Van Toch

Jane Reichman Van Toch is a specialist in strengthening individual, team and organizational performance. She began her career as a practicing lawyer in the private sector, later transitioning to the role of educator/consultant in the areas of organizational effectiveness, leadership and emotional intelligence. She came to McGill University in 2010 as Senior Advisor - Organizational Development and Talent Management, later joining the McGill Executive Institute faculty. Jane holds two Bachelor of Law degrees from McGill and a Masters in Human Systems Intervention (Organizational Development) from Concordia.

headshot of Chantal Westgate

Chantal Westgate

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Chantal Westgate

Chantal Westgate is a professor of organization behaviour at McGill University and specializes in human resources issues and labour management relations. She regularly consults with organizations from diverse industries on effective business communication and team collaboration. Prior to her academic career, she worked for 14 years at FedEx as an Employee Relations Advisor, where she consulted with management on Best People Practices.

 

headshot of Miriam Carver

Miriam Carver

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Miriam Carver

As a faculty member of the McGill Executive Institute and lecturer in the Desautels Faculty of Management, Miriam Carver’s areas of expertise include leadership development, conflict resolution, negotiation skills, building teams, customer service, executive coaching, and emotional intelligence. She consults with a wide variety of organizations in diverse sectors, from manufacturing and telecommunications to government and healthcare. She holds a Master’s in Education (Counselling Psychology) from McGill University and has completed additional graduate work in Organizational Development and Conflict Resolution.