Governance: Critical Issues for Executives and Boards

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the 12 principles of governance
• Understand the accountability and legal requirements of boards, including Sarbanes-Oxley and the Internal Revenue Service
• Discuss changing roles and responsibilities of high performing boards
• Explore best practice and changing practices that help ensure and protect the integrity of an NPA
• Share governance challenges with experts and colleagues

Purpose:

Governance is one of the hottest topics in both the corporate and nonprofit worlds today. The general public, legislators, and stakeholders are viewing organizational leadership and governance with a skeptical eye. AbilityOne producing NPAs are not immune from the concerns of the community at large about organizational performance, integrity, and service toward mission.

NISH is pleased to partner with BoardSource, one of the country's leading experts in nonprofit governance, to offer this exciting and essential new program. This course focuses on sharing governance best practices that are critical for executives and their boards of directors. The book The Source: Twelve Principles of Governance that Power Exceptional Boards (BoardSource) and cutting-edge practices provide the foundation for this program.

Audience:

This two-day course is designed for executives and boards of directors' members.

Format:

This course provides classroom-based instruction and opportunities for discussion about current governance issues and best practices.

Instructor:

Michael Daigneault is a Senior Governance Consultant for BoardSource. Michael is a thoughtful, highly respected, and experienced consultant, facilitator, trainer, and advisor. He is frequently asked to counsel sophisticated nonprofit boards, CEOs, and governance committees concerning vital governance, leadership, ethics, and strategic issues. He is a three-time graduate of Georgetown University (GU) and was the first graduate from the GU Law Center with a concentration in legal ethics and professional responsibility.

Improving Leadership and Management Effectiveness

Learning Objectives:

• Develop a personal management style through the administration of a variety of leadership effectiveness instruments
• Apply skills critical to executive effectiveness and competencies essential for leading an organization in the 21st century
• Better capitalize on assets, maximize personal impact and influence others
  
• Incorporate five types of effectiveness: leadership, personal, interpersonal, operational and organizational
• Develop skills and formulate practical objectives and plans to turn into action plans to take home
• Address many of the most current issues and challenges facing businesses
• Learn about leadership best practices and cutting edge methodologies that help organizations and leaders be successful in today's environment
• Apply various tools and models to the leadership of the organization
• Address some of the common questions shared by leaders today, including how to motivate staff, lead organizations and remain competitive

Purpose:

NPA executives face a variety of challenges in managing and leading their organizations. NISH continues to address these challenges through its partnership with the American Management Association (AMA) by offering one course that combines two of the AMA's most popular executive development programs. Whether dealing with the day-to-day issues or future planning, executives must remain focused, knowledgeable, confident, and competitive. In this course, participants discover ways to help transform managerial talents into dynamic leadership abilities, heighten self-awareness, and face today's challenges while increasing leadership, interpersonal, and operational and organizational effectiveness. Course content is ever-changing as is leadership itself and introduces cutting-edge best practices.

Topics include:

• Leadership Competencies and Effectiveness
• Improving Motivation, Communications and Productivity
• Operational, Visionary and Transformational Leadership
• Visionary and Strategic Thinking, Planning and the Learning in the Organization
• Transforming the Organization and Managing Change
• Flexing Your Style for Improved Results
• Review of the Practices of Today's Most Effective Leaders

Audience:

This course is valuable for CEOs and COOs, boards of directors' members and other executive level staff members who wish to strengthen their leadership skills. The course focuses on overall management effectiveness rather than specific supervisory issues.

Format:

This three-day course includes lecture, small group exercises, and self-assessment through the administration of various leadership inventories. All American Management Association (AMA) seminar facilitators use the adult learning model, which emphasizes experiential earning with role-plays, case studies, and exercises. Instead of lectures, AMA facilitators use "lecturettes" to maximize time for participation.

Instructor:

Curt Russell is a Consultant to business and industry, specializing in programs that strengthen managerial effectiveness and leadership techniques. Russell has worked on productivity, quality, and customer service improvement, executive team-building, and specific skill-building efforts. His clientele include TWA, Price Waterhouse, PaineWebber, Chrysler, Brooks Brothers and the U.S. Postal Service.

Improving People Performance and Results

Learning Objectives:

• Optimize on-the-job performance on a day-to-day basis
• Use a systems model to identify areas that need improvement
• Identify multiple causes and factors that may affect worker performance
• Learn how clear expectations, processes, training, consequences and feedback can ensure effective performance
• Understand what motivates people
• Understand the critical components of effective feedback
• Learn how to achieve consistency of performance, even with people who are not direct reports

Purpose:

A key role of managers and supervisors is to establish a work environment that will encourage high performance by people. Managers understand that they need to remove barriers that get in the way and provide positive consequences for exemplary behavior. This course provides a framework for analyzing the possible causes of a breakdown in performance and choosing the highest priority actions to get back on track. In addition, this model can be used to design an approach to ensure the smooth implementation of a new behavior or requirement.

Audience:

This course is appropriate for managers, supervisors, HR professionals and anyone whose job responsibilities include management of the performance of others.

Format:

This two-day training class consists of classroom instruction, group and individual work on case studies, and application to participant real-life people performance issues.

Instructor:

Polly Wessel has more than 15 years of experience in Strategic Planning, Quality and Performance Management, and has been a frequent speaker at the International Society for Performance Improvement. She has been recognized by the American Society for Quality as a Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence, and by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional. As a former NISH regional quality manager, Wessel brings her JWOD knowledge and her experiences as a trainer and performance consultant to the classroom.

Leadership: Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results

Learning Objectives:

• Create a vision of what it means to be a great leader and a renewed desire to get there
• Understand the radically new paradigm for leading in the Knowledge Worker Age
• Adopt a powerful new framework for solving chronic leadership problems
• Apply values, principles and competence in leadership
• Learn and apply practical leadership skills and 17 new tools that can be used immediately
• Create a “take-away” data-based six-month action plan to get started on actual work-related results and the “Opportunity for Greatness” that each participant is responsible for achieving

Purpose:

NISH collaborates with Franklin-Covey to bring Stephen Covey's most up-to-date Leadership training to the AbilityOne community. The course offers proven leadership strategies to help businesses build strong, focused, and loyal teams; loyal customers; and great leaders.

The course teaches participants how to move beyond the "manager" mentality and take on the role of leader as they improve their strategic thinking, long-term vision, and positive influence on others. This course is resultsbased training at its best and is based, in part, on Covey's latest book, The 8th Habit. It also includes some of the most recent ideas from other thought leaders, including Jack Welch, Clayton Christensen, Ram Charan, and Fred Reichheld. Participants will develop the "Mind-set," "Skill-set", and "Tool-set" necessary to unleash the talent and capability of their teams to achieve their highest priorities.

"Leadership: Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results" demonstrates what it takes to be a standout leader in today's workplace. It introduces participants to four distinctly different, yet inter-connected, "Imperatives" of modern-day leadership. Also included is an online Leadership Quotient (LQ), a selfadministered 12-question confidential survey (taken once prior to the workshop and once 3 to 6 months after the workshop). The survey provides participants with their own confidential feedback reports on topics including the categories of "Self," "Direct Reports," "Boss", and "Others" from up to 30 individuals.

"Self-administered" means the participants select who they get feedback from, print out the final report, and bring it to the workshop with them. It is completely confidential and seen only by the participant.

Audience:

This course is valuable for CEOs, executives, mid-level managers, boards of directors members, and leaders at all levels. Organizations that want leaders who can create strategic clarity and systems alignment will benefit from sending their top management teams. It is not intended to be a management training course for new supervisors or managers.

Format:

This three-day course combines a lively mix of lecture, videos, facilitator-led discussion, experience sharing, and group and individual exercises. Participants are encouraged to come with their own "Opportunity for Greatness" and specific results they would like to achieve over 3 to 12 months. The course provides the tools to apply what is learned directly to real-world leadership responsibilities. Participants are given access to a Web-based leadership resource site to formulate a 6-month action plan to apply what they have learned.

Instructor:

Jeff Cleary, a professional trainer with the Franklin-Covey Leadership Center, has taught many seminars throughout the last 15 years to individuals, managers and leaders in all types of organizations. He has taught for NISH for more than eight years. His specialty is teaching the programs as designed, and illustrating how to apply the concepts with examples from his professional and personal life.

Schedule:

Management: From Focus to Execution

Learning Objectives:

• Develop stronger, more rewarding relationships
• Discover how to communicate and delegate in ways that lead to fair and positive outcomes
• Learn valuable team-building skills Inspire and engage team members in the process of identifying and achieving organizational goals
• Learn how to narrow down to the number of truly important goals and focus on the absolutely critical ones
• Understand how to identify and measure the high leverage activities and behaviors required to achieve your most important goals
• Understand how to apply a proven process for successfully executing team goals

Purpose:

Two Franklin-Covey programs, "The 7 Habits for Managers" and "Four Disciplines of Execution," have been blended into one customized two-day management course. The course is designed to help managers achieve sustained superior performance.

Based on the 7 Habits Principles that have shaped the thinking and actions of many of America's most successful leaders and companies, and incorporating the best thinking from Covey's latest book, The 8th Habit. The course provides a framework for managers to direct their objectives and lead their teams more effectively.

In addition to strengthening critical management and team-building skills, the course highlights strategies that allow managers to unleash the potential of their employees. More specifically, a proven process to execute the organization's key goals, tasks, and responsibilities is addressed. Several new tools are provided that help managers focus and execute what is "wildly important", including building measures, translating goals into action, and implementing a team accountability process for sustained superior performance.

Participants will benefit by learning how to:

• Build real trust as a manager—the kind that both lasts and ensures people are solidly supportive
• Respond when resources are lacking
• Clarify the unique contribution they want to make
• Create performance agreements to which employees hold themselves accountable
• Provide meaningful feedback to bring out the best in employees
• Increase team or workgroup productivity by increasing their focus on key goals and building effective scoreboards
• Unleash potential so teams can succeed

Audience:

Format:

This two-day course combines lecture, group discussion and exercises while it exposes participants to tools and frameworks they can take home and use immediately.

Instructor:

Jeff Cleary, a professional trainer with the Franklin-Covey Leadership Center, has taught many seminars throughout the last 15 years to individuals, managers and leaders in all types of organizations. He has taught for NISH for more than eight years. His specialty is teaching the programs as designed, and illustrating how to apply the concepts with examples from his professional and personal life.

Management Skills for Supervisors

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how to succeed as a supervisor
• Fill participant communications tool boxes with skills that will enhance communications
• Learn how to motivate, delegate and coach for high performance
• Understand how to conduct performance appraisals more effectively
• Hear how to manage time and meetings, and define manager roles
• Define ways to employ emotional intelligence to bring maturity and confidence to the job and to relationships

Purpose:

NISH partners with the American Management Association (AMA) to bring this landmark course to managers and supervisors. It focuses on creating a solid foundation that provides supervisors with the basic knowledge and confidence to succeed. Many of the primary tasks of management are discussed, including planning, organizing, communicating, and monitoring. More specifically, this course examines four supervisory functions: managing people, managing processes, managing relationships, and managing oneself.

Audience:

This course is designed for emerging leaders, new supervisors, and managers without formal management training. Front-line supervisors and middle-managers will gain the most from this training.

Format:

This three-day course incorporates lecture along with individual and group exercises. All American Management Association (AMA) seminar facilitators use the adult learning model, which emphasizes experiential learning with role-plays, case studies, and exercises. Instead of lectures, AMA facilitators use "lecturettes" to maximize time for participation.

Instructor:

David Melvin, an instructor for AMA and the founder of Development Matters, a training and consulting firm that serves clients nationally and internationally, teaches this course. His company specializes in coaching individuals and teams by identifying the challenges they face in changing times, from mission through deliverables, and providing creative and effective solutions to those challenges.

Positioning Your Organization to Deliver High Customer Value

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze best practices from leading NPAs
• Understand the importance of viewing value from the customers’ perspective
• Adopt a needs-based approach to selling customers and serving employees
• Explore the links between the creation of value for customers, the delivery of value to clients and the capture of value by a NPA on behalf of its community
• Understand how frameworks such as “strategic positioning”, “industry attractiveness”, “customer selection”, and
  “cross-selling” can help a NPA fulfill its mission

Purpose:

This course is designed for NPAs that are serious about increasing the value they deliver to their Government customers. Through the examination of best practices in the NPA community, the nonprofit world, and for-profit organizations, participants move through a process that includes:

• Balancing the fulfillment of mission and the need for financial stability
• Forming a strategy (rather than having customers form one) that uses industry analysis (What products/ services do we want to deliver?) and examines capabilities (What are our strengths and weaknesses?)
• Examining value from the customers' perspectives and delivering that value from a needs-based perspective
• Exploring best practices in how value is delivered to customers

This course enables managers to explore how their customers see value and links that value to the fundamentals of organizational strategy. Evidence from the NPA community demonstrates that by aligning effective customer value creation with good organizational strategy, NPAs can create more value for their clients (in the forms of more and better jobs) and generate a surplus, which they can reinvest in their communities.

Audience:

Executives, senior managers, and those being groomed for senior management will find this course valuable. Board members are also welcome and encouraged to attend with their senior management teams. This course combines and deepens the study of best practices previously discussed in the course "Positioning Your Organization to Deliver High Customer Value."

Format:

The three-day course combines "real-world" proven frameworks with examples of successful organizations (including case studies) and application exercises. This combination ensures that the concepts and examples are brought "down to earth" so that they are applied to the unique situations of each participant's NPA.

Instructor:

Roger Hallowell has worked with NISH for seven years and has written three detailed case studies on leading NPAs and developing relationships in both the NPA and Government customer communities. A former Harvard Business School Professor, he now focuses exclusively on executive development with the Center for Executive Development.

Schedule:

Process Based Leadership: Creating and Sustaining High Performance

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the state of leadership today and barriers to effective leadership
• Understand how to drive quality throughout the organization
• Learn how to develop and sustain a high performance culture
• Learn about the required non-negotiable processes:
• Home Team Deployment
• Communication Systems
• Business Focus Systems - Scorecards
• Accountability Systems
• Behavioral/Performance systems
• Business Handbook Process

Purpose:

Today, many organizations have no sense of urgency; no clear, concise business focus; and no shared accountability throughout the organization. Process Based Leadership is a series of actions or steps to bring about a consistent result. Leaders must develop systems that give the organization habit, discipline, and structure to thereby drive consistency and focus. Process Based Leadership provides the strategy and a roadmap for creating and sustaining a sense of urgency, a clear and concise business focus and accountability system, and an effective communication strategy to increase communication and trust in an organization.

Audience:

This course is valuable for CEOs and other executive level staff. Quality managers may also find it useful. The ultimate benefit may be achieved when executive teams attend together.

Format:

This two-day course combines lecture and classroom exercises.

Instructor:

Shane Yount, Senior Partner, Competitive Solutions, Inc., teaches this course. Yount brings his experience in management and quality as he blends a humorous and no-nonsense approach in delivering this program. Competitive Solutions offers employee training and management services designed to help companies successfully improve their business, increase employee morale, and make lasting improvements on productivity levels. Competitive Solutions works with a variety of organizations, such as: Harley-Davidson, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, NISH North Central Region, Michelin, Rock Island Arsenal, Corpus Christi Army Depot, GlaxoSmithKline.

Schedule:

Situational Leadership®

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the concept of leadership and its importance to effective performance
• Improve workforce commitment
• Increase the probabilities for success for both leaders and staff
• State that the organization invests in the professional development of its leaders

Purpose:

The Center for Leadership Studies presents Situational Leadership®: The Core. "The Core" represents the center, a foundation, a nucleus from which leaders can drive proper action. This course provides managers with a complete understanding of Situational Leadership® concepts and the use of the model. It is taught with emphasis on diagnosing situations and practical applications.

Three key concepts are examined: Understanding the Performance of Others, Assessing Criteria for Performance, and Leader Behavior. The course begins by defining leadership: "Leadership is the attempt to influence. Effective leadership is adapting your behavior to the performance needs of the individual or group." The three main components of leadership in this model (diagnosing, adapting, and communicating) are discussed. Second, diagnosing individual or group needs is critical. Understanding their ability and willingness to perform effectively are key concepts presented in this module. Leader Behavior focuses on two components of leadership style: task and relationship behavior. Use of the LEAD (Leadership Effectiveness Adaptability Description) self-instrument assists participants in understanding their primary leadership style.

Audience:

This course is designed with the manager and supervisor in mind. New managers and emerging leaders will find this course extremely valuable in building a foundation for leading others.

Format:

This two-day course combines classroom lecture, discussion and hands-on application.

Instructors:

Barry Youngblood is vice president of Training at the Center for Leadership Studies. He has more than 28 years of experience in training and consulting. Youngblood makes the connection between theories and day-to-day issues using the Situational Leadership® Model. His style, wit and knowledge continue to receive outstanding reviews from audiences. He has a unique ability to view management and training objectively and analytically. These traits have provided him with the flexibility to work with everyone from senior management of large corporations to front-line employees of small businesses

Schedule:

Succession Planning for Executives and Boards

Learning Objectives:

• Learn what succession planning is and how to develop and implement a systematic program
• Learn how to identify and develop high potential employees
• Learn how to determine if an organization is "ready" for succession efforts
• Learn the key elements and best practices in succession
• Learn what is needed for succession planning success

Purpose:

According to the leading author, John Maxwell, "When all is said and done, your ability as a leader will not be judged as a leader as to what you have achieved personally or even what your team accomplished during your tenure. You will be judged by how well your people and your organization did after you are gone. You will be judged according to the Law of Legacy. Your lasting value will be measured by succession."

Over the next decade, a significant number of NPA executives are expected to retire. Most organizations are not adequately addressing succession or implementing succession planning efforts. This course will provide hands-on instruction on how best to address succession in your Community Rehabilitation Program (CRP).

Audience:

Executives, boards of directors' members and human resources professionals will find the program invaluable.

Format:

The two-day program includes lecture, discussion, and ample time for questions and answers.

Instructors:

David Berke is a principal at Lorsch, Berke and Associates, a firm that specializes in succession, talent management, and leadership development. David has worked in both large and small organizations and in for-profits and not-for-profits.

He previously held a position for 13 years as Senior Faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) focusing on assessment, design, and implementation of customer-specific initiatives.

Prior to that, David designed and led management, leadership, and organization development activities in several industries including aerospace, health care, and public utilities. This included a large-scale culture change effort at a Fortune 200 company. He has worked in the U.S., Asia, and Europe.

Scheudle:

(571) 226-4660