First Time Managers
The Tayvis Clothing Company has had incredible growth the last few years. During their rapid growth, they promoted 10 high-performing employees to managers. After end-of-year reviews, leadership determined that about half of these 1st-time managers were losing employees at a much higher rate than other managers. Exit interviews indicated managers had poor communication, were unresponsive, highly distracted, and unable to handle inter-team conflict. That's when they called me.
We established the goal of increasing employee retention and designing clear management training,
I talked to their leadership team to determine what skills gaps need to be addressed to help these managers. I then met with each identified manager to assess what skill gaps they identified for themselves. Finally, I met with the SMEs (top-performing managers). Using Mindmeister to help brainstorm and organize, I sorted the skills into 2 major branches; soft skills and people management skills.
Next, the leadership team, SMEs and I worked to determine what activities would be best to turn into e-learning story-based trainings, co-hort discussion sessions, or one-on-one mentoring with seasoned managers.
The following is the strategic framework we agreed to implement for all 1st time managers. Some portions are still in development.
After the approval of the action map, I set forth drafting a storyboard for our first e-learning course on "Active Listening"
Story Board
Through our discussion about e-learning formats, everyone agreed that participants needed to be able to explore consequences of incorrect choices in a risk free environment. Therefore, an interactive, story based format with a "mentor" will be used throughout all trainings for Tayvis managers.