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.
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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.



