Leadership: New Manager Training for Technical Professionals

Define what a technical professional is, highlighting their roles across disciplines and how they transform ideas into products and processes to deliver faster, better, cheaper outcomes.

Develop alliances as a manager by building mutually beneficial relationships and boosting morale across teams. Position yourself to foster partnerships that benefit everyone, while maintaining open communication despite personality differences.

Learn practical techniques to avoid workplace pitfalls and build strong managerial skills, including clear communication, active listening, honesty, empathy, delegation, obstacle removal, and project management.

Discover why technical professionals fail as managers, including poor people skills, poor communication skills, lack of training, ineffective delegation, and difficulty shifting from details to people.

Establish authority through earned respect, not fear, by setting clear expectations and firm consequences. Communicate what is acceptable, deliver warnings consistently, and coordinate with HR to ensure policies are followed.

Assist new managers in navigating company culture by listening, observing, and aligning changes with mission and values, while involving employees, maintaining open communication, and building accountability and trust.

Explore 21st century tools to access, integrate, manage, evaluate, create, and communicate information as a new manager, while developing critical, creative, and systematic thinking and digital communication skills.

Explore how a high-tech business environment blends informal structures with technology-driven processes to transform resources into products, while managing uncontrollable events and pressures from vendors, federal regulations, and management.

Meet the players in Acme's training department as Melanie, Tony, and Ron illustrate how technical professionals contribute to completing e-learning projects on time, on budget, and on schedule.

Explore remote offices and virtual teams, and the trends shaping a high-tech workforce balancing home and work life, with flexible schedules enabled by technology.

Explore factors driving job satisfaction for technical professionals, including flexibility, optimism, being outgoing, being open to changes, customer service, confidence, personal strength, and teamwork.

Build credibility as a manager by leveraging education, trust, and people skills. Mentor technical professionals with seniority by applying planning, organizing, leading, and controlling to align teams and objectives.

Explore four organizational cultures and how they attract technical professionals through employment security, performance criteria, flexible benefits, generous compensation, and career development strategies.

Lead a motivational e-learning usability project by coordinating functional tests, remote testers, and curriculum feedback within the learning management system, while providing continuous feedback and clear autonomy to technical professionals.

Define specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals through management by objectives, leveraging feedback and shared goals to boost performance, focus, endurance, and professional growth.

Cultivate a culture that values technical professionals, recognizes achievements with praise, and offers development opportunities and non-monetary rewards to turn a job into a career.

Develop a high-performing, cross-functional team with full authority to rapidly design an online assessment for sales readiness, featuring quick decision-making, clear roles, and a four-week timeline.

Forge a joint venture between technical professionals, managers, and companies to drive dynamic career development, opportunities, work-life balance, and job security.

Define a team as a group united toward a common goal, despite diverse opinions and backgrounds; a manager assigns tasks, supports members, and helps adapt across departments toward goals.

Learn how to delegate effectively using smart objectives—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely—to prepare employees for success and ensure clear responsibilities and deadlines.

Assess task suitability before delegation; avoid tasks requiring personal responsibility, then delegate minor staffing matters, daily responsibilities, routine questions, and promotional duties when appropriate.

Prepare thoroughly, know what you'll say and how, deliver a current, informative presentation with clear visuals, then share an agenda, be on time, focused, and fair.

Select appropriate channels to prevent barriers in spoken communication. Encode the message for the audience, account for cultural differences and missing information, and invite feedback.

Explore five new media communication modes—verbal, visual, musical, cinematic, and procedural—and learn how managers use journalism, storytelling, graphics, music, and computational thinking to communicate effectively for projects.

Managers facing a tight deadline and looming performance review must communicate with grace, address concerns, and follow up to prevent miscommunication and fear.

Strengthen organizational skills to improve time management and stress management for new managers. Learn to delegate, prioritize, monitor work, and recognize signs of disorganization to prevent burnout and costly errors.

Shift to continuous performance management replaces annual reviews, using software to consolidate data, measure progress against strategic goals, and boost productivity, capability, and communication between employees and managers.

Foster employee confidence by aligning expectations, ensuring thorough training, and supporting growth through mentoring, clear communication, regular check-ins, and realistic role fit.

New managers balance promotion-driven skills with increased responsibilities, learning to apply proven abilities to each new assignment to create a formula for success.

Explore how SWOT analysis helps executives identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to shape corporate strategy and improve performance.

Apply the step analysis to evaluate social, technological, economic, and political factors shaping the macro environment and guide strategic decisions.

Set clear goals, communicate expectations, and provide feedback to boost team performance. Learn to measure performance with effectiveness, efficiency, and economy, and align outcomes with company goals.

Resolve conflicts in the workplace to spur innovation when managed well. Apply resolution methods such as smoothing, avoiding, compromising, collaboration (win-win), and forcing to fit the situation.