The New Manager / Key Colleague Coaching Program is all about helping key leaders and their teams to maximize performance as they assume their new roles.

We will help those we work with to:

• Assess strengths and areas needing development
• Make the most of their style and preferences to achieve business results
• Gain insight into potential barriers to meeting the challenges of their new roles
• Formulate and execute actions calculated to produce desired results

Coaching is, at its heart, all about dialogue; goal setting; feedback; advice, and encouragement. Coaching is not conceptual in nature. Instead, it is very much “hands on”, immediate, and focused on specific business needs and development issues. Individuals or groups who are “well coached” develop increased capability over the course of time. In this particular coaching program, while we will assist our clients in looking toward longer-term goal achievement, we will focus most sharply on addressing specific short-term critical business tasks and assimilating the new leader into his / her role.

The Process:

• Self-Assessment via online tools
• Feedback and interpretation of self-assessment reports
• Understanding of, and planning for, short-term business challenges
• Creation of a Personal Action Plan (PACT)

As a new leader, others’ expectations of you will have changed. They will observe how you do what you do, so you must ‘walk the talk’. As you assume leadership responsibility, it is critical that you:

• Are able to honestly assess your capabilities and areas in need of development
• Acquire a thorough understanding of the situation you are being asked to manage, including your specific role, the make-up of the team reporting to you, and the critical business issues you face
• Develop a network of working relationships

The New Manager / Key Colleague Coaching Program uses three web-based questionnaires to provide participants with facts about what motivates them, information about their personalities, and data concerning their modes of resolving conflict. In addition, we will use state-of-the art business tools to help you understand the short-term challenges that need to be identified and overcome.

Viewed as a package, these questionnaires and tools, in addition to conversations with the participant and others, will enable your Wolf Management coach to provide each person with a substantial amount of feedback about their potential strengths and weaknesses, and enable the creation of specific plans of action.

The Questionnaires:

Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential (MAPP™)

MAPP™ is a robust 21st century instrument used by an individual to support growth in a personal and/or professional environment by clearly identifying unique potential. Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential helps to identify personal motivations in several categories, including temperament, aptitude and learning style. The results can guide individuals on a career or personal path, or validate one they are already on. The assessment identifies characteristics that help to indicate a strong motivation to do, or avoid doing, certain things. For example, an individual may be capable of something, but if she / he hates it, and if it were a significant part of her / his daily responsibilities, it might undermine strengths and become a liability.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)

The questionnaire is the most widely used personality inventory in the world and provides an accurate picture of an individual’s “personality type”. The MBTI® measures personality in four major dimensions:

• Extraversion – Introversion (describes where people prefer to focus their attention and get their energy — from the outer world of people and activity, or their inner world of ideas and experiences)
• Sensing – Intuition (describes how people prefer to take in information — focused on what is real and actual, or on patterns and meanings in data)
• Thinking – Feeling (describes how people prefer to make decisions — based on logical analysis, or guided by concern for their impact on others)
• Judging – Perceiving (describes how people prefer to deal with the outer world —in a planned orderly way, or in a flexible spontaneous way)

Combinations of scores on these dimensions result in a variety of distinct personality types. Understanding characteristics unique to each type provides insight about how a person interacts with others and the world around him / her.

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)

The TKI provides data on individual preferred modes of resolving conflict: avoiding, competing, accommodating, compromising, and collaborating.

The TKI is used widely in business and industry to help people explore the dynamics of effective conflict resolution. Data from the survey will help participants to enhance their conflict resolution skills and to learn what types of conflict resolution are likely to be most effective in transition situations.

The Business Tools:

The New Manager Assimilation Process addresses creating momentum, creating early wins, laying a solid foundation, and building that all-important credibility that translates into long-term success.

The process is intended to accelerate familiarity between manager and direct reports…to do in one day what might take six months to accomplish. AdVantage Consulting will help you to build teamwork by introducing a climate of openness and willingness to deal with the issues. By putting key interactional issues “on the table” early – styles, values, expectations, preferences, concerns – you will clarify team roles, relationships and values, in addition to identifying your most critical business problems and top priorities.

Fast Cycle Diagnostic (FCD)

The FCD is the framework for learning from the new leader and key stakeholders the critical information that is needed to achieve short-term goals. Some things it helps clarify:

• The business purpose of the management team
• Its critical near-term performance objectives
• Information about the organizational environment
• Who makes up the leadership team, and what the roles and responsibilities are, and the strengths and development needs of each member
• How effective the team is
• Supporting systems and processes

This process will very quickly make clear where your focus needs to be. It will identify the issues that are most critical and which need to addressed immediately.

The Breakthrough Strategy*

Business emergencies, crises, and other “disasters” often liberate teams from the restraints of the institutionalized barriers to performance improvement. These events evoke powerful and emotional responses that cannot be matched by any of the structured programs and technologies most commonly used in teams.

If we consider that the heightened performance seen in emergencies and crises usually occurs almost spontaneously, without the benefit of extensive management planning, we can only imagine the possibilities for greater performance if the galvanizing forces of the crises were combined with purposeful actions. It is clear that what we regard as "normal" levels of operation are only a fraction of what the Team is really capable of achieving.

The Breakthrough Strategy employs a startlingly simple logic that absolutely reverses the typical view of corporate cause and effect. The Strategy teaches you to stop focusing all your attention on infusing the organization with the right programs, preparations, and technology – in the hope that someday these magic ingredients will make your company a ferocious competitor. Instead, go for a better result at once…now…immediately – and make it happen.

The Breakthrough Strategy can help your Team achieve and sustain very high levels of productivity.

* Adapted from ‘The Breakthrough Strategy’, by Robert Schaffer

Wolf Management will work with clients to validate feedback data and develop a mutually agreed upon overall assessment of personal strengths and weaknesses. This assessment will then be used to develop powerful action plans designed to enable leaders to move into their new roles as effectively as possible.

Your Personal Action Plan (PACT) will:

• Identify at least three behaviors that you will be developing
• Identify developmental activities that will target those behaviors
• Identify short-term goals and objectives
• Determine how success will be measured. How will you know if you are, in fact, practicing and developing new skills and achieving your short-term goals and objectives
• Determine what resources and supports you will require and create a plan to get them