The course is conducted as a small group, so that you can always see and feel how skills are actually applied.  Contact days are ’supportively challenging’.  You will learn great things about yourself and provide a much stronger and more practical foundation for your management skills.

The course encompasses the following eight nationally accredited units of competency for an Advanced Diploma of Management

This includes:

BSBINN601A – Manage Organizational Change
BSBMGT605B – Provide Leadership Across the Organization
BSBMGT616A – Develop and Implement Strategic Plans
PSPGOV602B – Establish and Maintain Strategic Networks
BSBMGT608B – Manage Innovation and Continuous Improvement
BSBDIV601A – Develop and Implement Diversity Policy
BSBMGT405A – Provide Personal Leadership
PSPGOV516A – Develop and Use Emotional Intelligence

These competencies are addressed through a holistic process which focuses on participants specific learning needs covering material from the following subject areas.

Organizational Dynamics and You

So much of what goes on in organizations and groups has an emotional content. Do you ever feel puzzled by the way you respond to particular situations - why you may flare up or remain silent?  Much of this is the interplay between our conscious and unconscious selves.  Becoming aware of this dynamic can dramatically improve our capacity to manage ourselves, and in turn others and maximise the potential for collaborative endeavour.

This includes:
• understanding how our own unconscious ‘buttons can get pressed’ and how to manage this – First manage thyself! You will be introduced to the GIA model for understanding ‘The Unconscious at Work’
• understanding the organizational dynamics and your role in these
• the unspoken components of organizational dynamics and culture
• Role Theory - roles people play in teams and how we can prevent getting stuck in these

Leadership for Organizational Collaboration

The more we understand our leadership style and the internal dynamics we bring to our leadership, the better managers we will be. Therefore self-reflection will be threaded throughout the course.

This includes:
• understanding ‘The Unconscious at Work’
• our leadership styles and their impact
• working on our self-limiting messages
• building emotional resilience
• increasing confidence in risk taking
• leading organizational change

Collaboratively Managing People

Creating robust collaborative teams and organizations requires high levels of skills in ‘people management’. The success stories of the future are organizational cultures and practices that facilitate shared learning, innovation and the pursuit of excellence.

This includes:
• supervision for staff – Introducing the GIA staff Super Vision model
• refreshing the specific skills we need to facilitate supervision
• processes and skills for managing performance issues
• Performance Appraisal Circles
• Peer Learning Circles - our peer supervision model
• building strong collaborative teams
• practical strategies for encouraging risk taking, innovation and ‘mistake’ making
• processes for evaluative reflection and learning from our practice
• the art of giving Hearable Feedback.

Integrating your Values Within Your Organization

Awareness and articulation of our own values and an understanding of the values underpinning our organization, is essential for good management practice. We cannot be our best as managers when there is significant differences between our values and those of our organization.

This includes:
• integrating your values within your organization
• collaborative management values and beliefs
• understanding our organization’s values and beliefs
• how can we change our practices to better match our values?
• enhancing our capacity to effect change and influence values.

Planning and Acting Strategically - From ‘Big Picture’ to Detail

Strategic planning processes need to be collaborative, simple to understand and useful to guide people’s daily practices. This is often not the case!

This covers:
• connecting the every day to the big picture - vision, principles, aims and objectives
• vision, principle, aims and objectives – clearly understood
• understanding strategic planning within the overall context of the organization
• management skills to ‘rekindle the fire in people’s belly’ and ensure the strategic plan is whole heartedly owned by all
• developing and maintaining collaborative alliances and networks outside your team or organization
• working in partnership with other organizations
• understanding the opportunities and challenges of our arenas
• evaluation - how to make it work hard for your organization.

Innovation, Change and Continuous Improvement

As collaborative managers we need to be encouraging innovation, evaluating and continuously improving our service provision. At times this can be challenging. Initiating and managing change is a vital part of the role. As collaborative managers we need the skills to do this in ways that maximise involvement, collaboration and ownership.

This includes:
• understanding how organizational cultures are formed and changed
• strategies that strengthen collaborative workplace culture
• monitoring, evaluating and improving our service delivery systems
• creating a vision and steps for a change process
• strengthening our own and others capacity to personally effect cultural change
• developing continuous improvement processes.

Collaborative Decision Making

This focus here is on facilitating excellence in collaborative decision making

This includes:
• collaborative decision making - why it is so powerful in its ability to bring about lasting change, and yet is so challenging to implement effectively
• mapping the different types of decisions to be made and establishing where within the organization they are best made
• holding efficient, collaborative and rewarding meetings
• processes for clarifying boundaries between decision making, consultation and information sharing
• welcoming and working creatively with difference.

Organizational Rank, Power and Diversity

This area is often ignored in the study of organizational management. Yet marginalisation and the ‘them and us’ dynamic can present myriad challenges for managers.

This includes:
• understanding a structural view of power and rank
• dominant/non-dominant groups and their effect
• understanding how our own rank affects our management
• collaborative managers as leaders and elders
• understanding the depth and breadth of ‘diversity’
• fostering diversity.

Conflict and other Challenging Dynamics

Most of us have some fears and various avoidance behaviour around conflict.  As managers we need to be confident we can welcome such differences.

This includes:
• understanding our own responses to conflict and strong feelings
• working with ‘hot spots’
• managing challenging behaviour
• converting conflict into creativity
• facilitating/mediating between others in conflict
• addressing team conflict
• re-grouping a team after significant upheaval

Self Care and Professional Development

It is so easy to get ’snowed under’ as managers and find there is just not enough time to look after yourselves. We need to get past the rhetoric of self care and ensure we are in good shape to give our best as managers.

This unit includes:
• mapping our key work areas and their expectations
• practical tools for prioritising and tracking our objectives and managing time
• introducing people to time budgeting
• sorting the important from the urgent
• ‘managing up’
• taking care of ourselves
• professional development plans.