INTRODUCTION

As an administrative professional, you know that your job already encompasses numerous managerial skills and responsibilities, including planning, scheduling, negotiating and delegating.

This hands-on seminar enables you to bring your current challenges and to brainstorm with colleagues and your course leader on how to best solve your most pressing problems. Including case studies, action planning and group exercises to give you the tools and techniques you need to cut task time dramatically and better results from every action you take. Leave with a concrete action plan for achieving your goals!

Who Should Attend

Seasoned administrative professionals, including executive assistants, administrative assistants or senior secretaries who are striving to refine their managerial skills in order to enhance their careers and add to their organization’s effectiveness.

How You Will Benefit

• Juggle multiple responsibilities
• Learn better ways to think on your feet with powerful decision-making techniques
• Create win-win solutions that leave everyone feeling positive
• Become a strategic partner to your boss
• Understand different team player styles and learn to accommodate other styles for more effective collaboration
• Improve your personal impact as you present proposals or plan negotiations
• Stay in control of your time and your workload with advanced time management skills
• Streamline routine business systems
• Increase productivity and enhance operational performance
• Reduce delays, errors and duplications
• Overcome resistance to change—gain commitment
• Communicate your change and improvement recommendations persuasively and powerfully

Seminar Outline

Mastering Change with Management Skills

• Find your place on the management team by aligning your goals to support strategic and tactical projects
• Empower yourself to achieve growth
• Discover what it takes to become a change master
• Create a blueprint for managing change

Fine-tuning Your Team Skills

• Match business goals with administrative support goals
• Assess your leader/manager preference in teams
• Map your management team’s priorities for the year
• Increase your administrative effectiveness to meet the priorities
• Understand relationships on the management team

Controlling Your Workday

• Clarify your priorities to include goals of your team
• Set criteria to validate your risk/value priorities
• Plan projects with smart charts
• Use a delegation checklist to get and train helpers
• Solve urgency/importance dilemma
• Eliminate your worst 20% of time wasters
• Use task maps to control multi-loads

Communicating with Credibility

• Enhance your image to help in pursuing specific goals
• Strengthen your active listening skills
• Use key cues to manage your own emotions and detach from others’ emotions
• Build mutual respect and trust with others

Dealing Productively with Conflict

• Use persuasion and negotiation to gain better outcomes from conflict
• Define the sources of conflict in your workplace
• Choose the appropriate method to handle conflict
• Master five techniques for dealing with difficult people

Putting Your Skills to Work

• Improve your personal impact as you present proposals or plan negotiations
• Try new tools for effective meeting management
• Demonstrate best-practice tools in team interactions
• Improve your personal impact as you present proposals or plan negotiations
• Provide feedback to your colleagues

Identifying Productivity Improvement Opportunities

• Examine Productivity in Relation to Work Systems and Processes
• Streamline Routine Business Processes—Reducing Delays, Errors and Duplication—by
• Examining Results and Assessing Factors That Impact Productivity
• Identify Functional and Cross-functional Work Processes

Assessing Work Flow and Analyzing Processes

• Diagnose and Document Productivity Problems Using Process Analysis Tools
• Evaluate the Effectiveness of Work Systems and Identify Opportunities for Measurable Improvement
• Apply Process Improvement Tools to the Analysis of Workflow and Systems

Initiating Improvement Strategies

• Analyze Productivity Problems and Identify Potential Solutions
• Adopt Problem-Solving Techniques in Order to Generate and Set Criteria for Solutions
• Apply Creativity Techniques in Order to Generate Innovation

Leading Effective Improvement Efforts

• Initiate and Manage Change by Adopting Strategies That Anticipate and Overcome
• Resistance to Change and That Generate Support and Commitment
• Apply the Characteristics of Effective Teams and Team Leadership to Improvement Initiatives
• Plan and Facilitate Productive Team Meetings in Order to Increase Work Group Effectiveness

Planning for Improvement

• Evaluate and Prioritize Work Improvement Strategies
• Select Improvement Strategies Using Group Decision-making Techniques
• Understand the Impact of Group Dynamics and Groupthink on Decisions

Implementing Measurable Improvements

• Establish Measurable, Specific Improvement Goals
• Identify Factors That Will Influence the Achievement of Improvement Plans
• Develop an Implementation Plan for Productivity Initiatives

Communicating to Influence and Get Results

• Structure and Present Improvement Plans and Recommendations Effectively and Persuasively
• Address Conflict and Lack of Support by Confronting and Resolving Dissenting Views
• Assess Reactions to Conflict and Adopt an Approach for More Productive Resolution to Disagreements

Boosting Credibility and Gaining Recognition

• Apply Principles of Credibility to Increase Support and Influence
• Identify Strategies for Gaining Visibility, Obtaining Recognition and Reducing Self-Sabotage
• Create an Action Plan for Productivity Improvements