Navigating Relationships With Managers

Traditionally, many organisations employed a system of strict hierarchy. Increasingly, however, managers encourage their team members to ‘step up’, show initiative and take responsibility, which often means engaging with senior and more experienced colleagues, as well as their immediate line manager.
Navigating Relationships with Managers equips participants to communicate effectively in a range of situations with their line manager as well as other senior and experienced stakeholders. Whether meeting performance goals, offering feedback or sharing unwelcome news, participants will prepare to engage in a respectful, results orientated conversations.

Course Content

Context Setting

Micro case study – in someone else’s shoes.
Building a foundation of trust.

A Strong Foundation

Human / Task dimensions.
Take responsibility for the relationships you build.
Roles, responsibilities and ground rules.
Understand your communication style, and that of others.

Maintaining Positive Relationships

Intent vs Effect
Giving and receiving feedback (FAIR model)
Difficult conversations. Don’t sit on bad news.*

When Things Change

The changes we face – structure, role, team etc.
Sustaining positive relationships.

Course Approach

CHALLENGE

Yourself to participate in conversations with senior colleagues.
Expectations about your role in providing appropriate input to your senior colleagues.

CREATE

A respectful working relationship with your line manager which encourages open discussion.
Set yourself up for success when preparing to offer feedback or insights.

CHANGE

How you engage with your line manager and other senior and experienced colleagues.
How you interact and engage with people who may be more experienced than you.

Embedding Success

Post programme activities to support the transfer of learning and building of habits.

CHALLENGE: Take responsibility for your relationship with your Manager

Understand what is important to them and look for ways to align your deliverables with their objectives. Actively listen when they share their views and ask clarifying questions to help them develop their thinking.

CREATE: Opportunities

Look for an opportunity to offer feedback – either positive or constructive – to a senior colleague. Be clear about your intention and approach to focus on a positive outcome.

CHANGE: Your approach

Be proactive when facing a challenging situation, offer suggestions / solutions, and take responsibility for actioning them.

100%

of our clients would recommend Alpha to a colleague or peer

90%

of a cohort was promoted within 2 years after participating in an Alpha course.

96%

of participants felt more confident in their role, following an Alpha commercial leadership course.

Why study with Alpha?

Innovation and creativity born from experience

We are thought leaders in instructional and learning journey design and holistic solution architects. We have extensive finance and investments experience combined with skills application to deliver performance improving results. We develop immersive learning environments that maximize time to productivity, support talent retention and added value to improving quality of hires.

Knowledge Exchange Evangelists

We are focused on mining the embedded organisational intellectual capital for the benefit of the next generation. We create and curate best in class practice gathered from our experience with the leading financial institutions. We design our programmes with the end in mind – what results are you trying to achieve with this intervention? What metrics will we set ourselves to achieve that?

Generation Proof

Quality and innovation, using current market and industry best practices, have made us a trusted partner in delivering dynamic and motivating training for the financial and capital markets. Our programmes are generation proof and responsive to evolving learner needs and styles. Our solutions use a multi-stakeholder engagement strategy that expands beyond relationships between the learner and learning provider. We create connections with managers, peers and the wider business to drive impactful return on investment..

Enquire now

"*" indicates required fields

The team are so friendly and pleasant to work with, everyone is very professional and keen to help us. Building a relationship over the past couple of years helps us to feel like the Alpha team are even more able to understand our needs and provide more proactive solutions.