Overview
The Advanced Management Series is a program designed to enhance your knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively manage others.
Mission
Organizational Effectiveness works to empower individuals to fulfill their potential by partnering to build a healthy, productive, and engaged UI community that supports a culture of excellence.
The Advanced Management Series creates an interactive learning environment by engaging you in discussion and practical application of critical management practices. You will have an opportunity to interact with managers from across campus and, in doing so, enhance your perspectives when working with the complexities of managing in the University environment.
The Advanced Management Series recognizes that individual development leads to organizational success.
Benefits of Enrolling
Why is management development critical on our campus?
Investment in ongoing leadership development for UI managers is essential to sustaining excellence for our institution. Managers are often cited in the literature as being one of the most crucial drivers of employee satisfaction. UI leaders are asked to make hard decisions and manage significant changes, all while striving to keep up the morale and engagement of their teams.
Supervisors seeking to make Working at IOWA data actionable will learn strategies for continually improving engagement of their teams through this series. The Advanced Management Series addresses supervisory development needs by offering a comprehensive set of courses covering all six areas of the UI Leadership Competency Framework, leading to an AMS series certificate.
- A comprehensive set of core courses on key management topics leading to a series certificate.
- A personalized report with ideas for leveraging your unique management style (online managerial assessment tool called DISC).
- Goal setting before and after the series with your supervisor.
- Real-life case discussion groups to explore timely issues faced by participants, modeled on Critical Friends methodology.
- Referrals to campus resources.
DISC Managerial Behavioral Profile Assessment
Prior to the class, Managerial Assessment called DISC, participants will be asked to take an online assessment to determine their behavioral style preferences. This 30 minute exercise will result in a comprehensive report giving participants personalized information about how they interact with others as well as style indicators for others' behaviors.
This profile is a valuable tool to help managers gain insight into their own behaviors and others, including the management of:
- problems and challenges—Dominance (D factor)
- people and influencing of others—Influence (I factor)
- change and pacing yourself as a manager—Steadiness (S factor)
- rules and procedures set by others—Compliance (C factor)
As part of the online assessment process each participant will receive a comprehensive report which will help them to understand how they may become more self-aware in working with others and adapt their preferred styles in ways that will benefit them as a manager.
Series Requirements
To receive an Advanced Management Series certificate, participants must complete the entire core curriculum of courses. Additionally, we ask that each participant meet with their supervisor at the beginning of the program to set goals. Participants and their supervisor will both receive an evaluation at the end of the series and be asked to assess the participant's goal progress throughout the year. This information will be used by Learning & Development in aggregate form only, to measure program outcomes.
Core Curriculum
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Ethics are a deeply important and necessary part of strong business practice . . . and ethics often intersects with legal guidelines or regulations. Unfortunately, you don’t have to search very hard to find numerous examples of unethical judgements and practices. Of course, there are also many, many examples of leaders and managers who lead with integrity, care and a focus on doing the right thing. Even these areas of focus, though, can lead to a ‘right versus right’ dilemma. This can be challenging, and can also present opportunities to develop new skills and insights.
This session will begin with a brief orientation to the series structure and flow. Then, participants will be actively engaged in wrestling with ethical challenges. We will provide an opportunity for participants to explore and respond to intriguing ethical problems, and then present their cases (as a team) to the other AMS participants. Some pre-work will be required for this session, and will be provided after the AMS cohort has been determined. Be prepared for an interesting, stimulating and challenging session!
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Before class, Advanced Management Series participants have access to the online DISC Managerial Behavioral Profile Assessment. Through class discussion and interactive exercises, participants gain self knowledge and insight into their behavioral style, and the adaptations they make in their role as manager. Participants also learn how to adapt their approach to become more effective in their interactions with others. This course sets a foundation for the Advanced Management Series by deepening participants’ understanding of behavioral styles, including how they, and others, approach challenges, influence, change, and the protocol of their work environment.
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Conflict is inevitable in the workplace, and not addressing conflict often makes it worse. Understand your approach to conflict and your communication style, and apply these and other conflict management concepts and skills to scenarios that will be developed and role played in class.
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This session will present strategies relevant to managers and leaders. The session will be interactive.
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Let’s face it, change is unavoidable. For the most part, we are very practiced at accepting change and ‘rolling with the punches.’ There are times, though, when the struggle is more pronounced. For those who are trying to implement or lead change, resistance can take on a different flavor. Unpacking the tactics that motivate change and address change resistance can help. In this session, we will explore mindset associated with change acceptance. We will also examine resistance to change, and what we can do to increase change adoption, as well as the myths associated with change and change management.
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The UI is actively engaged in improving business processes. This effort has integrated principles of Lean to reduce waste and improve customer service. Managers and supervisors are a critical component to help initiate and implement those improvements. The improvements are aimed at improving quality, response time, security and effectively using technology and decreasing unnecessary steps and effort. This course will provide managers and supervisors with a general overview of the Lean process improvement methodology, what tools are available and how to apply them within the workplace.
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Develop strategies for building more inclusive and productive work environments by applying the principles of emotional intelligence and diversity.
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As a person who supervises others, you have significant impact on staff development and performance. This course offers a proactive approach to guiding staff in achieving consistent positive performance and growth. Supervisors will understand the importance of effective staff orientation and the impact of shared goal setting. Developing a collaborative approach based on mutual organization and individual benefit will be applied throughout the class.
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How should you proceed when employees do not meet performance expectations and have not responded to coaching? This class will provide you with practical tips and methods for addressing performance deficiencies and behavioral issues, recognizing that the goal is always to support improvement, but also recognizing that sometimes a separation from employment is necessary and in the best interests of both the unit and the individual. We will discuss Clarifications of Expectations, Performance Improvement Plans, and Progressive Discipline. Participants are encouraged to bring anonymous case studies to share and discuss with the group.
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Managing performance is an expectation of all our campus leaders/managers. This interactive session will invite you to consider ways to motivate and engage your staff to achieve their goals and the goals of the unit. Data, research and stories will be shared to bring this topic to life! Utilizing true-to-life workplace scenarios, we will also practice verbal feedback (meaningful conversations), as well as explore and identify coachable moments.
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Healthy, engaged, and productive staff are critical to the success and performance of the University. Through this course, learn about the direct links between individual health, performance, and engagement at work, and how staff can be impacted by health improvement programs. As a leader, take away ideas on how to support best practices in the area of health improvement and performance within your unit, as well as your own personal strategies for improving resilience, energy, and overall well-being.
Optional Learning Opportunities
UI Learning & Development offers a variety of courses to enhance your leadership skills. Visit our Employee Self Service | My Career | Learning & Development | My Training for dates and times of upcoming courses.
Enrollment
Due to space limitations, early registrations by university managers/supervisors who can commit to the entire series will be honored first. A one-time admission fee is required to support program costs. Watch for open enrollment in the fall of each year (typically November/December). Participants who are admitted to the Advanced Management Series will be notified of their enrollment after the application deadline.