Session Title:For delivery during EI Days, Feb. 20-21, 2014, plan on session spanning 90 minutes

Welcome and Session Overview (suitable for marketing)--estimated 8 minutes

This session is the first in a series of six sessions that will make up a course on Talent Management. In this session, participants will learn about human capital, gain an understanding of their organization’s human capital capacity, and contextualize the importance of human capital to their team’s and organization’s success. They will have the opportunity to evaluate themselves as leaders and learn how their leadership can best support their team. Finally, participants will evaluate their team and learn how to maximize their human capital.

Objectives -estimated 3 minutes

By the end of this session, learners will be able to:

Participants will understand that human capital is their company’s greatest asset. Participants will understand that effective leadership will result in the best use of their

talent. Participants will learn how to understand their own leadership style and how to use it to

manage their team. Participants will learn how to evaluate their teams’ strengths and weaknesses.

Lecture/Presentation (estimated 30 minutes)

Show PowerPoint Here Overview of Human Capital

o Ensure that participants have a broad view of human capital to include remote employees, contractors, school staff and other volunteer partners. Have participants generate responses regarding who and where their human capital is.

o Your team is more important than what you are doing because you need a strong team to succeed and accomplish your goals. Use Jim Collins’ bus analogy to demonstrate that the team should come before developing goals and strategies.

Overview of Talent Management o A holistic approach to optimizing human capital, which enables an organization to

drive short and long-term results by building culture, engagement, capability, and capacity through integrated talent acquisition, development, and deployment processes that are aligned to business goals. - Talent Management Practices and Opportunities (ASTD 2008)

o In other words:  “the collection of things companies do that help employees do the best they can each and every day in support of their own and the company’s goals and objectives.”(Israelite)

The importance of humble leadershipo Leaders set tone, facilitate, support, hold accountable and encourage. They do not

dominate.

Show video of an “ineffective meeting”. Have participants analyze what is wrong with the meeting to set up the next slides.

What does an ineffective team look like?o Lack of unified purpose

The team is not committed to common objectives.o Lack of motivation

The goal(s) are not meaningful to each individual on the team. Single goal, but differentiated motivators. Buy-in.

o The team has not taken the time to discuss its own maintenance and needs. The team has not explicitly discussed group process -- how the group will

function to achieve its objectives. The group does not have a clear, mutually agreed-upon approach: mechanics, norms, expectations, rules, accountability measures, etc. Individuals or small groups discuss what went wrong and why after a meeting, but this is seldom discussed within the meeting itself.

o The team is splintered into “camps” with their own agendas. Segments of the team do not share in all of the team’s goals and develop

coalitions to promote their own agenda.o The team has a plan but has ambiguous (or non-existent) performance goals for

itself. It has not defined concrete milestones against which it measures itself. It

has not developed an accountability plan to ensure that all of the goals are met or reevaluated along the way.

o Bad atmosphere at meetings There are lots of side conversations, whispering,, boredom, or tension. The

group is not genuinely engaged in the process.o A few people tend to dominate

People do not really listen to each other. Ideas are ignored or overridden. Sometimes some of the dominant people’s contributions are way off the point, but little is done by anyone in the group to keep the group clearly on track. Conversations after group meetings reveal that people failed to express their ideas or feelings. This can be particularly damaging if it is the team leader.

o A dominant figure seeks to gain and retain power on the team. The individuals focus is not on the goals of the team, but on

acquiring/maintaining power.o Personal feelings are hidden.

Team members do not share their feeling with the group. Emotions and grudges need to be expressed and addressed in order for the team to function cohesively and successfully.

o Disagreements are not dealt with effectively by the team. They may be suppressed by those who fear conflict, or there may be a

tyrannical minority in which an individual or sub-group is so aggressive that the majority accedes to their wishes in order to preserve the peace.

o Actions are often taken prematurely before alternatives, opposing views, and threats are considered.

A powerful majority is presents a course of action, and the minority is expected to go along. The minority may be resentful and uncommitted.

o Inaction paralyzes the team. The team spends too much time on process, alternatives, or threats and is

too slow to take action to achieve the goal in time.o There are one or more team members who do not carry their fair share.

Individuals fail to meet expectation of other team members. Individuals are disrespectful of the mechanics of the group: arrive late, come unprepared, don’t complete agreed upon tasks on time, etc. Individuals are unwilling to accept and complete action steps at an equal level to other group members.

The story of the plan to transition Smarties Tutoring Services to SmartStart Educationways to support areas of growth

How to support growth and developmento Team cohesion

Icebreakers, team-building exercises, alternate leadership roles between team members, meet with members of the team individually, short term partnerships (b/n 2 or 3 members), explicit process and expectations, equal treatment and evaluation for bad behavior.

o Follow-through/accountability Develop an accountability plan first (before and actual plan). How will

goals be developed? How is team success measured? How is individual success measured? rewarded? What is the timeline? How will the process be supported? What happens if benchmarks are not met (both team and individual(s)? What happens if the goal is not achieved (team and individual)?

An overview of a stellar team:o Sets clear objectives for itself

Team members have to understand and agree on what success looks like.o Sets clear processes, benchmarks, and supports for achieving goals

Team members must agree and buy-in to the process. All individuals follow the same standards. Every individual has the support that they need to accomplish their piece of the goal.

o Leadership checks in on progress regularly and even-handedly. Leaders pose  questions that help the group assess its progress: How are

we performing as a team? What obstacles can we remove? What additional supports do we need? If something is not going according to plan, why? Can we do something or do we need to adjust the plan?

o Goals and progress are data-drive, not emotion and intuition driven. Everyone on the team understands and knows why they are doing what

they are doing. That knowledge is based on data, not emotion or someone’s intuition.

o Everyone on the team is in the right roles. Not only do you need good people on the bus, but they need to be in the

right seats to maximize effectiveness. If you don’t know where people belong, move them around until you find out.

o Use a full arsenal of rewards. Obviously, use tie as much financial compensation to success as possible,

but if money is tight: reward team behavior by prominently featuring success, give exposure to senior leadership or mentoring, professional development opportunities, days off, etc.

Also the team, should give itself the stimulus of a continuous series of "small wins" along the way to larger goals.

o The leader knows each member of the team as an individual. A team has a singular goal, but motivation is individual. The leader knows

what each individual wants/needs and is able to address those needs to motivate individuals to a common goal.

o Focus is on the team, not on individuals Successes and failures are discussed collective. Behaviors, not individuals,

are celebrated.o Focus on every member of the team, not just the top.

Smarties to SmartStart transition example continued.

Reading/Resources-optional

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html

Group Activity/Discussion--estimated 35 minutes

(Directions, 3 mins.)We talked about self-reflection as an integral piece of keeping a team running smoothly towards meeting and hopefully exceeding goals. Below is an exercise in talent management assessment. Please use the following rubric to evaluate your leadership strengths and areas of growth, and note that you will be splitting up into groups in seven minutes to review results with a partner. (Independent Rubric Work, 7 mins.)

[At this point we will do a quick activity to divide the group into groups of three.] (Quick Grouping Activity, 3 mins.)

Please discuss the following questions with your partnersGroup Share (15 mins.)

1. Which three items represent your biggest strengths?2. How did you develop strengths in these areas?3. What was your lowest-scoring area? (If tied, select only one to discuss and evaluate further.)4. What would a score of 4 or 5 on that item look like for you/your organization? What steps can you take to get there?

Here we’ll return to a whole-group discussion. Participants can share responses to question #4 with the group. (Whole Group Recap, 7 mins.)

Individual Activity -- Estimated 10 minutes-- to be completed off line-with feedback from trainer

You will receive a form to complete as a means of evaluating your team. Please complete and submit your responses to the survey, and answer the questions below. Submit the form  and your responses to the presenters within seven days.

1. Please describe one result of this exercise which was particularly surprising.2. Choose two items for which you selected a score of 3 or below. Explain why you chose the score you did (in 3-5 sentences per item).  3. Now that you have identified two areas for growth, describe three strategies you will use to raise those items to a score of 4 or 5.

Wrap up- estimated 3 minutes

The key takeaways for the session are for participants to develop an understanding of the importance of Talent Management in their organizations. They learn how to evaluate their own abilities and roles as members of their team. Further, they learn to think about and understand their team’s strengths and weaknesses, and the develop specific strategies to develop, motivate, support, and evaluate their team.

Complete participant Evaluation Form.