Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

How to Lead Without Power

You don’t need a leadership position to lead. Build relationships and influence your team.

Learn strategies and techniques that will help you achieve collective goals by fostering trust, and make change by communicating more clearly.

You will learn to:

• Build relationships with individuals and engage in collaborative problem solving
• Facilitate the decision making process by actively listening to coworkers
• Use the basics of body language to your advantage
• Make a strong case for their proposal so that others “buy-in” to the change: express empathy, communicate clearly, and motivate others
• Handle frustrations and address push back that comes with the change, both from individuals and groups
• Practice ways to “de-escalate tension,” provide constructive feedback, and manage conflict
• Encourage conversation and allow for healthy debate

Leading Others Courses

Taking charge of others can be an intimidating task. Build confidence in your ability to determine the direction for a team of workers. Learn how to resolve conflict, coach and delegate to employees as a supervisor or manager.

Delegating

No manager can do it all. Master the challenge of delegation to balance your workload and to leverage your team’s abilities.

Effective delegation is one of the most valuable and difficult skills for a manager. Advance in your position by understanding when to and how to delegate tasks to members of your team, and how to overcome common problems.

You will learn to:

• Become more successful through delegation
• Effective use of an 8-step delegation process
• Provide effective instructions to produce better results
• Avoid common delegation problems
• Monitor delegation results
• Give effective feedback for continuous improvement

Leadership Skills for Supervisors

Gain skills in communication, coaching, and conflict resolution so your technical expertise can translate into leadership experience.

As a supervisor, you have the power to enhance or decrease the productivity of those who report to you. You are the crucial interface between the employees and the managers of your organization.

Learn leadership skills to make the most of your position and bring out the best in employees.

You will learn to:

• Prioritize, plan, and manage your time
• Identify your primary leadership style
• Develop some flexibility to use other leadership styles
• Meet the needs of employees and co-workers through communication and coaching
• Transform conflict into a powerful force for creative problem solving
• Develop employees

Motivating Employees

Understand what employees need in order to remain engaged and motivated.

Good managers and supervisors know that employees who feel valued for their work are more motivated, responsible, and productive. Create a more dynamic, loyal, and energized workplace by understanding what motivates your employees.

You will learn to:

• Use motivation in a supervisory role
• Use different kinds of motivators, appealing to both inner passions and promising external rewards
• Create a motivational climate by setting goals and understanding the role of values
• Design a job that motivates your workforce to get more done

Managing Change

Learn how to guide people through the change management process, reducing resistance and gaining buy-in.

Change can be exciting to some, and terrifying to others. Take steps to make change more palatable and successful by understanding people’s hesitation, enlisting the help of others, setting up plans, and managing stressors.

You will learn to:

• Accept that there are no normal or abnormal ways of reacting to change
• Understand the change cycle and common human reactions to change
• See change as an essential element of the world, not as something to be feared and resisted
• Understand that adapting to change is requires an attitude adjustment, not a technical one, and is not an intellectual issue but one that strikes at who you are
• Recognize that embracing the future may require a process of releasing and grieving the past
• See change as an opportunity for self-motivation and innovation
• Help others accept and implement change in the workplace
• Adapt to change by dealing with resistance, managing anger, and alleviating stress