Help your managers master critical tasks with "best practices" training on DVD

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Quickly train your team leaders to tackle the toughest management issues head-on with The Confident Supervisor. From hiring to discipline to performance evaluations and firing, from tough conversations with subordinates to resolving conflict, your supervisors will fall back on this innovative turnkey program to avoid strained relationships, poor performance, and costly blunders.

Now featuring 3 new videos addressing today's toughest challenges:
Diversity, Conflict Management, and Difficult Conversations.
See below for more information on these new editions to The Confident Supervisor series.

Each volume in the 7 DVD series contains:

• A 20 minute Confident Supervisor presentation on DVD, teaching tact, strategy, and hard-won secrets for executing a single essential management responsibility. Hosted by a team of top-rated HR communicators eager to share their insights and experiences, with case studies illustrated by professional actors. Each presentation delivers best-practices tips and guidance no supervisor should be without.
• A handy Trainers Guide, making it easy for you to lead informative and engaging sessions.

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Each volume available individually!

Three new Confident Supervisor DVDs address today’s toughest challenges.
These new video presentations, hosted by leading HR consultant Candace Kollas and experienced employment law attorney Mike Maslanka, help your supervisors become more sure of themselves, respected by staff, and effective in leading teams.

New! The Confident Supervisor: Diversity

You know that recruiting and retaining a workforce representing different races, genders, generations and ethnicities means good business, but your team leaders may not have “bought in” to this fact. Here supervisors learn to approach diversity as a positive characteristic, how to manage across a broad spectrum of employees, and what pitfalls to avoid. Click the play arrow in the window below to view a sample clip.

• Why diversity is important to achieving organizational goals
• Debunking the political correctness argument
• Differences between boomers and Gen X workers on telecommuting, flextime, and immediate feedback
• Difference between changing oneself and accepting differences
• What younger workers expect from supervisors
• What motivates Gen X workers
• How to incorporate respect into all conversations
• Why categorizing people by ethnicity is bad for business and a legal risk
• Eliminating same-race discrimination
• Assigning tasks based on age, ethnicity, gender.
• Key to diversity: if not always understanding, always respecting cultural differences
  

New! The Confident Supervisor: Conflict Management
Where people work together, there will be conflict. Your supervisors are responsible for minimizing it and leading respectful, productive and profitable teams. This DVD is the perfect tool for helping them become stronger, more effective, and more proactive. Click the play arrow in the window below to view a sample clip.

• What’s behind workplace conflict
• Why avoidance is so dangerous for supervisors
• Dealing with workplace conflict in a positive manner
• Keeping emotion out of conflict resolution
• Liability issues with documentation
• How managers represent your company
• Privacy concerns, blind copying on e-mail, and confidentiality
• Importance of a face-to-face conversation
• How to address concerns with respect and tact
• What is the proportionate response to the issue at hand?
• Importance of honesty and integrity
• Making open dialogue a part of your company culture
• Helping employees speak up sooner
• Using e-mail when resolving conflict
• Maintaining positive intent
• Focus on the situation, not the people involved

New! The Confident Supervisor: Difficult Conversations
A mishandled awkward or disciplinary conversation with employee can stir up bad feelings, misunderstanding and confusion, and even lower productivity. Done properly, such a discussion can transform an employee into a top performer. This presentation helps supervisors overcome common fears and excel at the task they like the least. It addresses the 3 most challenging aspects of workplace conversations: Difficult people who cry, swear, or worse, when confronted by management, performance evaluations when the employee needs to take corrective action, and embarrassing topics. Click the play arrow in the window below to view a sample clip.

• How to choose the right physical location for the conversation
• How to set the right conversational tone
• Ways to lower an employee’s natural defenses
• Tempering criticism with praise
• How to be direct
• Body English that helps take the edge off the conversation
• How to foster a two-way conversation, not just a lecture
• Bettering your listening skills
• Involving the employee in the solution
• Legal implications of managerial dishonesty
• Why it’s unethical to keep someone in a job for which they’re unsuited
• Why a termination conversation shouldn’t come as surprise to the employee
• Byproducts: Anger, lawsuits, union organization. Solution? Empathy
• Case study: layoff by e-mail sparks lawsuits
• Setting the right tone to help message get through
• Treating the employee with respect

The Confident Supervisor: Hiring
Smart managers know what to ask, what not to ask, and when to keep quiet and let the candidates reveal themselves. The Confident Supervisor: Hiring features 3 hiring experts explaining interview secrets that really work, using 4 lively vignettes to illustrate the coverage points in just 20 minutes:

• Making candidates comfortable with the setting and the pace of the interview
• Notes vs. no-notes
• Getting beyond the candidate’s rehearsed answers to uncover the real person within
• Letting silence work for you
• Selling the position to the candidate you want to on-board

The Confident Supervisor: Discipline
Supervisors generally find issuing corrective action distasteful, and who can blame them. It’s never easy to ask someone to change their behavior. But after viewing The Confident Supervisor: Discipline, your supervisors will stand tall and deliver the tough assessments needed to help team members improve. Three HR experts use 8 true-to-life scenes, depicted by professional actors, to teach:

• How to match discipline styles to employee personality styles, to derive the most value from the meeting
• Best ways to react to an employee who cries when criticized
• How to stay on track, keeping the focus on the behavior, not the employee, not the supervisor
• Ways to prevent an employee from taking control of a corrective action meeting
• Engaging the passive/aggressive employee by having them create their own corrective action plan
• And more!

The Confident Supervisor: Performance Evaluations
If your supervisors are like most, they see employee reviews as a bothersome chore and just go through the motions. But if they learn to do them confidently, these meetings can be a very effective tool in motivating employees and making supervisors’ jobs easier. The Confident Supervisor: Performance Evaluations arms them to deliver energizing yet fair appraisals that build on positives and help eliminate negatives. In just 20 minutes, they'll get:

• Three crucial things every performance evaluation must contain
• Leveraging the “unspoken agreement” between employee and manager to derive maximum value from the employment relationship
• Developing specific examples of past problems and accomplishments
• Using the “sandwich technique” to deliver criticism
• Physical positioning to foster conversation and openness
• Involving employees in evaluations, without turning the agenda over to them
• Problems with “one-size-fits-all” reviews that foster apathy.

The Confident Supervisor: Firing
Nothing has the potential to be more unpleasant for your managers than firing an employee. And few duties provide more chances to prove “Murphy’s Law” -- and go horribly wrong. The Confident Supervisor: Firing can’t take the pain out of a termination, but it can remove the trepidation. Combining expert yet plain-English HR commentary with completely believable scenarios, it helps your team see and overcome their own fears through our struggling yet well-intentioned manager, facing a task he dreads. They’ll learn:

• The 4 keys to a successful termination conference
• Preparation essentials for avoiding FMLA leave requests and other last-minute surprises
• Avoiding a negotiation over continued employment
• Who should be there, and who should never know about the decision to let the employee go
• How to split the termination between the manager and the HR department, taking the employee’s dignity and rights into account
• Safely terminating potentially violent or malicious employees while maintaining records and other assets
• How speed, clarity, and honesty can drive the termination to a successful conclusion

Presented Leading HR Experts and Lively Master Communicators

Candace Kollas is President of Workable Options, a consulting firm that assists organizations in developing cohesive communications and ensuring compliance in business practices. She has practiced labor and employment law, and served in the Employment Division of the Office of the Florida Attorney General. Her clients include AOL/Time Warner, Mercedes Benz, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and many other premier companies and organizations. Ms. Kollas assisted Coca-Cola Enterprises in the development of its Integrated Conflict Management System and is currently the Master Trainer for the nationwide implementation of that system.

Attorney Michael P. Maslanka with the law firm of Ford & Harrison has 20 years of experience in labor and employment law and is board certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. His emphasis lies in counseling clients on employment and labor matters, representing management in federal and state court employment discrimination litigation, and representing management in union arbitrations and before the labor board. Mike is the author Texas Employers' Guide to Employee Handbooks and Personnel Policy Manuals.

Attorney Margaret Morford is President of The HR Edge, Inc., a national management consulting and training company. Her clients include Lockheed Martin, Sara Lee Foods, U.S. Marine Corps, Fox Broadcasting, and many others. She has served as Vice President of Human Resources for three large companies, and as an attorney specializing in workplace law issues. Her presentations at the annual SHRM Conference and Expo fill the largest halls and are routinely "standing room only", a testament to her skills as a communicator and motivator.