Leadership Training Courses
Leading isn’t the same thing as supervising. FELTG’s Leadership and Team Effectiveness courses focus on leadership development to empower your agency’s employees to generate results and help fulfill your organization’s mission. All of FELTG’s Leadership and Team Effectiveness courses – and several of our Supervisory Training Courses – align with the Office of Personnel Management’s Executive Core Qualifications. The ECQs are required for entry to the Senior Executive Service and are used by many departments and agencies in selection, performance management, and leadership development for management and executive positions.
To find out how these courses align with OPM ECQs, click here.
LD-1: Comprehensive Toolkit for Leadership Success (1 day)
If you only have one day to stock up your leadership toolkit, this is it. Equip yourself with the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and confidence you need to lead with excellence. This training is for individuals of all levels but can be targeted to specific groups. Dr. Anthony Marchese will share research-inspired best practices and a practice-driven approach to increasing leadership effectiveness. The training will focus on several competencies, including developing others, team building, management, and leveraging diversity. Specific content areas can be emphasized or focused on depending on the agency’s needs.
Course Topics: Assessments; an easy-to-remember framework for managing difficult conversations with employees; strategies for cultivating high-performing teams; recommendations to increase your influence within your agency; four content areas – Leading Myself, Leading Others, Leading Teams, Leading the Agency.
LD-2: Effectively Managing and Communicating With Employees (1-2 days)
This course is built upon the premise that a one-size-fits-all approach to managing others is ineffective. Drawing upon the latest research and best practices in behavioral science, communication, team effectiveness, and generational studies, Effectively Managing and Communicating with Employees provides federal supervisors with relevant insight and practical strategies to ensure that they are managing for success. Using realistic agency scenarios, participants will learn how to understand and leverage individual differences to develop a meaningful management methodology that is targeted to the needs of their employees and those of the agency.
Course Topics: Managing vs. leading; identifying and honing your supervisory skills; managing difficult employee personality types; managing a multigenerational workforce; managing a mobile workforce; using structured communication with your employees; conflict resolution skills; utilizing a team-based approach in the federal government.
LD-3: Mentoring Matters (1 day)
The Office of Personnel Management has been a champion of mentoring programs across the government because it sees mentors as instrumental in maximizing learning and development and improving employee retention. We here at FELTG agree. This one-day seminar will provide a comprehensive overview of mentoring, include guidance for improving the mentoring program at your agency, and show you how to utilize mentorship skills in leadership roles.
Course Topics: What mentoring is and what it isn’t; make sense of mentoring myths, understanding and leveraging generational differences; assessing different types of mentoring; exploring mentoring best practices; developing and implementing a mentoring program at your agency.
LD-4: Influencing for Results (1 day)
High performance and communication effectiveness are inextricably linked. Attend this class to take your communication skills to the next level, and develop those competencies – partnering, influencing and negotiating, and political savvy – that are absolutely critical to your success in the federal workplace.
Course Topics: Ingredients of influence; how to persuade through spoken, written, and non-verbal communication and hands-on experience; delivering a variety of messages to peers within a safe, accepting, and supportive learning environment.
LD-5: The Leader’s Edge: Emotional Intelligence as a Catalyst for Success (1 day)
Emotional Intelligence and work experience are far greater determinants of leadership success than IQ and education. Top-performing organizations in the federal government are starting to realize this. Dive into this comprehensive one-day analysis of this critical piece to leadership success.
Course Topics: Assessing your emotional intelligence; exploring strategies for improving emotional intelligence; developing an Emotional Intelligence Action Plan that will target both individual growth and team growth.
LD-6: Connecting, Collaborating, and Creating: Mastering the Art of Meaningful Relationships (1 day)
What is stopping you and your team from developing innovative solutions to your most challenging problems? Dr. Anthony Marchese will explain how to leverage diversity, build a solid team, manage conflict and develop the resilience needed to get your team over the hump.
Course Topics: Developing skills to identify, honor, and leverage individual differences; understanding the sources of conflict; how to navigate conflict; avoiding GroupThink; cultivating a culture of strong psychological safety and innovation.
LD-7: Becoming a Learning Organization (1 day)
Learning organizations are more able to swiftly adapt to changes and make continuous improvements to ensure effectiveness. A strengthened community that shares knowledge will lead to increased productivity. This application-based course will prepare agency leaders to turn their own departments into hubs of learning. Each participant will leave with a detailed plan of action.
Course Topics: Conducting stakeholder analyses; identifying performance gaps; translating findings into programmatic and micro learning; implementing learning strategies and conducting assessments.
LD-8: Leading by Design: Strategies for Career Growth and Development (1 day)
This course is built upon the book DESIGN: An Owner’s Manual for Learning, Living, and Leading with Purpose by Dr. Anthony Marchese. Participants will craft their very own Personal Owner’s Manual as a tool to increase mindfulness and complete a career mission statement and action plan to guide them on the next phase of their journey.
Course Topics: Organic decision-making; leading self and others according to their strengths; charting a course for continued personal and professional development.
LD-9: Strengths-based Strategies for Success (1 day)
Managers who help employees identify, develop, and strategically apply their strengths create a culture of high employee engagement and performance. According to Gallup, 67% of employees who strongly agree that their manager focuses on their strengths are engaged in their jobs. And according to OPM, 47% of disengaged millennials will leave their agency for a culture where they feel they better “fit in.” This fun, interactive session will provide a tool for participants to assess their own strengths and plug in to the agency mission. Learners will leave with increased self-awareness, awareness of others, and practical tools to extend and apply their learning.
Course Topics: Encourage a safe environment for empoyees to explore their strengths, identify strategies for embedding strengths into job execution, and introduce learners to the completion of their own Strengths-Based Strategies for Success Development Plan.
LD-10: Mindset Matters: Making the Transition from Individual Contributor to Supervisor (1 day)
Receiving a promotion is a career highlight. However, if that promotion means you’re now supervising your former co-workers, then it also means you’re about to navigate the trickiest part of your career. This one-day course is perfect those who have been promoted, or hope to be promoted at some point, and will cover the following competencies — leading people, resilience, decisiveness, flexibility.
Course Topics: Assessing existing managerial knowledge, skills, behaviors, and confidence; understanding the art and science behind managing others; differentiating between a general mindset, positional mindset, and job-specific mindset; understanding the traits that directly correlate with the ability to accurately assess performance; create a personal development strategy to transition to supervision.
LD-11: Leadership Deep Dive (1-2 days)
Take one or two days to submerge yourself into this interactive course led by nationally recognized leadership scholar and trainer Dr. Anthony J. Marchese and you’ll leave with a roadmap for continuously improving your leadership skills. The four areas of content (Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading Teams, Leading the Agency) can be emphasized and focused on the needs of the group in attendance.
Course Topics: Equipping individuals at all levels with the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and confidence to lead with excellence; research-inspired best-practices and a practice-driven approach to increasing leadership effectiveness; self-assessments; an easy-to-remember framework for managing conversations with employees; strategies for cultivating high-performing teams; recommendations to increase your influence within your agency.
LD-12: Senior Executive Leadership Academy (2 to 5 days)
FELTG instructors will work with your agency to craft a leadership training program that will meet your leadership’s specific needs, while addressing the five Executive Core Qualifications as established by OPM.
Course Topics: Build the knowledge, skills, and a development plan consistent with the ECQs. Understanding each core qualification; build leadership skills and knowledge, and create a development strategy for continued growth.
Upcoming Training Events
Instructors
Deborah Hopkins, Barbara Haga, Katherine Atkinson, Ann Boehm, Joe Schimansky
Course Description
The most comprehensive supervisory training event available anywhere returns once again. The Federal Supervisor’s Workshop: Building the Best Toolkit for Managing Today’s Workforce offers six specific sessions (with a bonus seventh session for those who manage bargaining unit employees) that will give you the tools and skills to effectively and efficiently manage in the Federal workplace circa 2023.
If you’ve attended FELTG’s previous supervisory webinar series, UnCivil Servant: Holding Employees Accountable for Performance and Conduct, or any of our other flagship courses, these fast-paced and engaging 60-minute sessions, held monthly from 1 – 2 pm ET, will expand upon the legal and foundational principles shared in those sessions with best practices to handle very specific discipline, performance, leave, and reasonable accommodation situations. And the guidance shared will help you build the necessary framework to tackle numerous other specific and equally challenging situations.
FELTG’s annual supervisory series will get you up to speed quickly, without wasting any of your time. Just 60 minutes each month. The sessions are taught live by FELTG’s experience instructors AND you’ll have the chance to ask questions and get answers — in real time.
2023 dates and topics:
March 7: Why Supervisors Need to Use the Douglas Factors
If you’re not using the Douglas factor analysis to figure out an appropriate penalty for a misbehaving employee, then you’re doing it wrong. And when an appeal is filed, your action may not be so easy to defend without this justification. A scan of MSPB cases reveals how regularly Federal supervisors fail to understand these factors, and how that lack of understanding may sink the agency’s case. FELTG instructor Ann Boehm will explain the importance of the Douglas factors, using both foundational and recent case law examples, and walk you through the importance of each factor.
April 4: 5 Keys to Implementing and Managing a Successful Performance Opportunity Period
You’re not alone. Every agency has employees whose performance is unacceptable. The key to addressing poor performance is to initiate an opportunity to demonstrate acceptable performance (called everything from a PIP or OIP to an ODAP or DP). A successful opportunity period will either lead to sustained improved performance OR a defensible performance-based removal. From the Santos requirement to a post-PIP drop in performance, FELTG President Deborah Hopkins will explain the key steps to take and pitfalls to avoid.
May 2: They Just Won’t Show Up: Handling Excessive Absence
In a year when no-shows are more common than they should be, supervisors need to understand how to handle excessive absence, using the appropriate tools to correct employee behavior, while keeping in mind cases that involve reasonable accommodation or medical inability to perform. In 60 minutes, FELTG Senior Instructor Barbara Haga will share the documentation needed and steps necessary to effectively discipline an employee for excessive absence, leave abuse, and other related matters.
June 6: Ensuring Accountability with Hybrid and Teleworking Employees
Many experts agree: The performance success of a hybrid or telework environment will come down to managers and supervisors. You may think you know how to discipline. And you may think you know how to handle poor performance. Now that your employees are spread out beyond the physical workplace, you must hold all equally accountable for performance and conduct, regardless of where they physically work. FELTG President Deborah Hopkins will give you the tools and foundation to effectively do that, while also managing employees who remain in the physical workplace.
July 11: Trends in Hostile Work Environment Harassment: 2023 Edition
The pandemic sparked a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Pacific Americans and now the country is dealing with a steep increase in antisemitic threats and actions. How have these trends impacted the Federal workplace, and what is the supervisor’s role when it manifests in microaggressions, bias, harassment, or outright discrimination? This 60-minute webinar provides the tools supervisors need to recognize and quickly take effective action to prevent and correct illegal harassment in the workplace..
August 8: Providing Reasonable Accommodation for Invisible Disabilities
The effects of the pandemic live on in an increase in chronic fatigue and depression, not to mention the severe impact of long haul COVID. Meanwhile, chronic pain, diabetes, and other non-visible disabilities are on the rise as the Federal workplace continues to age. During this webinar, managers will learn how to find the right accommodation for a number of hidden disabilities.
August 22: What Supervisors Should Know About Official Time
The Labor-Management Statute holds labor and management equally accountable to the taxpayer with a shared responsibility to ensure that official time is authorized and used appropriately. In this 60-minute class, Ann Boehm will share everything that supervisors need to know to uphold that responsibility without overstepping their role. Attendees will learn who is entitled to official time — and who isn’t, along with the latest relevant case law and guidance.
Pricing
Early Bird Tuition:
- $270 per site, per session (payment required by February 24).
- Special series discounts available through February 24: $1,525 for the first 6 webinars or $1,795 for all 7. See registration form for details.
Standard Tuition:
- $295 per site, per session (payments made February 25 or later).
Working from home? Teleworkers may be added to a primary site registration for $60 each, per session, on a space-available basis.
Cancellation and No-show Policy for Registered Participants: Cancellations made after the cancel date on the registration form will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses. Pre-paid training using the “Pay Now” option will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses. No-shows will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses.
Course Description
Most disputes in federal agencies settle employment disputes — whether they initiate as grievances, EEO complaints, or as appeals of agency disciplinary actions. While it’s common to assume that settlement means the agency has a flaw in its case, it has no direct tie to liability or admissions of wrongdoing. Often, it’s the most efficient and effective way to handle a dispute and allow you to get back to focusing on your agency’s mission.
During this interactive half-day virtual training, Bob Woods will discuss the roles and responsibilities of individuals involved in settlement discussions, and will cover considerations for why and when to consider settlement as an option. In addition, he’ll explain concepts including confidentiality, legality, and enforceability.
Mr. Woods will also cover specific settlement terms that may be negotiated including references, compensatory damages, reinstatement or promotions, modifications to benefits, clean records, and more.
Learning objectives
Attendees will learn how to:
- Implement best practices in drafting plain language agreements.
- Structure a possible agreement.
- Identify the limits on settlement terms.
Plus, you’ll have opportunities to ask questions. The training will run from 1 – 4:30 pm ET, with 10 minute breaks throughout.
Date and Time
Wednesday, April 12, 2023, 1:00 – 4:30 pm eastern.
Instructor
Registration
Download Individual Registration Form
Price
- Early Bird Tuition (register by March 28): $370
- Standard Tuition (March 29 or later): $395
- Rates per registrant.
- Want to register a group? Group discounts for 10 or more attendees are available through March 28. Contact FELTG.
Event FAQs
- Can I attend Virtual Training from my government computer?
- FELTG uses Zoom to broadcast this Virtual Training Institute event. Many government computers and systems allow Zoom access. If for some reason your firewall will not allow access, you’re welcome to use your personal email address to register, and to attend the sessions from your personal device.
- Can I earn CLE credits for this class?
- CLE applications are the responsibility of each attendee; FELTG does not apply for the credits on behalf of attendees. If you are seeking CLE credit, attendees may use the materials provided by FELTG in submission to your state bar. Attendees may also request a certificate of completion which will contain the number of training hours attended.
- Can I share my access link with co-workers?
- No. Registration for this event is per individual, and access links may not be shared. Each link may only be used by one person.
- Can I register a teleworker?
- This event is individual registration, so the cost is the same whether the person is teleworking or in an agency facility.
- How do I receive a group rate discount?
- Group rates are available for agencies registering 10 or more individuals. Group discounts are available through March 28.
Cancellation and No-show Policy for Registered Participants: Cancellations made after the cancel date on the registration form will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses. Pre-paid training using the “Pay Now” option will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses. No-shows will not be refunded or given credit toward future courses.