Supervisory Training Courses

At FELTG, we understand how important the managers and supervisors are to every agency’s workforce. These training courses are specifically designed to meet essential training requirements and provide your supervisors with the skills they need to effectively manage their employees within the guidelines of the law. Managers and supervisors who attend FELTG training learn how to comply with President Biden’s Executive Orders and how to streamline procedures for handling poor performance per OPM and OMB requirements. From first-line supervisors to senior executives, federal managers at all levels will benefit from the various adaptations of these programs.

Several of these courses, as well as all of FELTG’s Leadership and Team Effectiveness 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. Any of these programs may be presented onsite, or on a virtual platform. See below for program topics and descriptions.

MG-1: UnCivil Servant: Holding Employees Accountable for Performance and Conduct (1-2 days)

MG-2: The Supervisor’s Role in EEO (1/2-1 day)

For many federal supervisors, the EEO process is mysterious and foreboding. With this course, FELTG aims to make it less so. Federal supervisors have a role to play in the EEO process – and it’s an important one. FELTG’s experienced instructors describe that role in detail and provide specific guidance of how to handle each step along the way, whether the complaint involves allegations of intentional discrimination, hostile work environment harassment, retaliation, or failure to accommodate. Attendees will leave this course with a thorough understanding of how to best defend against EEO complaints, and how to foster a healthy work environment where fewer complaints are filed.

Course Topics: The role of EEO in the federal government; defining protected categories: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, genetics, and reprisal; what to do if you’re a Responding Management Official in a complaint; defending against frivolous complaints; EEO witness tips.

MG-3: Preventing and Correcting Sexual Harassment in the Federal Workplace (1/2-1 day)

The #MeToo movement has had a noticeable influence on the workplace. There has been a noticeable increase in sexual harassment complaints, according to EEOC reports. Supervisors who attend this course will learn their responsibilities to respond to harassment claims, as well as how to effectively address situations before they rise to the level of harassment.

Course Topics: Definition of sexual harassment; circumstances that constitute harassment; roles in harassment; tangible employment actions; LGBTQ protections; same-sex harassment; strategies for prevention.

MG-4: Supervising in a Unionized Environment (1 day)

Does it sometimes feel like there are different rules for employees in unions? Well, there are. And if you supervise bargaining unit employees, you need to know those rules. This course will explain those rules and everything else federal supervisors need to know about federal labor unions.

Course Topics: Collective bargaining agreements; official time; LR meetings; an overview of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute; fundamental employee, union, and management rights; unfair labor practices; union representative rights to participate in meetings; controlling official time; handling information requests.

MG-5: Effectively Managing and Communicating with Federal Employees (1-2 days)

There is a significant difference between managing and leading, and we’ll explain that difference in detail. Attendees will leave this training with the know-how to use social styles to communicate and manage conflict with precision, and a structured approach to high-stakes conversations.

Course Topics: 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.

MG-6: Leave-Related Discipline & Medical Removals
(1 day)

Federal employees enjoy a wide variety of leave-related benefits. And sometimes they enjoy a little too much leave. Can you discipline, or even remove, an employee for taking too much leave? You most certainly can, but it’s not easy. Let FELTG walk you through all the charges and rules, as well as how to handle employees are unable to perform the job due to medical reasons. The course includes a workshop to help you hone the skills you need to handle the most challenging leave situations.

Course Topics: Handling the leave abuser according to the legal discipline process; documentation necessary to discipline an employee for leave abuse; steps to disciplining leave abusers; AWOL charges; leave restriction; excessive absence removals; medical inability to perform removals. 

MG-7: Making Performance Plans Work (1 day)

Don’t let your poor performance drag your unit or your agency down.  This one-day course will give you the direction you need to effectively and quickly deal with poor performance in the federal workplace – and to be able to survive third-party review.

Course Topics: Legal and regulatory background; environment; system requirements; performance plan elements and standards; feedback; applying performance plans; MSPB decisions on performance measures; Performance Plan Review Workshop; Within-Grade Increases; unacceptable performance; Opportunity to Demonstrate Acceptable Performance; taking performance-based actions.

MG-8: Understanding Misconduct Investigations (1-2 days)

This one- or two-day dive into investigations provides managers and supervisors with a thorough grasp of how misconduct should be investigated to withstand third-party scrutiny.

Course Topics: Investigative authority; investigative interviews; witness rights in a unionized organization; comparative liability; collecting penalty evidence; what supervisors should know about reprisal and retaliation.

MG-9: Handling Behavioral Health Issues and Threats of Violence in the Federal Workplace (1-2 days)

These are the kind of workplace challenges that make you pause and, sometimes, doubt yourself. What should you do if someone threatens violence at your agency? How can you best prepare yourself to protect the lives of those around you? Are there risk factors that might give you an indication of when someone will become violent? What do you do when an employee with bipolar disorder is going through a manic phase? Our behavior health expert will provide you with real answers – once that require more understanding more than the law says. For federal managers, these topics are too important to ignore.

Course Topics: Your agency’s legal obligation to provide its employees with a safe workplace; ADAAA requirements on accommodating individuals with mental impairments and other behavioral health issues; types of mental disabilities and how they may exhibit in the workplace; the “direct threat” analysis; dealing with suicidal employees; dos and don’ts when working employees who have behavioral health issues; myths and facts about targeted violence in the workplace; individual characteristics that put an employee at higher risk of committing an act of violence; steps to take if someone becomes violent in the workplace; developing and implement an in-house threat management team to deal with threat assessments; risk management; the best ways to keep employees safe during a crisis.

MG-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. 

MG-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.

MG-12: The High-Performing Team (1 day)

This interactive, full-day learning experience is based upon Social Styles, an industry-tested assessment that helps leaders leverage individual personality types and strengths to promote accurate communication, diminish unhealthy conflict, and increase individual and collective performance. The High-Performing Team, led by nationally recognized leadership scholar and trainer Dr. Anthony J. Marchese, includes assessments, relevant articles and videos, real-life simulations, and practical suggestions for ongoing sustainability.

Course topics:  The neuroscience behind peak performance; the composition of teams of excellence; strategies to understand and negotiate individual differences; align team goals with those of the agency.

MG-13: Developing & Defending Discipline: Holding Federal Employees Accountable (3 days)

Holding federal employees accountable for performance and conduct is easier than you might think. Too many supervisors believe that an employee’s protected activity (EEO complaints, whistleblower disclosures, or union activity) precludes the supervisor from initiating a suspension or removal, but that’s just not true. FELTG is here to make federal supervisors’ lives easier by clarifying those misconceptions while helping supervisors understand how to take defensible misconduct actions quickly and fairly – actions that withstand scrutiny on appeal by the MSPB, EEOC, or in grievance arbitration.

Course Topics:

Day 1 – Accountability for Conduct and Performance, Part I: Accountability and supervisory authority; discipline and misconduct theory and practice; penalty defense and due process; discipline procedures and appeals; psychology of performance appraisal; performance-based removal procedures.

Day 2 – Accountability for Conduct and Performance, Part II: Completing a performance action; team workshop; mentoring programs; handling the absent employee; union considerations; understanding the federal supervisor’s personal liability in employment actions.

Day 3 – Defending Against Discrimination Complaints: The Supervisor’s Role: The role of EEO in the federal government; defining protected categories: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, genetic information and reprisal; theories of discrimination; agency defenses; what to do if you’re a Responding Management Official in a complaint; what happens if you’re called as an EEO witness.

Note: This course fulfills the 5 CFR 412.202(b) mandatory training requirements for new supervisors.

MG-14: Managing Federal Employee Accountability
(5 days)

One of the biggest myths about federal employees is that it’s very difficult to hold them accountable. This five-day program will disprove that myth, while making lives much easier for the supervisors who attend. Our presenters will explain how to take defensible misconduct and performance actions quickly and fairly. This is the only course that teaches supervisors the skills to manage in a unionized environment and to handle leave abuse, EEO complaints, and reasonable accommodation requests? Attendees will also learn workplace management, communication, and leadership skills that will help when dealing with the most challenging situations and employees. And then there’s this bonus: The course fulfills the 5 CFR 412.202(b) mandatory training requirements for new supervisors.

Course Topics (note: the order of training days may be altered based on instructor availability):

Day 1 – Uncivil Servant: Holding Employees Accountable for Performance and Conduct: Fundamentals of disciplinary actions and unacceptable performance actions; establishing rules of conduct; proving misconduct; selecting a defensible penalty; providing due process via agency discipline procedures; writing valid performance standards; implement an Opportunity to Demonstrate Acceptable Performance; removal for unacceptable performance in 31 days.

Day 2 – The Supervisor’s Role in EEO: The role of EEO in the federal government; defining protected categories: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability and reprisal; what to do if you’re a Responding Management Official in a complaint; EEO witness tips.

Day 3 – Essential Management Skills for Federal Supervisors: Communicating effectively with employees; managing a multigenerational workforce; handling difficult employees; managing a mobile workforce; mentorship; identifying your leadership skills; bullying v. harassment; “robust debate” and union employees.

Day 4 – Managing Employee Leave Abuse: Types of leave and leave entitlements; overviews of Family and Medical Leave Act; Office of Workers Compensation Program absences; leave as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act; leave as religious accommodation; leave abuse; alternative, modified and compressed work schedules; managing telework; the magic of Medical Inability to Perform removals.

Day 5 – Supervising in a Unionized Environment: What every supervisor should know about federal labor unions; collective bargaining agreements; official time; LR meetings; an overview of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute; fundamental employee, union, and management rights; unfair labor practices; controlling official time; handling information requests.

or 

Day 5 – Effectively Managing and Communicating with Federal Employees: 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.

MG-15: The Performance Equation: Providing Feedback That Makes a Difference (1/2-day)

There is one action you can take that, when done effectively, could have a major impact on your team’s morale and productivity, and that is providing employees with honest feedback.  This half-day training experience will equip participants to nurture a culture of candor, while exposing feedback myths and ineffective practices.

Course Topics: Tools and frameworks for training others to provide feedback; and best practices for nurturing a culture of healthy and actionable feedback.

MG-16: Jumping In: Be Confident When Managing Conflict (1 day)

Conflict is going to happen. And the best thing a manager can do is address it confidently. Avoiding conflict or failing to address it effectively will put a serious crimp in agency morale and productivity. This simulation-based training will examine conflict through interpersonal relationships as well as within teams. Attendees will leave with an invaluable skill in their supervisory toolbox.

Course Topics: Reassessing beliefs about conflict; the dimensions of conflict; misconceptions about conflict; benefits of conflict; practical strategies for facilitating conflict.