PRG-Schultz, the world's leading audit recovery firm, has recently completed the first full cycle of its new Leadership Development Institute. The Institute is part of PRG-Shultz's ongoing commitment to developing the current and future leaders of its company.

Mr. Herminio Hernandez, then Director of Organizational Performance and Development at PRG-Schultz, conceived the Leadership Development Institute in response to the increasing cost of recruiting top talent to the company. Mr. Hernandez believed that the company could prepare high potential employees for positions as Supervisors, Managers, Senior Managers, and Executives instead of hiring from the outside.

PRG-Schultz selected Shaun Hopkins Seminars to both design and deliver the new program. In order to make the program a success, there were two prerequisites. The first was the need for the program to be integrated into the current performance management system. Through the annual employee performance reviews and the list of core competencies, the company created a Succession Planning Process to identify the candidates who would most likely succeed at the next level of management. Corporate Psychology Resources, an expert in succession planning and 360ª feedback, assisted PRG-Schultz with this phase of the implementation. The company invited this list of candidates to the Leadership Development Institute to prepare them for their future roles.

The second prerequisite for the success of the program was to obtain the buy-in of the company's Executive Committee. Everyone agreed that this leadership training needed to be different from the off-the-shelf programs currently available. As a result, each team of participants in the Institute was tasked with identifying a problem or opportunity facing the company and then apply the skills learned in the Institute to address that issue. Each group presented its ideas to a panel of Executive Committee members for approval on the last day of the Institute. The teams then conducted pilot projects over the following 90 days to test their solutions before company-wide implementation.

PRG-Schultz sponsors four separate Leadership Development Institutes each year, one for each level of management. Each Institute is 10 days in length, spread over four weekends. The company invites the families of the participants to attend the final weekend, held in Orlando, Florida. This is in recognition of the support that the families provide the participants while attending the Institute.

The results have been impressive. Recruiting costs are down, 75% of participants were promoted within one year, and the pilot projects have solved real company problems. One participant described the program saying: "The content of the program is similar to material being used at the best graduate business schools in the country. And at a fraction of the cost! The program has successfully taken solid management principals and applied them to everyday PRG applications. In my opinion, this is invaluable to anyone from a supervisor to a vice president."

Monthly Tip

Coaching

The goal of coaching is to encourage self-correcting behaviour and long-term superior performance on the part of the employee. Coaching is a style of management that follows a four-step process:

1. Establish Relationship

• Coaching is based on building trust, openness and respect between the coach and the employee

2. Recognize Opportunity

• Coaching is based on a need
• This need may be based on a need to improve performance or a desire to achieve greater results

3. Assess Priorities

• At the beginning of the coaching process, the coach helps the employee assess the employee's concerns, commitments, future vision, goals and needs

4. Coach through Conversations

• Coaching occurs through one-on-one conversations between the coach and the employee
• During the conversation, the coach and employee build rapport, discuss progress, identify priorities, assess strengths/limitations, set goals and create action plans

What's On

ISPI Selects Shaun Hopkins Seminars for Encore Presentation

Marketing Skills for Trainers: How to Promote Your Training Service, presented by Shaun Hopkins, received an evaluation score in the top 15 of all sessions offered at the International Society for Performance Improvement's 43rd Annual International Conference in Vancouver.

The ISPI has invited Shaun to present this session again next year in Dallas, Texas, April 6-11, 2006 as an Encore Presentation. Encore Presentations are a special feature of an ISPI Conference, highlighting the best sessions from the previous year.

Session Outline
Marketing Skills for Trainers: How to Promote Your Training Service
Shaun Hopkins, President,
Shaun Hopkins Seminars Ltd

Having difficulty filling your classes? Need to improve the marketing of your training? In this session, you will learn dozens of practical tips on how to promote your training, the four keys to marketing success, and how to create a marketing plan. Learn how to align your training with the priorities of your company, to differentiate your courses from the competition, and how to build lasting relationships with your internal customers.

Participants will be able to:  

1. Create alignment between training and the company's mission and goals.  
2. Select the promotional techniques for their marketing campaigns.  
3. Write persuasive hooks in their marketing materials
4. Build positive working relationships with their customers.
5. Write a marketing plan for their training services.

I must admit, I only purchased this book because of the fascinating title (marketing does work!). But once I began reading this short, 204 page dazzler, I couldn't put it down!

This book turns conventional wisdom on its head. The authors use the science of economics to answer perplexing, everyday questions, such as: What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How do experts bend the facts? What really caused crime rates to plunge during the past decades? Do real-estate agents have their client's best interests at heart? What makes a perfect parent?

Through a combination of storytelling and wit, Levitt and Dubner use the economist's tools of collecting data and asking simple questions to look at everyday situations in a new and enlightening way.

Works from areas of study outside of leadership remind me of the importance of what we do as managers. The premise of Freakonomics reminds me of the importance of being curious, asking insightful questions and gathering data before coming to a conclusion or making a decision.

Managers must make dozens of decisions everyday, and make them quickly. Every problem is a chance to learn something new and to examine an issue in a different way. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time we have to make good decisions, we often try to recall our experiences on how we dealt with a similar issue in the past in order to provide us with answers for the present.

Freakonomics reminded me that part of being a good manager is the ability to ask good questions. It reminded me not to always rely on "the way we do things around here". It reminded me to challenge the conventional wisdom and make good decisions based on all the information available, not on expediency.