KonTerra Resilience Services

KonTerra Resilience Services

Helping managers build important skills in managing for wellbeing.

Manager Training Series

Your organization’s managers are its most valuable asset. An employee’s relationship with their direct manager is the greatest predictor of their engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity. However, many managers serving with humanitarian, development, and advocacy organizations have limited training in people management processes and skills, or how to support staff who are under pressure.

Working in these sectors exposes staff to unusual levels of risk and stress. Many staff are at increased risk of experiencing vicarious trauma, burnout, and other stress reactions. Organizations operating in this sector have a responsibility to take measures to equip staff to manage these sorts of pressures and cope more effectively with distress.

One way to help your organization fulfill this duty of care is to invest in training designed to help managers “manage for wellbeing.” Equipping managers with necessary skills to communicate with and support their staff more effectively will:

  • Increase your managers’ job satisfaction, engagement with their own work, and commitment to the organization
  • Contribute to building a healthy organizational culture characterized by support, trust, and safety
  • Improve staff wellbeing, commitment, retention, and productivity over time

Series topics

Learn about the six main contributors to burnout and ways you can take action as a manager to prevent and reduce burnout.

Burnout is an occupational hazard for anyone in a high-stress role, especially those whose work exposes them to injustice, violence, and suffering. During this interactive 4-part training series, managers will learn and explore:

  • How to recognize burnout
  • The six main “drivers” of burnout
  • Tools and strategies managers can use to help prevent and reduce burnout
  • Specific strategies for helping staff (and managers themselves) operate more effectively over time in a context of perpetual urgency, work overload, and limited control over important variables.

Session Titles:

  1. Causes and signs of burnout: What is burnout? What causes it? How does it show up in our thoughts, feelings, and behavior?
  2. Preventing and reversing burnout: Self-care and beyond: What self-care strategies are most important when it comes to preventing burnout? What else should managers be doing to help prevent burnout?
  3. Tools for tackling the root causes of burnout: What can managers do to reduce the mismatches that are causing burnout?
  4. Strategies for staff experiencing burnout: How can managers effectively support staff experiencing burnout?

Learn ways to use coaching approaches and tools to support the wellbeing and ongoing development of your staff.

Managers are often expected to have all the answers, but there is more to being a good manager than being informed and decisive. In a high-stress context of unpredictable change, the best managers will know how to forge trust, build confidence, facilitate collaborative problem solving, and encourage development. This is what helps unlock previously untapped sources of creativity and fuels productivity. During this interactive 4-part training series, managers will learn and explore:

  • The fundamentals of an effective coaching approach for managers
  • When to use a coaching approach
  • Power tools of coaching managers can use every day, and how to put them into action

Session titles and descriptions

  1. The What, When, and Why of Coaching for Managers: What is coaching, and how is a coaching approach different from other approaches? When should you choose to use a coaching approach as a manager, and how can a coaching approach help your staff?
  2. It’s All in Your Mind: Essentials of A Coaching Mindset: What are the fundamentals of a coaching mindset, and how does this mindset support and shape every coaching conversation?
  3. Power Tools of Coaching for Managers (Part 1): Learn and practice power tools that managers can use in coaching conversations.
  4. Power Tools of Coaching for Managers (Part 2): Learn and practice power tools that managers can use in coaching conversations.

Learn processes and strategies for approaching challenging conversations and giving effective feedback as a manager.

Many managers do not feel comfortable having challenging conversations with their direct reports or giving evaluative or directive feedback. In this interactive workshop series, managers will learn skills, frameworks, and tools that will help them gain confidence and comfort giving feedback and engaging in other challenging conversations. During this 3-part series, managers will explore:

  • The most important skills for managing challenging conversations well
  • A framework and checklist to help you approach challenging conversations (and know what to do afterwards)
  • Types of feedback managers should be giving
  • Great questions to ask and other power tools for managers

Session titles and descriptions

  1. A Checklist for Challenging Conversations: Tips and strategies for handling challenging conversations before, during, and after the interaction.
  2. Appreciation, Advice, and Evaluation: Types of feedback managers should be giving their team members, and when/how to give each of them.
  3. Key Questions to Ask And Other Power Tools for Managers: Powerful questions and other tools managers can use when giving effective feedback.

More about the manager training series

Depending on topic, each series includes:

  • Three or four 90-minute training webinars delivered at 1 or 2-week intervals
  • Virtual “seats” for up to 25 participants
  • Written resources and tools for participants (including a PDF of the slide decks used during the workshops)
  • Co-facilitation by a team of two professionals who have managerial and sector experience, as well as expertise in staff support

Following the series, you will receive a report that includes satisfaction survey results for the series, and observations and recommendations from the facilitation team on additional training, staff support initiatives, or other actions the organization may wish to undertake.