New Supervisor Training

Our leadership continue on
because it's exactly what we build.
Our leadership development program,
we view leadership development as a continuum.
It truly is a maturity model.
We feel that before you expect people to run
they have to be able to walk,
before they walk, they have to learn how to crawl.
So we start leadership development,
very early in person's career
and then build it, and broaden it, and strengthen it
throughout a person's career.
And our supervisory development program is one aspect,
so let me go ahead and get into the presentation here.
The main points that I am going to be addressing with regard to
our supervisory development program is number one,
it's not a standalone developmental program.
It is thoroughly integrated into an overall
leadership continuum development model
and we brand that the NRC Leadership Academy.
Our focus is on developing ECQ competencies,
plus supervisory competencies.
So we take advantage of the ECQ competencies,
the 20 underlying competencies
and apply that as our leadership development model.
We also in our leadership development program,
our leadership academy, use a progressive approach
where one aspect of the program builds on the previous aspect.
So by the time a person becomes a formal supervisor,
chances are they have already have lot of those
supervisory courses under their belts
before they move into the formal supervision.
And also what's important is
our program fully meets the requirements
for supervisory leadership development
under 5CFR Part 4-12.
Here is a schematic of the leader's academy
and it shows the various workforce leadership segments
and those are vertical bars.
So we start leadership development
before people move into any sort of a formal supervision
or even a team leadership role.
We call these situational leaders.
So these are non supervisory people
who are maybe beginning to think about the idea
of moving under formal supervision,
but they are not there yet.
So we start building some leadership there.
We also have what we consider pre-supervisors,
team leaders, supervisors, pre-executives
and then executive manager
and senior leader executives.
And the foundation for the leadership development program
for each of these segments
is we offer a variety of modes of learning.
Instructor lead, online training,
may different forms of informal learning,
experiential learning, coaching, mentoring,
seminars; basically the full breadth of learning modes
that also many of you who are in the audience,
I am sure, also utilizing your organizations.
It's also founded on the ECQ competencies
as I described earlier and then very importantly,
the foundation for programs
are the values that we live by at the NRC,
they are very important to us.
So that's a schematic of the leadership academy.
Now what I want to do is start drilling down
into various segments of the workforce
that we focus our leadership development on.
First let me show this slide. This is simply...
it's a remake of the leader's academy slide that OPM has.
We made this circular.
At NRC we have to do things a little bit different,
but we took a great idea from OPM.
We innerized it and made it so it looks more cyclic
or more of a circle starting with drilling
the core competencies in our early development programs,
leadership development programs
and then progressing around clockwise through team leaders,
supervisors, managers and senior executives.
Let's start with the situational leaders
and the situational leaders
probably should provide a brief definition.
It's listed there.
These are non-supervisory personnel
who want to develop their leadership skills
and competencies.
And the curriculum that we have,
we started off with a self assessment for leadership
and in this course there is a series of diagnostics
that employee state.
We start off with 360.
We include and MBTI, Myers-Briggs.
We also do, it called the SDI, Skills Deployment Inventory,
but that helps identify for the individual
where their strengths lie where some of their
developmental opportunities might exist
and that follows on with the leadership orientation
which gives them some basic leadership skills,
but also gives them a better idea of what to expect
if they were to become a formal positional leader.
So that... many people, they often view that supervision
is just the next step in your career.
They start off as a non-supervisor.
They develop and then ultimately at some point
they become a supervisor
and that's probably not the best model
or best expectation to have.
It works a lot better
if people go through a very thoughtful process,
really understand
what positional leadership is all about
and choose to go there,
because that's what really attracts them
and appeals to them as opposed to thinking that
it's just the logical next step
after being a high performing individual employee.
If the skill sets are completely different,
the rewards, the personal rewards and gratification
is much different as a positional leader than as a doer
and so this course helps people sort through
and a little bit about
whether or not positional leadership is really for them
and then also because one of the foundations
for good leadership is good interpersonal skills.
We see that as being a foundational course
for people before they move in
any kind of formal supervisory course.
So that's the curriculum that we have
for the situational leaders.
We also take full advantage of
Harvard subscription of online course.
We have 42 different online leadership course
that we find to be very, very effective.
We also do other activities.
We develop a leadership development plan.
That results actually from the self-assessment
for leadership course that we have.
We also conduct quarterly briefings
and mentoring for the situational leaders
and this is not something
that we just automatically allow for employees.
Employees have to request this from the supervisor.
The supervisor has to feel that they are ready to take on
or to pursue development in a way
that's going to lead them down a leadership development path.
[Inaudible]
The question was about the 360, how is it that we do 360,
how do we administer,
how do we apply the results for non-supervisors.
The 360s that we use and right now we are using the OPM 360
and leadership skills are fairly universal.
They transcend various positions
and if a person is a good communicator,
you don't need to be,
a positional leader to be a good communicator.
It's extremely important,
the higher that you move up in the hierarchy,
but even front line level staff,
need to be good communicators
and so communication's one aspect,
that's assessed in a 360.
There are many of those competencies that transcend
certain positions of leadership and so they are still
very applicable even at the staff level.
So it helps the staff person identify,
again where they are strong,
where do they need some development,
and then that information is used as input
to the development of a leadership development plan/
And notice I used the term LDP,
well it's basically IDP,
but the focus is on leadership,
so we refer to that as our leadership development plan.
So the 360 in terms of how we administer it,
is really no different than how we would administer
four other segments of our leadership.
Your welcome.
The next segment that I want to discuss is pre-supervisors
and this program, it' somewhat unique in NRC.
I have worked in two other agencies
and even the other two agencies
I had worked for prior to coming to NRC
had such a program.
Although it's a program I thought was probably needed.
And this is, it's leadership potential program.
It is a competitive program, 12 months in duration
and is specifically designed to prepare team leaders.
to prepare people for team leadership
or supervisory leadership
or other positions requiring supervisory responsibilities.
So a person does not need to be a positional leader
to get into this program.
It's all about preparing them to be a positional leader
and again it's a competitive program.
Now one advantage to this program,
is that if they were later to apply
for a formal supervisory position,
they get a higher ranking in the competitive process.
So by virtue of having completed this course,
they get preferential ranking when it comes time
to compete for a formal supervisory course.
So that's a tremendous advantage in terms of
being able to compete against the competition
for those formal supervisory positions.
The formal requirements are over on the left hand column
and again you see one thing that I showed you
on the situational leaders.
This is where one program builds upon another program.
I mentioned, starting off, we use a progressive approach.
We start off with a self assessment program.
If they have already completed that
in the situational leaders program, great!
If they haven't then they have to take it here.
Leadership orientation, same thing.
If they have already had it as a situational leader
they don't need to take it here.
If they haven't had it, they do have to take it.
So all of the elements on the left hand side of the column
and those are formal courses,
those have to completed either previously
through another program as a situational leader
or if they are coming in cold, they have to complete all these.
So those are the required courses over on the left,
and then the ones on the right are courses
that we require of the Harvard online courses.
So we require those in addition to those classroom courses
that are identified over on the left hand column.
Now team leaders; let's talk about team leaders for a minute.
Team leaders is not a formal competitive program.
But many of the team leaders that we have
came from graduates of the LPP program
that I just described, the Leadership Potential Program.
If they did not come through the leadership potential program
then these are the requirements that we have
for the team leaders
and again in curriculum for formal courses,
classroom courses that are over in the left hand column
and on the right hand column,
we have a series of the Harvard courses that
are available for the team leaders
and as with the previous programs I described,
the first program over on the left side of the column
where we have them complete
a self assessment development, a LDP.
That LDP will contain specific elements, specific requirements
for their development as well as part of the team leader program.
So it's a combination of being a standard program
with these elements, plus a customized program
to focus on development where the 360
or some of these other diagnostic tools
suggest that they need to have some development.
So it's a combination of a core set of courses
and a combination of custom development
tailored specifically to that individual
as identified in their leadership development program.
The person that typically this is geared for
is the GS 14 through 15.
As with the LPP,
people that graduate from a team leader program,
they do get preferential treatment
when it comes time to compete for a formal supervisory job.
So the next level of formal supervision
above a team leader would be of branch chief.
When they compete for branch chief
they get special consideration,
preferential consideration in that competition.
Supervisor development program;
this is the main thing that we are here to talk about,
that I couldn't talk about it in isolation
of the other elements
of our leadership development program.
So over there on the left hand side
of the column is the 14 course,
core curriculum for supervisors.
Now the preceding program identify;
the LPP course, the team leaders program,
those programs were subsets of these 14 courses
that are shown here.
So again this builds on the previous programs
that I just described,
but if a person comes in cold,
let's say we hire someone to be
a first line level supervisor at the NRC,
we expect them to complete these 14 courses.
We expect them to complete it within two years.
The entire curricula is 140 hours in duration.
So 140 hours of training over the two year program.
They can complete it quicker, if they were able to,
but we do require them to complete all 14 of the courses.
Now the Harvard courses
over on the right hand side of the column,
those are optional course and are available.
And more often than not,
where you will see individuals taking those courses
is where they have some learning opportunities
that reveal themselves
through the different diagnostic tools that we apply
and they would use these as interventions
to show up some of those opportunities at a 360,
they suggest they should develop in,
but they are also not limited to these.
Do they have to take the 14?
Yes, that's non-negotiable, but if their LDP suggests
that they need development in other areas,
they can go through a wide variety of venues
to get the learning and development they need
to close whatever gaps are identified through that process
and again this is tailored for the GS14-15 level.
You see GG as General Grade, being at NRC,
or accepted service,
we use slightly different terminology,
but the grades correspond to the GS schedule.
The pre-executive;
the pre-executive program that we have is our SCSCDP.
One of the things that's relatively unique about NRC
is we have near 100% placement of our SCSCDP graduates
and the SCSCDP program
is one of the primary recruiting tools
that we use to fill our SCS jobs.
Now there are occasions when NRC does hire SCS
from outside the organization,
but the primary recruiting tool is the SCSCDP.
Right now, we have a surplus of graduates
that are waiting placement
and I think the attrition has slowed down a little bit
because of the weakening economy/
Many of the SCS haven't left at the rates
that we have initially projected.
So we still have a pool to select from our last SCSCDP.
Our SCSCDP addresses all of the requirements
that are contained in the regulations 4 in SCSCDP,
in 5CFR Part 4-12.
the plan as the regulations require must be approved by OPM.
Minimum of 80 hours training, focus on ECQ,
so that inter-agency training,
minimum four month rotational assignment,
SCS mentor, all those are required elements.
We also do something that are a little bit
above and beyond for the SCSCDP inside NRC.
We do 360s coaching.
We have other specialized training
focused on particular responsibilities
and competencies that a supervisor needs to include
performance appraisal workshop,
how to do the performance evaluations,
financial management seminar, acquisition management.
Some of these course are required
of the supervisory development program and for the most part,
the individuals that are selectively,
when they compete successfully in the SCSCDP,
many of those individuals have already come through
those earlier leadership programs I described.
So some of the training that's mandatory
down in the bottom part of the slide,
they may not to take that again,
if they have already had it.
Executive managers and senior leaders,
this is once you become an SCS,
this is what we require of our SCS.
It's a very flexible program that we have for a SCS.
The one thing that is required
about our SCS leadership development program
is that they conduct a 360
and that they have an executive coach
to help them digest the results of the 360
to assess what are those results really mean to them
and the purpose of the quote is three hours of coaching
to work with that executive,
to help that executive understand
what the results are really telling them
and then through discussion with the coach figure out
what areas of the EDP suggest that might be right
for development for that particular executive.
That is the only required part that we have.
360, the coaching and then an EDP or LDP,
leadership development plan.
That... that I just described is required every three years.
Every executive will undergo them
and the theory behind the three years,
is that's how much time it takes
before you start seeing results
and being able to show up those developmental opportunities
that emerge out of the 360 coaching process.
So it's a continuous process, continually refinement,
continually improving and using the 360 in the coaching
to help guide that entire process.
We also, now this is not a requirement,
but we do strongly encourage the 14 course curricula
for the supervisors or equivalent.
We also require or suggest that
they participate in other learning form
to include a quarterly leadership seminar
that we have where we have invited guests
to come in to speak on various leadership topics.
Alright, question?
Yes, I have a question from USDA.
Do you have in-house instructors
that facilitate the classroom sessions
or do you utilize vendor services?
Combination of the two;
we rely very heavily in our leadership
and professional skills program on contractors
to come in and present the courses.
They are similar courses.
We also have in-house instructors.
One of the courses that we have,
particularly for new people that we pull in,
it's a course that's designed to just orient them
to the work of NRC, to follow NRC, what it is,
what it does and we tap many of our senior leaders
to include our senior most career level person
inside the agency,
that's our executive director of operations,
who personally comes
and presents in that course to describe NRC.
Very important course for people that are new to NRC
to orient them to the work that the agency does.
In that case, we utilize our senior leaders.
Other courses, we have professional instructors
that are part of our staff,
or the people that help develop our course
and participate in one way or another in the courses.
I would say, the majority of the courses,
that we have as part of our leadership development program,
we do outsource.
I would like to go ahead, and before I summarize
we have another question in the audience.
Hi, I am Peggy Fernandez from USDA.
I notice on the SCS portion,
you had the three-year refresher
that we need to go and continuously do that.
What about the other components of the programs?
Do you have any other refresher components?
Very good question and the answer to that is yes.
For example, for supervisors we have 24 hours
annually refresher training.
Now what we don't have right now,
we are in the process of tweaking
what that program looks like,
exactly what will the content be.
One of the things we are struggling with,
I mentioned that the core 14 course curricula
that we now have supervisors is 140 hours
and that's a lot of development
while we are convinced the content is the right content
and they focus on the competencies
and skills that supervisors do need to their jobs,
we feel that we can probably do that
in a more timely efficient way.
And so even with our fairly recent,
just the curricula I just described, the 14 courses,
we implemented that efficiently in November of this last year.
That we now when revisit that
and ask ourselves can we deliver the same content
in a slightly different mode
or in a slightly different way so that,
it can be done in less time
than the 140 hours we currently spend.
So that's one change we are making.
The other change we are making is
what exactly will that 24 hours
of continuing refresher supervisory training look like
and which of those courses will be
pulled out off the required 14 course curriculum now
or do we need to develop something new
that's more general,
that spans a larger number of supervisory
skills sets and competencies.
So if you would have asked me this question a year from now,
I will be able to have a more complete answer for you.
One more question?
Just spent this year.
Do you have any post assessments?
Any post assessments?
Yeah after taking up these, for instance.
The pre-assessment, it's more about the diagnostics
to figure out where the employee is.
Now in terms of post assessments on say,
how well the supervisor is performing
as result of these learning interventions
that's more determined by the performance evaluation process,
is the employee performing well.
Now I should say that, we are in the process now
of implementing a course assessment methodology.
We are following the Kirkpatrick model,
but we have not done it in a highly systematic way.
and nor has it been automated.
We are in the process of doing that now,
using our LMS to be able to automate our assessments.
Starting off with the level assessment,
even though the level one is not,
we don't view that as being the endpoint
of where you want to be.
We also want to be able to measure,
has learning taken place,
has there been a change of behaviors,
has it had a bottom line impact
in terms of supervisory performance,
We are not there yet.
We are just now, as I mentioned,
in the process of automating the level ones.
We have been piloting that over the last two months.
We are going to be rolling that out now
over the next several months.
One more question in the back.
One more question from CFTC, how many staff do you have
and how many employees and managers?
I have 59 staff in my organization,
split between a technical training center
in Chattanooga, Tennessee
where we so some very Hard technical training
in the nuclear arena
and then I have a professional skills developmental center
here in the DC area over in Bethesda, Maryland,
the staff is roughly equally split
between those two organizations.
I also have responsibility for knowledge management and
organization development
which we manage out our office in Bethesda.
As far as supervisors beneath me,
I have got two deputies reporting to me
and under one of those deputies I have four managers,
under the other deputy I have two managers.
How large is NRC?
NRC has a workforce of a little more than 4000 FTE
of which one third of that has been acquired
over the last three and a half years or four years,
a very rapid growth, in anticipation
of expanded nuclear energy in this country.
Okay, in summary, I am going to wrap up here,
the way that we approach supervisory development
it's not as standalone program,
but rather it's integrated into
an overall leadership development model,
built-largely upon OPM's leadership journey.
We truly believe and build leadership
at all levels in the organization
believing that leadership development,
it is a maturity model.
We use a progressive approach
where each level builds on the previous level.
We have a combination of open processes
as well as competitive processes,
sometimes we assign, we have mandatory
and elective courses in curricula
for various segments of our leadership development
and our program overall,
it's more structured at the early levels.
It is very prescribed
at the lower levels of leadership development,
but then once a person gets to the level of SCS,
it's very, very tailored with the one required element,
being the 360 and executive coaching,
and the development of the executive development plan,
that the executive is then expected to execute on
and then repeat the coaching and 360 every three years.
So if there are no further questions in the audience,
I would like to conclude again by thanking OPM
for this opportunity to share
what we are doing at NRC with all of you.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon everyone.
My name is Nichole Vennell.
I am from the Office of Workforce Development
at the National Cancer Institute,
one of 27 different institutes
and centers at the National Institutes of Health.
I want to echo with what Jody said and thank OPM,
especially Julie Brill and Karen Simpson for us down today.
I also need to thank as Jody did my
fellow program developers for the program
that I am primarily going to be talking about today.
Sharon Connolly, one of the colleagues in my office
has done the lion's share of program development,
for our new program called the Empowered Supervisor
and Sophia Stewart Sago has been
invaluable in terms of our support
for what we are going to be doing.
For folks that are here, and you have noticed this
through the first presentation, if you have questions,
please raise your hand
and we will get the microphone to you,
that is so folks that are viewing it over the webcast
can have a chance to hear the question,
as well as hopefully they can hear an answer.
So just a little bit about our office first.
We, as I mentioned are in the National Cancer Institute
which has about 3000 FTEs
and probably an additional 1000-2000 depending upon season,
other employees, contractors,
fellows in terms of our large training organization as well.
We have anywhere between 400-450 supervisors of record,
and anywhere between 30-60 new supervisors each year.
So when we are thinking about the audience
that we are trying to attract,
those are the numbers that we are working with.
Our office itself, in addition to doing supervisor training,
does organizational development work.
We also have an entire continuum of leadership development
programs for leader at all levels.
We also focus on a number of pipeline programs in our office.
Some scientific, but mostly administrative
and communications
then we also develop a lot of resources for our staff to use,
libraries, fact sheets, that kind of thing.
And one of our charges, is to figure out
how NCI can meet the new OPM requirements
that have come out relative to supervisory training.
We are actually really happy with the new requirements
because this is a training that we have always been
interested in offering for our staff.
As we looked at the continuum of programs,
we thought that that was the one critical piece
that was missing even with
all of the other offerings that we have.
So the way that the NCI addressing,
the OPM requirements is in two ways.
One is the Empowered Supervisor
which I am going to be talking about in more detail
during the rest of my presentation
and the other is of course,
called holding in play is accountable.
In determining how to create the Empowered Supervisor
which is an internal program,
we benchmark with other successful
supervisor training programs
both within NIH and outside.
We also surveyed a certain number of NCI supervisors and
asked them what do you need, what have you had that worked,
what haven't you had that would like,
both in terms of topics
and also in terms of program components itself,
the structure of the program.
Is it one week intensive thing and then you go,
is it something that happen ever so often.
The holding employees accountable is
done by an external vendor
that is something that we are requiring of all NCI supervisors
over the course of the next two years.
In particular, it addresses unacceptable performance,
including written reprimands, suspensions, firing, testifying.
It also though addresses,
conducting performance appraisals for employees
by how do you write [inaudible] be able to do that.
One of the most important things
that the instructor of that course says,
is that the things that he teaches
are to be used when everything else has already failed
and the everything else
is what we cover in the Empowered Supervisor,
mentoring employees, improving performance,
conducting appraisals as well.
So I am now going to talk specifically
about the Empowered Supervisor Program.
We are incredibly excited about the program in part,
because it launched this week.
So this is sort of the press information
and we will get back to you in about
six months with how everything went.
It's a very highly interactive training program
designed to allow supervisors
to do their job to the best of their abilities.
All supervisors can participate.
This is not limited to new supervisors,
although that is the target audience for what we are doing.
The pilot as I mentioned was launched this week
and we will go through November.
We have a maximum of 25 slots in the program for this pilot,
we have 15 participants that have just started with us.
In terms of logistics,
the delivery method is primarily in person classroom.
We have eight half day sessions,
spread over the course of 5 months at about equal intervals,
and the cost of participant internally is $1200 per person.
We made sure to align the development of this program
with the leadership and management competencies
for NIH overall.
We also made sure that it was certified
for contractor requirements
and that kind of continuing education.
So that folks who do attend the course,
can help fulfill some of the other requirements
that they have to meet
and don't have to do something in addition.
For the in person classroom sessions,
we have internal staff that do that,
and as I mentioned,
three folks have developed the content,
we have two additional staff
that help us facilitate them as well.
Program components; I mentioned the in person workshops
and I will get into that in a little bit more detail.
We also have a couple of assessment tools.
Every participant starts by completing the disk
for managers profile
and that's something that we actually use
throughout the course.
We continue to refer to that content
and then they also have 360 leadership assessment
that is optional,
that they can take at the end of the program.
In addition, we have six hours of individual executive coaching
that they are to take advantage of with external coaches
and one of the big areas of emphasis
for anything that we do in our office is what's next.
So they have action plans
and implementation that they are going to be working on
throughout the program and
working with their executive coaches on
how to implement what they are doing.
For the in person workshops, you can see those topics,
managing yourself 1 and actually managing yourself 2,
comes at the very end of the program.
We bring our first full circle back.
Managing people, building a managing team,
managing conflicts and diversity,
developing people, managing the work
and managing the organizations.
Workshops are incredibly interactive.
We do let them sit occasionally
but we tend to like them up and moving
and interacting as much as possible.
One of the reasons why is that
a side from individual scanning skills,
we are always very interested
in building a community of practice,
the more that people get to know other people in the agency
that are dealing with similar issues,
the more that we can do that.
There are a small group work, large group work.
There is a lot of practical applications like role plays,
a lot of training videos,
also to build this co-partners community of practice,
we make sure we do check ins and checkouts at every session.
We always interested in not just presenting an information
but in having them actually absorb it,
making it individual and
determining how they can then move forward to doing that.
Program materials; many of the standard things,
the reason why I included this,
is because one of the things
we have developed for this program is a toolkit.
So you notice from the list of workshop topics,
that we are focusing on the soft skills related to supervision
and there is a lot of technical information
that's required as well
and so what we have done is
actually pulled it together in essential resources.
There is a certain piece of information
about the organization,
for instance if someone is coming new to NCI doesn't know
where they sit and how that relates.
Information on our administrative resource centers,
recruitment and hiring, merit system principles,
our performance management system,
flexible work schedules, budgeting, ethics.
Those are topics we are not going to be
covering in the course,
but wanted to make sure to pull it together
in the essential resource.
There are a lot of different locations
that that information lives
and for a new supervisor to come in,
they will have to try to find out
all of those places in addition
to dealing with everything else is complicated.
It's one of the things we're particularly interested in
getting feedback on from our Pilot group to see,
how useful it was, did they use it,
was the content useful for what they are looking for
and are there other ways
in which we can manage that as well.
Participants get a binder at the beginning of the program
and for each workshop there are the slides that are presented,
there is also a workbook with various exercises
that we use throughout.
They will also be getting books,
perhaps occasionally articles related to the topics.
So by the time they are finished with the program,
they will have all of those things
and then including things like disk for manager's assessment
in one place, should they need to refer back to it.
Individual executive coaching sessions;
we incorporate executive coaching
into a variety of our programs.
In fact, we also have an
internal standalone coaching program as well,
that uses both internal certified coaches
as well as external coaches as well as external coaches.
We incorporated that into this program,
because we have always gotten a tremendous response
for people that have used those services
in terms of their ability to take what they have learned,
individualize it and actually move forward with it.
So there are six one hour in person sessions,
that translates to,
they have six hours of coaching,
it is up to them and their coach,
how they manage that time but for budget reasons
they can't have more that.
So that's something that they work with.
In person, is something we feel incredibly strongly about,
especially for those of us
that work in the internal coaching program,
so that something that they need to be able to manage
in terms of how to manage that.
It is completely confidential as all coaching needs to be.
We do as program managers, we will check in
with the coaches twice during the program.
We will not talk with them about the content of their sessions,
but what we will talk about is, how everything is going,
are you running a into any logistical issues,
are you running in to any issues with your time,
any issues with meeting in person.
Are there general themes that you are hearing
that we can then address during a workshop
and that's incredibly useful to us,
to make sure that our program participants are
getting the best experience that they possibly can.
We are using three external coaches for the program
and the focus of this coaching sessions is going to be,
to work on our participants with the action plans
they developed during the workshops
and how to actually implement them,
because we don't have a lot of time
to address that individually in the workshops themselves.
Assessment tools; as I mentioned,
everyone completes the disk for managers
at the beginning of the program.
For those of you
who are familiar with the DISC assessment,
it assesses folk's behavioral styles
and behavioral preferences.
This is a complement to the individual DISC assessment
which is disk for managers
which looks at some different things as well,
based on the same profiles and as I mentioned,
we use that content throughout the workshop,
so it's not the sole focus of every workshop,
but we refer to it continually relating to someone's style,
what if someone else doesn't have your style
and how you can best work with yours
and with others to manage them.
As I also mentioned we have an optional 360 leadership
assessment at the end of the program.
We use the Denison 360.
If someone chooses to take that
they have an individual de-brief with a member of our office
who is trained in the assessment for an hour and a half
to go over their report.
They then have two to three weeks later
an action planning session
where they return with a draft action plan
to be able to move that forward.
In terms of future plans;
evaluation is also a big component for us.
We are also in the beginning stages of doing that
in a more sophisticated way.
For the mean time we are evaluating
the participants' responses after every workshop
and then we will also evaluate the program as whole,
so we can not just get feedback on the content,
but also the program components as well,
was the coaching worth it, how was the toolkit,
what did that look like, how were the logistics?
Like many people are staffed or located in various places,
so those are all of the things
that are concern to us to make sure
that we have the best program as we move forward.
We plan on offering the program two times each year,
allowing both new and experience supervisors to attend.
At the Pilot group on Monday, I would say,
least half of the people in the room indicated that
for however long they had been a supervisor
and some were newer and someone were more experienced,
at least half of them had never had
any supervisory training.
So it's one of the reasons,
we are not limiting this to just new supervisors
because there are a lot of folks
that need to be caught up in a way
and we think we will be happier in our jobs once they do.
We are also considering surveying participants
six months after the completion of the program.
We have not operationalized that yet,
but we are interested both in their response
and then also some more actionable issues
related to not only what they have learned,
but were they are able to implement it
and is there anything else that our office can do
to help with that not only in terms of the program
but with the subsequent services
and resources that our office gives.
So that is a very quick summary of Empowered Supervisor.
You will see my contact information on the bottom
and I want to thank Shannon and Sophia as well,
for the development of the program.
I am happy to take any questions on this program
or generally speaking on our other programs as well.
We have a couple of questions up here.
Hi! I am not sure if the microphone is working or not.
Great!
A question about the coaching;
the approach that is used for coaching really intrigues me
and especially the element where you use internal coaches.
Can you describe a little about
how you develop your internal coaches,
what sort of requirements you have,
also whether or not you use your internal coach's force,
one workforce segment versus your outside
professional coaches for other segments?
Okay.
Sure I would be happy to.
We have an internal coaching program
that is approximately three years old
and by internal program,
part of what I mean is
that we have six internal staff that are certified coaches
and so the requirements for them is to
participate in a certification course.
We are certified Sherpa coaches,
I am lucky enough to be one of them
and I would happy to talk about that process
at some point as well, if that's of interest.
Coaching is for the upper GS levels at the organization,
for the highest GS levels that can self-refer for our
12s and 13s I believe it is they need to have
a supervisor referral to come in.
We initially did it again as Pilot
with some of our intern programs
with some other staff that had participated in our
programs and since then we advertised for all staff,
get in and take forms and assess the process from there.
The decision about whether or not we use internal versus
external coaches because we now have a mix.
Partially with our internal program,
we also now use, external coaches,
because the demand has now exceeded our capacity.
We are in a very lucky position of having more folks
that want to take coaching than those of us
who are internal coaches can handle.
That's partially because those of us that are coaches
that's not the only thing that we do
and we tend to like that balance.
So and we want to make sure that our staff get the services
and don't have to wait a year for coach for instance.
Very often the decision is a budgetary one.
It depends, some of our courses are free, some cost,
some are essentially funded some are not.
Very often if there is a budget, because of capacity issues,
we will hire external coaches to be able to do that,
but it's always a decision
that we make program by program in terms of staff capacity,
resources and also what the program itself needs.
There are sometimes, there are advantages and disadvantages
to internal and external coaches
that can service a program in one way or another.
Does that answer your question?
Good afternoon, I am Steve Wagasky
from the Transportation Security Administration.
Hi! I am wondering if you could talk a little bit
about the administration of your 360
and when we have tried to do some 360,
sometimes it's hard to get feedback from different levels,
what strategies do you put in the place
to really get a good cross-section of feedback?
The way that the Denison 360 works,
is that the individual who is getting a 360
or I should say, who is getting 270,
we do have people that are not supervisors
and don't have direct reports
that can still get the same kind of feedback from peers
and from their supervisors.
They are the ones that choose their radars.
They are required to choose a certain number
and have them completed at certain levels
where they can't get valuable data
when they get their feedback.
So they are the ones that choose their radars.
We do brief them before they do it on...
you need to know people
that are going to know you in the workplace.
You need to know people that know you well
enough to be able to respond to this.
And you need to ask people to write you
whose feedback you value.
That may seem like common sense
but sometimes people check off the box
and don't pay much attention to it
and then it's really up to them to say,
I know you haven't completed the assessment,
can you please make sure to do that by the deadline.
And for the most part, we get fairly good response,
because this is an optional service,
unless it's part of one of our leadership development program
and so those are optionals to begin with
as a requirement of one of those programs,
then it's up to them to be able to manage their radars
and make sure they get the feedback.
We monitor that for them
and let them know who and we have
and we have not heard from
and if we do have enough responses
then they can get composite information based on that.
We do have occasions where radars don't respond
and then they just can't get the data
for that particular section or not enough robust data.
So that's really up to them in terms of
who their interested in having write them
and managing that part of the process.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Anyone else.
Okay, thank you very much.
I understand there is a couple more questions for me,
I would be glad to entertain them.
How much money do you spend on
the supervisory training program?
I would have to do an estimate.
What I can tell you is what we spend total for
overall developmental programs in terms of portion that out
just to how much we spend on supervisory development.
If you were to shoot me an email, I can answer you later,
I just have to pull a number out of the air now
and I don't want to do that.
My email address, I am not sure how many emails
I am going to get as a result of giving this out
over this webcast, but it's
jody.hudson@nrc.gov.
How do you stay current and up to date once all core courses
have been completed?
I believe we took that answer earlier,
and we have refresher of 24 hours annually.
After the 24-month program
is completed of 140 hours of training,
the exact nature of that additional 24 hours
refresher is still under development.
We don't know exactly what that's going to look like,
but it is going to be refresher on
the full breadth of competencies that the core program addresses,
just in a more abbreviated, more condensed fashion.
Okay, last question.
The learning experience is individualized
to each executive based on their 360 degree assessment
rather than agency identified skill gaps?
Let me answer the question this way.
The 360 instrument that we use
for the executives is the OPM 360.
That 360 directly co-relates one for one
with 28 executive core qualification competencies.
So the tool itself identifies where a given executive
is strong or whether it is a development opportunity for
those 28 underlying ECQ competencies.
So they are very, very specific competencies
that we are assessing using the government wide
executive competency model.
Before the webcast today, we had a chance to visit for a minute,
about how NRC is consistently rated
as one of the best agencies to work for by the employees.
So I make there is some evidence here
that the training that you are giving
is being transferred in the actual performance,
and I think as a challenge that we have as trainers
how to carry that out of the classroom
and out of the computer back into the workplace
to transfer into performance.
Do you folks have a strategy in place that enforces that or
reinforces the training once folks go out of the classroom?
That's a good question.
The short answer is yes,
but I want to touch on something earlier you said
and maybe this is just going to be a shameless plug for NRC,
yes we are number one in federal government.
I never miss an opportunity to state that
and that's from the partnership for public services analysis
of the data that is generated through the annual survey
that OPM conducts on to the federal workforce
and we take very pride in that
and by the way we are also number one
in training and development,
but again I want to putting in the shameless plug
for NRC too much.
But do we reinforce, the training that we do,
and the short answer is yes
and how we do that depends upon
what area we are talking about.
For example in our technical programs,
I described how part of my operation
as a technical training center in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
we have 40 qualification standard programs
where our call card programs.
We have very defined, very specific curricula
that people have to complete in order to be qualified
to do the job that they are hired to do.
A good example is our resident inspectors
who stay out in the field
and have a high level presence at the 104
operating nuclear reactors across this country.
As part of that call card program,
they have on the job training
and that on the job training reinforces
much of what they got in the classroom.
The resident inspectors also work under
a senior resident inspector who has far more experience,
that more experienced senior resident inspector,
they have to complete refresher on their call cards,
but they also take the combination of their experience,
their classroom learning and apply that
and how they reinforce,
the resident inspector working under them through them
on the job training reinforces the elements of the training,
elements that the more senior inspector
gain through experience
impart that on that new inspector who is coming up.
So it's one very specific example
with regard to how we do that.
We also more on the leadership development side use mentors and
the purpose of the mentors
and purpose of the coaches is to do just that.
You learn so much from the classroom,
but how you accomplish a lot of the learning
is by putting them in practice in what you have learned
and have some support system there
to help you to reinforce what is that you have learned
theoretically in the classroom and the purpose of the mentors
and the coaches is to help reinforce that in terms of
how people practically apply.
Does that help?
Any other questions?
I believe that is all.
I will turn it back over to Karen.
Well, thank you to our presenters.
If you have any further questions,
you can email them to us,
and we will get them to their appropriate presenter.
Right now I want to show up, token of our appreciation for
our presenters for Jody and Nichole.
This says thank you for doing this and under the community
and everyone at OPM thanks you.
-Thank you very much. -Thank you.
Just for all of you to know
while this webcast has been recorded
and will eventually be posted to the YouTube channel
and for those who have trouble viewing the presentations,
I will send them out through the lister.
So thank you so much for attending today's webcast and
I hope you have a great rest of the day.