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• Coaching and Counseling for Peak Performance
• Managing Change in the Workplace
• Mediating Conflict
• Motivating Your Associates
• Partnering in Performance I
• Partnering in Performance II
• Purposeful Communication for Leaders
• Understanding and Managing People
• Creating a Self-Disciplined Workforce

• Critical and Creative Thinking (8)
• Effective Interviewing Skills (8)
• Managing a Diverse Workforce (10)
• Performance Management (13)
• Presentation Skills (13)
• Solving Problems and Effective Decision Making (15)
• Strategies for Leading Effective Teams (16)
• Time & Stress Management (17)

• Conducting Effective Observations
• Labor Reporting Systems
• Managing to Performance Expectations
• Manpower Planning
• Observation Training (on-the-floor)
• Standard Operating Procedures/Best Practices
• Supervisory Assessment Training for Operation's Managers

• Coaching Team Members
• Dealing Positively with Change
• Ethics in Your Workplace
• Gaining Cooperation from Your Team Members
• Peer-to-Peer Conflict Resolution
• Proactive Problem Solving to Improve Productivity & Efficiency
• Purposeful Communication
• Team Nuts n' Bolts

    TZA can create customized classes by combining content for your specific needs.

When self-discipline breaks down, associates are automatically subjected to imposed discipline. Keep in mind, though, that the various steps of a discipline process are not necessarily going to help the associate improve - the supervisor needs to coach and counsel the associate on specific ways to reach higher levels of productivity.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Learn how to prepare, conduct and follow up on a counseling session in this energetic role playing workshop
• Learn, then demonstrate, how to use the various steps in effective coaching
• Understand how to ensure their associates are set up for success, not failure

Benefits to You:

• Reduce the high cost of time in recruiting and training associates
• Organizational leaders have the tools to effectively coach and counsel existing associates until they meet or exceed the standard and/or performance expectations

This course is designed to inform participants about the purpose, benefits and styles of coaching. Through this knowledge, participants will be able to identify when it is appropriate to use the tools of coaching and how to best modify their coaching style to meet the needs of their Team Members.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Leadership styles - learn the difference between leader and coach
• Learning styles and recognizing the value of different generations
• Feedback vs. criticism

Benefits to You:

• Empowered associates have the tools they need to step up into leadership roles when needed
• With improved communication and better understanding of each other, the teams within their areas or departments are efficiently working together towards a common goal with the least amount of downtime due to low motivation or lack of understanding

Observations are a supervisor's lifeline to understanding why an associate is having difficulty making standard or why an associate is far exceeding the baseline. (Please note: This course is the classroom portion of OBS 101 – Observation Training. These courses are delivered jointly.)

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Objective observation techniques
• Understanding the observation form
• Pre– and post–observation communication techniques with the observed

Benefits to You:

• A structured, repeatable process of evaluating employees
• Objective evaluation techniques

From the days when we were very young, we were told not to be critical. We were also taught to color "inside the lines" - if we didn't, we were admonished for not following instructions. Being critical and creative are two things our minds were not trained for and yet as supervisors and managers we are routinely asked to carefully analyze situations and think "outside the box." As with anything, if we want to excel at critical and creative thinking, we need to practice.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• The obstacles to overcome in order to become advanced thinkers
• Ways to expand the creative right hemisphere of our brains to find innovative solutions to the problems faced at work
• To think "outside the box" to solve problems

Benefits to You:

• Supervisors and managers are armed with the ability to make great decisions that are not based on gut reactions
• They are taught to think on a level that not only keeps pace with, but surpasses, the competition

We can't avoid change in the workplace; sometimes you're faced with change on a daily basis. For example, a last minute change in your assignment for the day, a new process for a task you've been doing for a long time or a change in management.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Organizational change and its impact
• Communicating change effectively
• Problem-solving techniques to expedite change

Benefits to You:

• Learn and understand change management skills
• Proven techniques and strategies for managing change as it happens

Sharpening these skills will help prevent expensive and unqualified hires, while providing supervisors and managers with the skill set they need to make good hiring decisions.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Pre-interview and interview prep
• Conducting and closing the interview
• Evaluations and hiring decisions

Benefits to You:

• This course not only covers the interview process itself, but also how to review resumes, identify potential red flags and phone interviewing
• Supervisors and managers are armed with specific steps to assist them in making a sound hiring decision

This workshop is all about moral intelligence - our mental capacity to determine how universal human principles, like the "golden rule," should be applied to our personal values, goals and actions. When we naturally do what we are supposed to do when we are supposed to do it, our moral compass is pointing us in the right direction.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Four moral principles that form the foundation for sustained personal and organization success
• Participants will complete a Moral Competency Inventory which will be scored and evaluated for future development into morally intelligent leaders

Benefits to You:

• All employees across the organization are trained to model the desired behavior
• Honesty and integrity and not compromised when each employee's moral compass is set in the right direction

No matter where you work in the organization and what your role is, you are a team member. This course creates a unique path to improved team communication, meeting deadlines and achieving goals.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• A selfish and successful strategy for getting more cooperation
• What the road blocks are and how to avoid them
• Six cooperation techniques

Benefits to You:

• Participants learn the value in making it easy for others to cooperate with you
• Understand the importance of working or acting together to achieve a common goal and the positive effect it will have on performance and productivity

This session offers supervisors and lead associates an in-depth, hands-on opportunity to work directly with your labor reporting system.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• How to correctly input data, modify entries, run and read reports, etc.
• Each participant will be tested and retested (if necessary) to ensure their full understanding and proper use of this important tool

Benefits to You:

• Supervisors and leads will know precisely how to compile good performance statistics by which to measure individual and group progress
• They can quickly identify poor performers and then coach, counsel and observe them
• Allows organization leaders to easily track and proactively manage performance

We are living in an increasingly multicultural world. Understanding and inclusion will help supervisors and managers better relate to their diverse employees which, in return, will contribute to the success within your organization.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• What is diversity and why is it important
• Understanding the generations through awareness and demographics
• Including and understanding your team's personal culture

Benefits to You:

• Participants will learn when and how to adapt as needed
• They will walk away with a management process for diagnosing, understanding and creating an action plan that will allow them to innovate well beyond what they have in the past

Change is not an easy thing for most people - it can throw us off balance and create unnecessary anxiety. When change is abrupt or poorly managed, productivity is potentially compromised because associates are thinking about everything but the task at hand.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Key components of change
• How to soften resistance to any change introduced in the DC
• Identify and overcome obstacles towards change

Benefits to You:

• Supervisors and managers capable of taking on a leadership role for change to be successful
• Properly managed change can positively impact productivity and profitability

It is important for you to know exactly how you arrived at the performance expectations that were developed so you can easily explain the process to your associates. This creates buy-in when they see how much goes into determining fair expectations of performance. Don't worry; this session won't involve complex math or confusing formulas.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Understand how the performance expectations were created, and then teach how to effectively manage in this new environment
• Supervisors will learn how to measure employee performance, assess utilization and track total performance

Benefits to You:

• This specialized training will help participants become effective with the new processes and procedures, the labor reporting system and the trigger point for imposed discipline
• This session can also be directed to all environments that are working within an engineered labor standards environment
• This workshop doesn't prepare you to accidentally bump into success - instead, it drives you to success and drops you off at the front door

The whole purpose behind setting standards and gathering data is to use that information to more effectively plan and utilize your manpower.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Supervisors will learn how to analyze data quantitatively and qualitatively
• Assess timelines and execute critical strategies
• Forecast manpower in both the short and long term - by shift or by day, based on demand, work profile and/or associate capabilities

Benefits to You:

• Get more work done quickly without having associates with down time, resulting in unnecessary higher labor costs
• A solid manpower plan results in maximum productivity and lower operational costs

Knowing that conflict cannot be avoided, it's critical that supervisors and managers have a proven process to manage and resolve conflict amongst their team members. The role of the supervisor as the mediator is uncovered in this session.
Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Understand the types and causes of conflict
• The five steps to successfully managing conflict
• Benefits of effective conflict management

Benefits to You:

• Conflict resolution before working relationships are compromised
• Mitigate the risk your distribution center and/or workplace faces from the ill effects of unmanaged conflict

People are very interesting creatures - they are both fascinating and frustrating. Just when you think you've figured someone out, he/she does something totally unexpected.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Attitudes, values, self-concept and personalities
• The impact on individual and group performance
• Motivational strategies to be applied immediately following this session

Benefits to You:

• Supervisors and managers armed with tools to assess and influence associates
• Proper techniques to minimize unexpected negative behavior
• Supervisors and managers will know how to take the necessary steps to implement programs that motivate their workforce

This workshop is the follow-up to MGT 179 - Conducting Effective Observations and is designed to give supervisors an opportunity to practice the skills they have learned in order to validate the standards or performance expectations.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• "On-the-floor" of the warehouse. Supervisors will "skill and pace rate" an associate under actual, not simulated, conditions
• This session will finish back in the classroom environment where supervisors will share their notes (observations) and discuss specifics about the associate's performance with the entire group

Benefits to You:

• On-the-floor observation training is the opportunity to prove the engineered standards or expectations are fair
• Provides supervisors and managers with a tool to isolate poor performer's weak areas so they can provide the training needed to boost his/her performance

This half day session is a unique course. We invite supervisors and managers, with their team of employees, to participate in the first segment of this session. It's an opportunity to put them together and determine performance agreements and guidelines.

Who Should Attend: All Associates, Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Purpose of goal setting and understanding corporate goals and how they drive the performance agreement
• Attitudes and performance agreements
• Establishing a measurement system

Benefits to You:

• Participants leave with a clear understanding of their individual roles and responsibilities
• An established foundation of performance expectations and how they will work together to support corporate goals and initiatives

Once you have agreed upon performance expectations, what will assure success is a foundation of trust and commitment.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Steps to create job commitment
• Potential obstacles and overcoming obstacles that will block goal achievement
• The performance agreement discussion

Benefits to You:

• A proven methodology for gaining commitment and building trust
• Developing an effective action plan that will drive productivity while building self-esteem

Three of the proven facts about conflict in the workplace are: (1) Whenever human beings are involved, some amount of conflict is inevitable. (2) When significant change is introduced in the workplace, conflict has a tendency to become more prevalent. (3) Conflict can be managed and mitigated.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Recognizing different personalities
• Understand the classes of conflict
• Understand the barriers to conflict resolutions and the five steps to resolving it

Benefits to You:

• Provides associates with tools to turn conflict into cohesiveness
• They will understand how to achieve compromise that results in a win-win outcome

Performance management is about people working together to set performance expectations and having a model or process in place by which to evaluate those expectations for success - success for the employee, supervisor, manager and the company.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Developing specific, measurable performance agreements with your employees
• Identifying and overcoming obstacles that decrease efficiency and productivity
• Delivering effective performance reviews

Benefits to You:

• Success is achieved by those who know how to prepare for it
• They will have a deliberate method of partnering between management and employees to determine who will do what, by when

Giving a presentation is more than just knowing what you want to say.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Gaining rapport with your audience
• Using visual aids to create impact and attention
• Develop techniques to create a professional presence

Benefits to You:

• Well–prepared presenters at every meeting
• Presenters are provided specific techniques to reduce nervousness and fear

Many problems in the workplace often go unresolved because no one recognizes that a problem exists, and in times when a problem is correctly identified, the solutions are often haphazardly selected just to get some closure on an issue. Ultimately, the problem continues to plague everyone in the DC and/or across the organization.
Who should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Participants will learn the six-step problem-solving approach
• Understand how the process is designed to work from beginning to end
• Diffusing the "blame game"
• Identify and overcome obstacles to problem-solving

Benefits to You:

• A process that can be properly implemented for problem-solving
• Participants tackle real issues in your DC and they are armed with the tools they need to "hit the ground running" when problems come their way

We communicate messages all day long without even trying. Unfortunately, we do it poorly most of the time, without even trying.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Establishing a track record for truth (credibility)
• Conversing one-on-one with associates
• Listening until you really hear

Benefits to You:

• Communication skills that prevent misunderstandings, build cohesive teams, demonstrate appreciation and elevate productivity
• Full understanding of the role that effective communication plays in driving productivity and efficiency, which is critical for reducing errors, fostering camaraderie and enhancing profitability

Similar to the Communication Workshop for Leaders, this workshop focuses on the associate perspective and teaches the fundamentals of peer communication, building trust and communicating one-on-one.

Who Should Attend: All Associates
What's Covered:

• Establishing a track record for truth (credibility)
• Conversing one-on-one with peers
• Listening until you really hear

Benefits to You:

• No matter what their role, arming all associates with communication skills that prevent misunderstandings and demonstrate appreciation amongst one another will build cohesive teams and elevate productivity
• Full understanding of the role communication plays in driving productivity and efficiency, which is critical to reducing errors and building camaraderie

One common mistake leaders make is that they tend to believe competence and commitment are consistent from task to task; this, of course, is not true. A person can be highly skilled at one function but terrible at another; they may be committed to one assignment but despise another.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Understand how much direction and support to give each associate based on the task he/she is doing
• Learn to diagnose development levels
• Learn how to respond with an effective leadership style tailored to the situation

Benefits to You:

• Avoid the common mistake supervisors make that destroy morale
• Supervisors will adopt the right approach to raise the performance bar across the workforce

In this course, we will use a six-step process to help solve problems that arise in the workplace. The course will then address one of the biggest challenges for most supervisors and managers, which is the decision–making process. Making decisions, or even the inability to make one, can plague everyone in the DC and/or across the organization.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Time-tested approach to identifying problems
• Basics of decision making
• Force field analysis, multi-voting and the nominal group technique
• Understand how these processes are designed to work from beginning to end

Benefits to You:

• Problem-solving is a huge benefit to your organization when it is done correctly; likewise, it is a huge drain on your company's resources if it goes unchecked
• Leaders learn to make decisions that are good for the company and its employees
• They are armed with the tools they need to "hit the ground running" when tough decisions come their way

Upon implementing best practices and having SOPs or engineered labor standards developed, we will provide training for all associates and supervisors on the new procedures. This vital instruction will take place in dual settings (classroom and on the floor) as determined by conditions, constraints and consensus.

Who Should Attend: All Warehouse Personnel
What's Covered:

• Each associate will receive the attention needed to fully understand the information presented
• Every associate will be assessed to determine their level of preparedness and to ensure a positive outcome
• Associates and supervisors will learn to steer clear of bad habits and ineffective practices
• Supervisors will receive training on procedures
• Supervisors will learn how to effectively teach new associates as personnel changes occur

Benefits to You:

• SOPs and best practices ensure consistency throughout the DC
• Consistency is vital in the DC to drive improvements and productivity levels

This 4–hour course will guide you in developing, growing and sustaining real teams.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Identify and develop behaviors of team members
• Skill building techniques necessary for building an effective team
• Understand the stages of development teams will go through and value personality styles and differences

Benefits to You:

• Through discussion, hands-on activities and workgroup exercises, participants will learn to apply the concepts of this course into your team's process of sharing control and give the team power to influence its own outcomes.

It is crucial for your operations managers and executive team members to know how to assess and continuously improve the capabilities of line supervisors.

Who Should Attend: Operations Managers, Executive Management
What's Covered:

• Assess supervisors' knowledge of the engineered standards program and the Labor Reporting System
• Recognize acceptable, deficient or outstanding performance of supervisors
• Coach and counsel supervisors
• Daily maintain the program

Benefits to You:

• Participants will know what to look for and how to manage key players in your DC's productivity and your company's overall profitability - your supervisors
• This knowledge is priceless to you and your organization as you continuously look for opportunities to improve productivity

There is a reason organizations form teams - to gain insight from different people for problem solving; tap into the combined brain power of the group; enhance service, delivery times or quality - and many more. This session unveils the principles of the effective, progressive TEAM. This team workshop is like no other. It is an 8-hour course that can be delivered in a full day session or two half day sessions.

Who Should Attend: All Associates, Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Determining the TEAM direction
• Helping your TEAM succeed
• Establishing TEAM ground rules
• Setting TEAM support rules
• Knitting together varied responsibilities
• Delegating TEAM functions
• Developing the human side of TEAMS
• Handling Differences
• Action Plans
• Virtual TEAMing
• Receiving and giving feedback
• Consensus decision making
• Monitoring TEAM progress
• Assessing TEAM effectiveness
• TEAM diversity - what it is and what it is not

Benefits to You:

• Developing teams that are united around a common goal and are structured to work together
• The importance of sharing responsibility and depending on each other
• Establishing teams that are empowered to implement consensus decisions

There are 168 hours in a week - that's all your employees get. If they run short of time at work, they simply have to pull time away from another area of their lives. When they do so, their stress levels usually become elevated because of conflicting priorities - work versus family perhaps.

Who Should Attend: All Associates, Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Organizational stressors and those outside the workplace
• Consequences of stress and appropriate methods to manage stress
• Importance of getting and staying organized

Benefits to You:

• All employees will recognize and deal with workplace stress before it can have a negative impact on productivity
• Proper time management techniques will put employees back in control of their work schedules, allowing them time to concentrate on their work and/or the tasks at hand

In order to effectively change an individual's behavior from a negative outcome to a positive one, it helps to find out why they chose to behave that way.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Understand why people repeat negative behaviors
• How to help associates learn productive behaviors
• Learn and understand different behavior modification strategies

Benefits to You:

• Supervisors and managers understand the "one size fits all" band-aid mentality of leadership doesn't apply
• Associates need supervisory approaches tailored to his/her specific needs to alter behaviors
• Understanding the expectation is the same for everyone, but the means by which you attain them must be customized to fit the person

When you hear the word discipline, it is very common for you to think about things like correction and enforcement. In a fast-paced, standards-driven warehouse environment, you want your team to consist of self-disciplined workers versus individuals that need a supervisor's attention and intervention much of the time.

Who Should Attend: Group Leads, Supervisors, Mgmt. Team
What's Covered:

• Supervisors will learn the role in which training plays in creating self-disciplined associates
• Specific steps to take when associates fail to comply with policies and procedures
• Understand and apply every aspect of discipline - from self–controlled behaviors to those requiring externally imposed correction and documentation

Benefits to You:

• Understanding and know-how to building a team of self-disciplined workers and how to hold them accountable
• Helps supervisors overcome any apprehension about enforcing the rules

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