MoDA - Management of Development Assistance

This workshop is for managers and supervisors.

Leadership is the skill of inspiring people with a meaningful vision of the organization and of providing the necessary support to make that vision an operational reality. Management is the skill of creating an environment that allows the individuals to reach their full potential in pursuit of organizational objectives. The first constant in the job of a manager is to make human strengths effective and human weaknesses irrelevant; the second constant is to be accountable for results.

Leadership without effective management is a recipe for failure of the organization; management without inspiring leadership is a recipe for irrelevancy of the organization.

Both leadership and management are skills that can be acquired.

The Management and Leadership Practices workshop is an intensive, five-day training activity in which participants engage in a learning-by-doing process with support from television and immediate feedback from peers and learning facilitators. Most of the time participants are in laboratory situations applying fundamental and high impact management and leadership tools.

Participants are given frequent opportunities to experience cognitive dissonance by comparing, with support from television, what they believe they do in real life with what they see themselves doing in role-plays of real life situations. Furthermore, participants obtain significant levels of self-awareness in an empowering, non-clinical way. A solid theoretical infrastructure supports the practical approach to leadership and managerial development. The workshop starts with a diagnosis and ends with an action plan developed by each participant, for implementation in the immediate future. Each participant receives his/her own videotape containing about two hours of recording of his/her personal learning experience.

The process of management and leadership are broken down into behavioral components to proceed in a cumulative learning approach.

The learning agenda of each participant is individualized through a) a baseline
videotaped sample of his/her communication and influencing competencies; b) the feedback provided to the participant in the Management and Leadership Practices Inventory - MLPI. The MLPI is a 360° feedback instrument developed by MoDA® to increase participants awareness regarding the image they project in 110 management and leadership behaviors. The inventory is answered by self, the boss, a number of peers, a number of direct reports, and some support staff. Each manager receives a 21-page report, and a color graph.

Usually, the workshop is a five-day residential activity. The ratio of facilitators to participants is 1:5, and in exceptional cases, 1:6, to allow for intensive work on influencing and communication skills laboratories with support from the TV.