MoDA - Management of Development Assistance

The supervisory skills workshop is for middle-level managers and supervisors in international or multilateral organizations and in government offices.

Effective supervisory skills and attitudes can be acquired. The supervisory skills workshop is an intensive, five-day training experience in which participants engage in a learning by doing process with support from television and immediate feedback from peers and facilitators. The process of supervision is broken down into behavioral components for cumulative learning. Most of the time participants are in laboratory situations practicing each component.

The workshop is designed to empower supervisors to:
• practice value-added supervision;
• become agents of change;
• adapt their leadership style to different situations and people;
• sharpen their communication and influencing skills;
• use feedback as a leadership tool;
• manage quality service.

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 supervisory skills 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 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 supervisor 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.