Julie Dormand is the Managing Director of The Works, part of Capgemini and Sydney facilitator of AdSchool’s new Manager Fundamentals course. In this short Q&A, she outlines why people management skills are more important than ever and how this course will help new managers get the best out of their team.
Q1) Why should agency leaders enrol their staff in Manager Fundamentals?
We often have these amazing people who get promoted because they’re brilliant at their craft, whether that’s copywriting, project management, digital production, or another field. They get promoted and then at some stage they become a people manager and need a totally different set of competencies. I’ve seen this happen often – people are put into management roles with no training. That’s why an industry-certified course like this is important. It gives people an opportunity to succeed as managers and learn the right way to deal with people and leadership. It helps the industry with something that it hasn’t necessarily been brilliant at in the past.
2) The pandemic played a role in putting even more pressure on managers because employees expected much more of their manager during that time. Are there still repercussions from that?
Totally. Dealing with people’s emotional state and wellbeing is an added pressure for any manager. Remote work means greater responsibility in having to make sure teams are connecting in between the meetings, are happy in their role, and are being checked in on every now and again etc. Those things are quite hard to do when everybody’s busy and time challenged, and they’re the things that continue to slip in hybrid working environments. Employees need to feel close, heard, seen and able to effectively convey what they’re looking for or need from their manager. I think it’s still hard for any manager to remain consistent with a people-first approach.
3) What kind of skills do you think participants walk away with after doing this course?
Every session has great value, but most of them ladder back to one thing, which is how to become a strong communicator to get the best out of your team, and how you allow them to strive, enjoy work and engage as an employee. Strong communication is two-way and there are lots of different strands to it, enabling managers to set boundaries, deal with tough performance management issues, interview and choose the right candidate for the job, set goals, and make it clear what people are there to do. All those things lead back up to being a really strong communicator.
4) What is the course highlight for you?
I’m a passionate advocate of learning about unconscious bias, which students will do in focusing on the recruitment process. Importantly, they’ll also learn about it as part of a session on finding their own management style. The course provides a practical understanding of the theory behind managing people, but also how to understand yourself, your style, and what your biases might be. The tutorial discussion with the facilitator and wider group then allows students to dig deeper to better understand how to apply that theory to the way they manage and interact with their teams. The theory and the practical elements of the course really embed those learnings and ensure the key takeaways are strong.
5) How does this course help managers take the next step in their career?
The skills you learn in this course will be critically important if you’re going to continue your career as a manager to lead bigger teams and progress to more senior roles. If you decide to pivot and become a subject matter expert rather than a team manager, then you’re still going to have to deal with a very collaborative workforce, where problems don’t get solved by one person alone. You’ll rarely be at a point where you don’t work with other people.
AdSchool’s Manager Fundamentals course kicks off in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth on 1 June and is open to any new managers including account managers and directors, strategists, creatives and producers. Find out more and register here.
