The 30 Minute Manager!™ | Managing People Training Activity

• The key attributes of effective managers and supervisors
• What new managers need to know about their role
• To appreciate the concept of the 'whole' manager
• To reflect on participants’ own strengths and weaknesses
• To pinpoint areas for performance improvement

Each team has a set of 62 cards, each stating a characteristic that a manager or supervisor might possess - some desirable, some less desirable, some irrelevant.

First, teams must sort the cards into four groups of attributes: Personal, Organisational, Interpersonal and Irrelevant. They then reduce the cards to just 30 (spread roughly over the three categories) that best describe their view of the perfect manager.

They score their profile against the ‘definitive profile’ supplied. (Teams may suggest that ‘the definitive profile’ can be refined – which all makes for good debate.)

How do individuals match up to the profile? What are their strengths and weaknesses? The act of sorting the statements and the elimination process stimulates valuable discussion about manager attributes and creates a view of the ‘whole’ manager.

The timing for this activity can be flexible from 30 to 60 minutes.

1. Issue a set of cards to each team and allow up to 20 minutes for sorting into the four categories. You can allow teams to take longer if you have more time, and equally give them less time if not.
2. Allow teams a further 10 minutes to select their top 30 cards.
3. Issue Profile Forms for teams to 'profile' their ideal manager.
4. Use the secret code to double-check teams have put cards in the right categories.
5. Score each team and lead a discussion on each team’s profiles and the key ‘manager attributes’. Was there much agreement between team profiles? If not, why not? Get participants to reflect on their own manager attributes: their strengths, where can they improve - and how?

Full guidance supplied in the Trainer’s Notes.

• Trainer’s Notes
• Card Sets x4
• Header Cards Sets x4
• Profile Forms
• The Ideal Profile

This activity is for face-to-face classroom use. It is supplied as a hard copy pack and the digital files are supplied via the Northgate Trainerhub.

This Northgate Training activity comes with a five-year licence for repeat use with up to 24 participants at a time, for use by Trainers based at one licence-holding site.

All Trainers physically based at the same office location can access the Northgate resources during the five-year term, including the digital resources supplied on the Trainerhub via your own site-specific Trainer Dashboard. If you have Trainers based at other locations, and/or remote workers, who would like to access and use the Northgate resources, we can advise further depending on your requirements.

For further information on our licence terms please view the Northgate Licence Agreement.