Cultural literacy in the workplace depends largely on effective communication across all team members without excluding or unintentionally offending those from different ethnicities. AMA’s seminar, Managing Multicultural Teams for Peak Performance, offers some communication tips to managers of multicultural teams:

• Use a simplified message with less complex sentence structure and vocabulary.
• Never raise your voice or shout to be understood.
• Clearly spell out acronyms and define technical terms.
• Avoid non-standard abbreviations common in instant messaging and texting, like “U R” in place of “you are.”
• Be patient and listen to your team’s ideas and logic. They may be different than yours, and be perfectly valid.
• Feel free to ask people to repeat themselves once or even twice. If you still don’t understand, then ask them to restate their comment differently.
• If you make a mistake that results in your embarrassment or the embarrassment of others, remain cool and composed. Chances are this is the result of an innocent misunderstanding.
• If something said or done by someone of a different cultural background is offensive, be sure to fully understand their meanings and intentions before acting.
• If someone else’s actions or words seem completely negative, chances are good that you’re missing something. Check with that person for clarification or speak with someone else with experience in those of a similar culture.
• Take into account that others may have a different comfortable personal space zone than yours. Be willing to adapt as needed. Often the distance at which they shake hands provides a clue to what is acceptable.
• Give others the benefit of the doubt. When someone’s actions or statements seem wrong or just strange, ask yourself “How else could I interpret this?”
• Communication important messages in several ways to be sure they are received and clearly understood. E-mail, phone and speak with others in person. Be sure your comments are consistent.

For more information on honing communication skills, see AMA’s seminar “Managing Multicultural Teams for Peak Performance” or any of the other 170+ management training courses that the AMA offers.

Not only will improvement in leadership skills help your company, but it will certainly improve your own performance, effectiveness and importance within the organization. These leadership courses offer many different choices to improve and enhance your leadership capabilities – both in planning and execution – and help you and your teams accomplish your goals as efficiently as possible.

Many leadership subject areas are taught in the various formats offered by the AMA: Team building and leading, delegating, business strategic planning & strategic leadership, decision making and more. In addition to discussing the theory and published works on leadership, the leadership programs focus on techniques and practices that have been proven to work in the real world.

Leadership courses and seminars are offered all across the United States; here is a list of current offerings:

General Leadership Skills Training

• Stepping Up to Leadership: A Course for Administrative Professionals
• Critical Thinking Seminar
• Leadership and Team Development for Managerial Success
• Preparing for Leadership: What It Takes to Take the Lead
• Making Sense of Web 2.0: Leveraging Social Networking in Your Organization
• Leadership Skills and Team Development for IT and Technical Professionals Seminar
• Leadership Smarts: Assess and Optimize the Hard-wired Skills That Drive Success
• Storytelling: The Secret of Great Communicators
• The American Management Association’s 5-Day MBA Workshop
• Developing Executive Leadership
• Leadership Skills for Supervisors

Strategic and Executive Leadership Training

• Evaluating Strategic Alliance and Partnership Success
• Strategy Execution: Getting It Done
• Situational Leadership II Workshop
• The Voice of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results
• Leading with Emotional Intelligence
• AMA’s Green Leadership: Implementing Sustainability Strategies
• The 21st Century Global Leader
• Advanced Leadership Communication Strategies
• AMA’s Advanced Executive Leadership Program
• Coaching: A Strategic Tool for Effective Leadership
• Leading Virtual and Remote Teams
• AMA’s Course for Presidents and CEOs
• Strategic Agility and Resilience: Embracing Change to Drive Growth

Here are other valuable links on the American Management Association’s web site:

Learning Paths for Leaders – Information on complementary courses and leadership seminars

AMA Certificate Program in Leadership – Information on qualifying courses (3 required) to earn AMA’s Leadership Certificate

Recorded Webcasts and Podcasts on topics in Leadership (Site registration is required to listen to many podcasts and download presentation materials)

To understand the difference between strategic plans and operational plans, think of them both from a military perspective. Strategic plans are the basis of a major battle or an entire war, while tactical and operational plans deal with engagements or skirmishes.

Why Plan At All?

Some managers don’t appreciate the need for planning — even operational planning — given today’s fast-changing world where the time frames for planning are continually being shortened. Admittedly, our chances of planning effectively in our unpredictable world are greatly diminished if we approach planning as we have done in the past. Rigor is needed, but we need to be more flexible than in the past. And failure to plan — whether a year, three months or even a month ahead — can cause confusion and, ultimately, crises in our unit. In terms of the bigger picture, since a unit’s efforts should support the overall corporate mission, it can make the corporate master plan work — or not. The inability of a unit to fulfill its commitment because of poor planning can mean not.

Planning’s Bigger Picture

To understand your role in the planning process, let’s begin at the top of your organization, with its mission. A corporate mission statement articulates the company’s vision. It gives direction to all within the firm. The more succinct the statement of the mission, the clearer it may be. Henry Ford used nine words to describe his company’s mission in 1903: “I will build a motor car for the multitude.”

The next step is a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is merely a guide for organizing your thinking about a company and the environment in which it operates. Corporate management examines the firm’s external and internal environments in conducting a SWOT analysis.

After the analysis, leadership training teaches us that senior management should ask some serious questions, including:

* Does it have the resources and capabilities to take advantage of the opportunities in the external environment and neutralize the threats it has identified?

* How many competitors have the same strengths and management competencies as the firm?

* Does the company lack a particular resource or capability that it can’t afford to acquire? If it has this resource or capability, can the company make something of it to grow the business?

Top-Down Planning

Corporate strategies are the broad goals designed to grow the business. These strategies are vital because they will give you and your colleagues within your organization a focus. The mission is achieved when the strategies are accomplished. The strategies or objectives, built around the organization’s mission and customer demands, cascade down within the organization, translated at each level into goals that support the strategies.

So you and each of your peers need to begin your planning from the strategic planning done at the corporate level.

For instance, before setting final goals, you, with your staff, should consider your unit’s strengths and weaknesses and any threats and opportunities in light of your company’s mission and strategic and tactical goals. This SWOT analysis will influence both your goals and your plans to reach them.

SMART Goals

Once this analysis is completed, your team is ready to commit to the unit’s goals. Goal setting is critical for effective planning. Perceptions about what is important to the team may differ and, unless time is spent in discussing and mutually agreeing on a unit’s goals, the planning effort will be wasted.Unrealistic goals can have an emotional impact on staff members, causing resentment and even anger when employees know they are being committed to goals that are out of reach. So when you sit down with your manager and, later, when you talk to your staff, you need to discuss the stretch the goals set demand. What will you need to do to accomplish the goals senior management expects of you (staff, equipment, information)? If you can’t get what you will need, you need to renegotiate the goals as your unit’s leader.

The Planning Process

Once your unit’s goals are identified, you need to meet with your staff and make your plans. As you make your plans with your group, beware of certain human tendencies because they can interfere with even the best-laid plans. For instance, the staff may focus solely on the short term, giving little attention to the period beyond. Or it may be too optimistic, believing that something unforeseen at this point will occur to make the goals achievable. Or, your team may encourage you to oversimplify the internal or external environment. For instance, you and your unit may plan to find more distributors for the firm’s products, ignoring the likely reality that competitors will emulate the practice or your sales force may see such an expanded distribution network as competition and put obstacles in your way.If significant change within your unit will be needed to enact a plan, you may even get opposition during the planning. If the plan might threaten job security, your staff members may not want to face that tough issue.

The more specific you are in planning, the better it may be for you. However, don’t get so wrapped up in the planning that you lose sight of what you are trying to do, but be sure that any problems that might arise are identified and that solutions are pre-determined.

Keep in mind that the most important factor in the success of the planning process is the plan itself. At the end of the process, you need to ask your staff questions to show that you have done a good planning process:

* Is the plan clear? Do we understand it? How about our peers?

* Does the plan agree with the values and purpose of the organization?

* Does the plan deal effectively with both threats and opportunities, those identified by top management for the organization and by the unit?

* Does it identify the items of importance to our work unit?

* To what extent does it contain specific, measurable goals and objectives?

* Is the plan a real basis for action?

* Does the plan contain contingencies in case of a serious internal or external event?

* Does the plan include a way of obtaining feedback on its success?

* Is the plan flexible in case it needs to be changed?