Upcoming Courses
Overview
This advanced course is designed for foundry supervisors with prior supervisory training or experience who are ready to develop the judgment needed when the answer isn't obvious. Participants will hone their leadership approach, manage performance with clear expectations and documentation, work through conflict and difficult conversations, make fair and consistent hiring and development decisions, recognize employment-risk situations, lead change they did not choose, and connect everyday supervisory decisions to their foundry's financial performance. The course concludes with a personal action plan for continued growth.
Learning outcomes
After completing this program, participants should be able to:
- Apply advanced supervisory practices that support safety, quality, productivity, and employee engagement.
- Use coaching and feedback techniques to address performance issues before they become larger problems.
- Conduct difficult conversations in a respectful, factual, and results-focused manner.
- Apply consistent supervisory practices to hiring, onboarding, retention, and employee development.
- Identify employment-risk situations and describe the appropriate response according to company policy and escalation procedures.
- Document workplace issues using clear, timely, factual, and objective language.
- Communicate change to employees by explaining expectations, listening to concerns, and following up consistently.
- Connect department decisions to cost, delivery, quality, scrap, rework, overtime, and overall foundry performance.
- Build a personal action plan for continued growth as an established foundry supervisor.
Course Length
CEU Units
Course outline
Introduction: Welcome, Course Expectations, and Participant Goals
Module 1: From New Supervisor to Established Leader
- Where You Stand Today
- Adapting Your Leadership Approach
- Influence, Credibility, and Servant Leadership
- Emotional Intelligence and Communication Styles
- Traps for Experienced Supervisors
- Coaching Small Issues Early
Module 2: Performance Management in Depth
- Goals and Measurable Expectations
- Coaching Versus Correcting
- Documentation That Holds Up
- Progressive Discipline and Improvement Plans
- The Solid-but-Not-Strong Performer
- Feedback Beyond the Annual Review
Module 3: Conflict and Difficult Conversations
- Sources of Workplace Conflict
- When to Intervene
- Preparing for a Difficult Conversation
- Mediating Between Employees
- De-Escalation and Pushback
- Repairing Trust
Module 4: Hiring, Retention, and Developing Talent
- Defining the Job and Screening Fairly
- Structured Interviewing
- Questions You Cannot Ask
- Onboarding the First 90 Days
- Development Plans and Stretch Assignments
- Stay Interviews and Succession
Module 5: Advanced Employment Issues and Risk
- Accommodation Requests
- Leave Basics
- Wage-and-Hour Traps
- Harassment Complaints
- Investigations and Retaliation
- Remote and Hybrid Supervision
Module 6: Leading Change
- Change Is the Job Now
- Understanding the Why
- Communicating Change You Didn’t Choose
- Managing Resistance
- Protecting Morale
- Managing Up and Across
Module 7: Business Acumen for Supervisors
- Measures You Influence
- Key Business Terms
- Reading a Profit and Loss Statement
- Building a Department Budget
- Explaining Variances
- Making the Business Case