Programs and Events

Construction Professionals Leadership Academy

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

2:00pm - 6:00pm
$1,495.00 Members, $1,995.00 Nonmembers
AGC Conference Center, Wellesley

Construction Professionals Leadership Academy

4 - half-day workshops

February 9 - March 3 - April 8 - May 4

AGC Massachusetts’ Construction Professionals Leadership Academy provides the insight, strategies and skills you need NOW to:  

• Improve bottom-line leadership performance     
• Win work     
• Manage change     
• Increase effectiveness in marketing and business development     
• Strengthen relationships with current clients     
• Motivate staff      
• Start relationships with new prospects      
• Present yourself and your company more effectively      
• Update, clarify focus on leadership goals and priorities     
• Manage time to balance urgency and strategy 

This high-impact program: 

• Features four monthly half-day seminars for a small group    
• Helps you add more value in your company     
• Focuses on applying skills in your everyday work      
• Delivers not just interesting ideas but lasting results      
• Enables you to reach higher levels of performance     
• The strategies and skills you need NOW to improve marketing and business development and increase bottom-line performance. 

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
 
Successful project managers trying to move up to company leadership discover “What got you here won’t get you there.” They discover several significant shifts: 
 
The Construction Industry Leadership Gap
 
Many construction companies face a critical mid-level leadership gap.  Young staff and senior executives are performing at high levels, but they are looking to their mid-level leaders to do more.  As companies grow and mature, they need their mid-level leaders to do much more than just manage projects.
 
Many mid-level leaders themselves are frustrated, stuck, at a plateau.  They want to do more, know they can do more, but don’t know what steps to take.  It’s not that their
mid-level leaders are unmotivated or apathetic, but that they need a different set of skills to succeed at the next level than the skills that brought them to their current jobs.
 
Can Leadership Be Learned?
 
No matter how hard they practice, few if any young golfers will grow into a Tiger Woods.  Yet any golfer will improve performance if they learn some skills and work at smart
practice.  And of course, Tiger practices relentlessly, consistently, intensely.
 
It’s the same with learning leadership.  Few leaders will become General Patton, Donald Trump, Jim Welch, Abraham Lincoln.  But any leader who builds skills and works at smart practice will improve his or her performance.
 
Who Should Attend 
 
The two most important factors for participants are interest in improvement and willingness to apply the skills.  Beyond that, participants should: 

• Have 10+ years in the construction / engineering / design industry     
• Have 5+ years experience managing projects and have already developed excellent project management skills     
• Are considering career and professional advancement     
• Work in a company that supports their development and growth    
• Identify a “mentor” in their company to work with them on clarifying learning goals and applying program skills

Monthly Program Design Maximizes Lasting Results 

The Construction Professionals Leadership Academy features monthly half-day seminars spread over four months.  This program design enables participants to not only learn program concepts but to apply and practice program skills between sessions.  Most leadership training uses one-time seminars:  two, three, four, even five-day retreats.  This approach is intense and efficient, but ineffective in the long run.  In one-time
programs, participants focus on fresh insights and ideas but neglect the more difficult issue of how to apply what they learn.

Program Logistics And Details
 
Four Monthly Seminars.  Four sessions provides a critical mass of time to enable participants to work with four very different kinds of learning essential to leadership performance:  self-assessment, goals and vision, communications skills and essential processes and methods.
 
Start-Up.  To ensure maximum productivity of program sessions, we ask participants to complete several hours of self-guided pre-work before the first program group seminar. 
This enables our discussions to be more thoughtful and worthwhile for all.
 
Homework.  After the first session there is little “homework” in the traditional sense of reading or writing assignments.  However, we do ask participants to apply what we covered
in the everyday work and to prepare brief case material enabling them to link program content with their own specific issues and opportunities.  
 
About The Program Leader
 
Dr. William Ronco planned, designed and leads the program.  Dr. Ronco works extensively with construction professionals, architects and clients on leadership development, strategic
planning and partnering.  He wrote the Reports on Leadership, Strategic Planning, Partnering and Teambuilding for the American Institute of Architects’ Practice Management
Manual (NY:  John Wiley, 2004, 2005 and 2006)
 
Dr. Ronco initiated and directs: 

• The AGC Young Contractors Professional Institute (now in its fifth year)     
• The Boston Society of Architects’ Young Designers Professional Development Institute.  (now in its tenth year)     
• The Client Institute For Design And Construction (now in its fourth year)

Dr. Ronco's work in partnering, teambuilding and change management has earned him an international reputation as an outstanding management and organization consultant.  He
has led management seminars for Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston University, Northeastern University and CORENET  (Corporate Real Estate Executives.
 
Author of the The Partnering Solution (Career Press, 2005) Dr. Ronco has led over a hundred successful partnering projects in design and construction and another hundred cases outside construction in outsourcing, strategic alliances, mergers and the public sector.  Dr. Ronco earned his B.A. at Rutgers University, his Ed.M. at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and his Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  
 
Program Core Topics 
 
This outline describes the sequence we will follow.  As participation in the CPLA is strictly limited, we will vary program focus and content to reflect specific group priorities
and interests.
 
Seminar 1.  Increasing Self-Awareness, Core Leadership Concepts 

• Why would anyone want to follow you?  What it takes to earn respect.      
• How do others perceive you?  Do others read you as more aggressive and destructive than you think, or as too soft and indecisive?     
• Tools and insights to sharpen your awareness of how others perceive you.     
• Planning to use 360 survey data to increase your awareness *      
• How marketing and business development tasks fit in leadership 

 Seminar 2.  Improving One-On-One Skills 

• Identifying the key one-on-one situations that determine your leadership effectiveness     
• Improving comfort and effectiveness in key marketing conversations     
• Breaking destructive, predictable patterns that emerge in one-on-one meetings     
• Improving your ability to deliver bad news, constructive criticism, critical feedback in a way that others accept  
  Increasing your ability to communicate positively to motivate and encourage     
• How to market without using the “had sell”     
• Sharpening your negotiating and collaborating skills

Seminar 3.  Improving Meeting And Teambuilding Skills 

• Increasing your comfort and effectiveness with presenting to groups of all sizes     
• Running much more effective everyday meetings     
• How to run meetings so that everyone participates evenly and positively.  No vocal minority, no venting, and productive discussions     
• Building your group into a high-performing team

Seminar 4.  Clarifying Work, Career and Personal Vision and Goals 

• Analyzing your 360 survey results, developing an action plan *     
• Updating, clarifying your job description, priorities, goals     
• Updating and clarifying your personal vision and goals     
• Strategic thinking, planning and everyday time management     
• Learning to learn, planning your next steps for development and growth 

Special Program Feature:  Using 360 Degree Survey Data
 
We are pleased to make our proprietary 360-Degree Leadership Communications Survey available at no additional charge to CPLA participants.  You are not required to work with
the survey, the choice is up to you.  Thousands of professionals in architecture, engineering and construction have found that these surveys provide valuable data and insight, and have used their survey results to improve their leadership effectiveness.
 
We explain the survey in detail in the first program session.  If you choose to work with it, you are in complete control of whom to give your survey forms to and how to collect them
to ensure anonymity and confidentiality.  We tabulate the results and return them to you in the final program session.  In the final program session, you work with others in the group to interpret and analyze your results and develop a meaningful action plan. 
   
Considered as an investment, the fee provides outstanding returns.  The CPLA program: 

• Improves immediate job performance and productivity 
  Helps participants take on new tasks and responsibilites 
  Provides development and recognition for neglected “good performers” 
  Builds essential skills for new job responsibilities and advancement      
• Increases job satisfaction, morale, energy and focus     
• Especially focuses on skills that increase the value participants add to the company     
• Provides professional development beyond the company’s internal resources     
• Strengthens participant’s working relationships with clients and others in your company     
• Improves succession planning and processes

MCAP Contributors All MCAP-contributing firms will receive 50% reimbursement of their registration fees - up to a maximum of $2000 per program, after full registration is paid to AGC. Attendance is required for reimbursement.

Questions?  Please feel free to contact William Ronco at (781) 275-2424 or by email at  
wronco@gatheringpace.com 

Tell Us About Yourself
 
To help us plan and focus program content, would you please take a few moments to provide us with background information on yourself.  Email your responses to program
director William Ronco at wronco@gatheringpace.com 
 
1.  What is your current job title, including major roles and responsibilities? 
  
 
2.  Tell us the key points that describe your work history, recent and long term progress,
changes in roles, etc. 
 
 
3.  What do you consider to have been 2-3 major successes you’ve had?  
 
 
4.  What do you consider to have been 2-3 of you major shortcomings or disappointments?  
  
 
5.  What tasks / aspects of your job provide the deepest levels of job satisfaction? 
  
 
6.  What major competencies do you want to develop? 

 
7.  What are your major feelings, hopes, concerns about yourself in the next 10 years? 
 
 
8.  What outcomes would you like to achieve as a result of participating in the program?