My job as the Director of Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church requires a certain degree of management skills. I am directly responsible for 5 employees, 2 interns, and over 50 volunteers. This is not a skill that comes naturally to me, nor is it one I picked up in school (BA in English and a Masters in Bible). I have had to find ways to learn, mostly through trial and error, articles, and books. I’m a faithful follower of Michael Hyatt and other management bloggers but to be honest it’s been a difficult journey. Addressing conflict head on has always been my number one struggle and as my responsibilities grow so do the variety of personalities in which I’ve been asked to oversee.

I’m constantly searching for training beyond the books, blogs, and in your face trial and error experiences. Living in the sunny city of El Paso, I have not found a great deal of management workshops. Being married to the military with young children and a job, finding time to travel out of town for a seminar is close to impossible.

To say I’ve been feeling overwhelmed is an understatement.

Right when I began to feel like this wasn’t what I signed up for, I received an email from my FRG leader. The Fort Bliss Family & Morale, Welfare and Recreation was offering a FREE full day Management Skills Workshop on Developing Effective Managers in Today’s Society as a kick-off for a much larger program in 2017. After reading a brief description my eyes landed on one important breakout group, Managing Conflict, and I was sold. It took me all of 5 seconds to clear my schedule and RSVP.

The day started off with a Panel Discussion on “The New Role of Today’s Manager.” Panelists included Anthony Lovett (Family & MWR Deputy Director for Fort Bliss), Mark Cauthers (Family & MWR Director for Fort Bliss), Joseph Moscone (Fort Bliss Deputy Garrison Commander), and COL Mike Hester (Fort Bliss Garrison Commander).

The panel was lively, filled with military lingo and humor.

Some key points I took away from the panel were:

• the leader’s responsibility is to shape the culture of the organization
• the importance of leaders developing trust amongst those they lead
• as a leader surround yourself with people you trust who will call you out when you mess up
• do not equate leadership with keeping people happy. Sometimes leading makes you unpopular
• leaders make people believe in themselves
• leaders keep little problems little
• feedback goes both ways

I also left with a keen sense of how I want to mold my leadership style. It is important to allow those I lead the flexibility to come to their own conclusions and beliefs. I must always be open to suggestions. I want to inspire and empower, to mentor and be their loudest cheerleader. I want to free those I lead up to care for the people they are called to serve. I never want to lose my sense of humor, always to be transparent, and an example of what it looks like to step out of my comfort zone. My job as a leader is to make others believe in themselves, to model and foster courage.

After the panel, we broke up into 6 smaller workshops.

• Time Management
• M. P. Motivating Your Team
• Overcoming Difficulties in the Workplace (Managing Conflict)
• Performance Coaching
• Today’s Effective Managers
• Improving Your Management Skills

Each of these smaller workshops was a sampling of additional classes that will begin in January 2017.

This is a bi-monthly Family & MWR Training and Professional Development for Management Skills Workshops. The Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range professional communities are invited to attend.

If you are interested in registering for one or more of their workshops, please go to http://bliss.armymwr.com/us/bliss/programs/family-resilience-center-frc and select “Management Skills Workshops - Online Registration”.

Here is a description and schedule of each of the classes they will be offering. I’ve already signed up for quite a few. Click on any of the images to register.