A program manager wears many hats. You handle the day-to-day business operations of the program, the organizational systems and protocols that keep children safe and healthy at your program, and act as a leader that inspires and supports staff members, families, and children. As a program manager, your vision and actions support a program culture that forms the foundation for supporting children and families. In this lesson, you will explore what it means to be a leader and how to maximize your leadership style and skills through self-reflection and action planning.

Vision and mission statements can help ground the work you do. They represent the shared core values and goals that everyone in the learning community is committed to working toward. They form the foundation on which you build policies and practices that support staff members, families, and children and youth. In this lesson, you will learn why vision statements and mission statements are so important and you will explore a process for creating them and communicating them with current and prospective staff members and families. You will also examine how to make sure that your vision and mission statements move beyond the page and into actions.

Your job as a program manager involves interactions with staff members, families, and community members on a regular basis. How effective you are at engaging with all these groups of people depends in part on the strength of your relationship with them. In this lesson, you will identify key aspects of relationship building, discuss the importance of relationship-based leadership, and examine some key things you can do in your role as a manager to build the foundation for positive relationships with staff members, families, and the community.

As a program manager, you are responsible for setting up and maintaining organizational systems that help keep the program’s operations running smoothly. Efficient systems help to keep children safe and support direct care staff members in providing high quality care. In this lesson, we will review the key ingredients needed for a good organizational system and review some strategies for getting key organizational systems up and running, including systems for your program budget, record keeping and reporting, and safety policies.

Much of your role as a manager has to do with organizing and supporting the individuals who provide direct care to children and families. This means that you must have organizational systems in place that help you hire qualified staff that are a good fit for your program, onboard new staff in a way that sets them up for success, create schedules that keep children safe and honor staff members time and needs, and provide ongoing support for the staff’s professional growth. In this lesson, you will review key components for setting up systems that will allow you to do these things efficiently and effectively in collaboration with your leadership team.