Leadership Training and Development
Systems Thinking and Relational Leadership
Traditional solutions to the complex issues that public policy seeks to address have been found to be limiting in their ability to bring about significant change. This is because they have often been undertaken in isolation failing to understand how social, health and economic problems are located within a much wider and complex eco-system. To achieve sustainable change in communities requires a focus on how to integrate across multiple organisations and partners across local systems. To play a key part in bringing about change, social purpose organisations need to develop skills to exert influence and ensure appropriate outcome-focused approaches are adopted.
This 2-day training course on systems leadership has been designed to do just that. It is based upon the principle that leaders need to work across their immediate organisational boundary to address complex challenges of mutual concern within their local communities. This requires highly developed skills to influence in the absence of direct managerial control and an in-depth understanding of techniques for bringing about change within a system.
Content
The course will enable participants to develop skills in systems thinking and how to influence within their local eco-systems. It considers concepts of relational and distributive leadership, and connects these leadership processes with a system’s capacity for adapting to change, dealing with ambiguities and responding more effectively to complex problems. Participants will gain an understanding of processes that can better result in innovation and adaptability within the communities they are located.
Participants will gain an understanding of the importance of context for place leadership, identifying local needs, leading in the absence of authority, strategies for achieving cultural change and how adaptive leader behaviours may help for working across communities and boundaries. Models of change at community level will be introduced to expand participant’s understanding of systems thinking and levers to effect change. Participants will explore participation strategies and methods such as stakeholder dialogue, citizen panels, appreciative inquiry, focus groups and future search conferences. Case studies will highlight how concepts might be applied in practice and role plays will help participants to apply learning more personally in constructed scenarios
Leading Ethically and Responsibly
There are now expectations for organisations to adopt new responsibilities to act ethically and sustainably. To support this aim, the concept of responsible leadership has evolved that incorporates leadership, ethical decision-making and social responsibility. It requires leaders to act to further the public good, and engage with the full range of stakeholders necessary to bring about greater sustainability across social, economic, and environmental spheres of life. Responsible leadership lies at the nexus between individual level leadership and organisational level social responsibility. This requires a very specific set of skills to enable organisations to navigate complex challenges and effect change within their own organisation and wider society.
Content
This course will introduce participants to most recent thinking on the concept of responsible leadership and alternative ways in which this particular form of leadership has been looked at. You will examine the changing missions of organisations and explore how to gain traction for sustainability change initiatives drawing upon case studies involving social purpose organisations. You will also focus on understanding the processes that underpin ethical decision-making and how to more successfully navigate ethical dilemmas in leadership roles. As a result of participating in the course you should be better able to foster an organisational culture of integrity and accountability and inspire others to join a wider social responsibility agenda.
Leading Change
Figuring out what needs to happen to ensure an organisation successfully manages change is a major challenge in today’s dynamic and complex environments. It requires leaders to understand relevant models for implementing change but also how the important role that organisational context and culture play in influencing change trajectories and outcomes. This course is designed to help you to understand how to apply theoretical frameworks and gain the practical skills necessary to become an effective change agent.
Content
In this course you will gain an understanding of the reasons why many change initiatives fail to succeed in achieving their objectives. We will explore the rational and emotional components of successful change and practical strategies to gain buy-in. You will gain skills in how to diagnose the change situation and communicate change agendas more effectively. You will develop a good knowledge of the principles, concepts, and methods of change management in organisations; the change management process and change planning. The course is largely experiential. In-class exercises and case discussions are the main tools of learning. A key feature of this course is that you will practise how to manage a change process using a sophisticated simulation.
Leading Teams
Effective team performance depends upon the effective coordination of individual team member contributions, team processes and critically team leadership. Leadership models that underpin leadership more broadly in organisations are not sufficient for addressing the specific leadership of teams. Team leadership focuses on leadership actions and behaviours that promote effective team processes in dynamic work environments.
Content
The course provides participants with the most recent knowledge on the team processes that have been found to affect team effectiveness and performance. How team leaders affect specific cognitive and affective team processes is explained with a focus particularly on the importance of developing shared team metal models , team motivational processes and establishing team performance norms and these can be effectively monitored. The course explores the importance of trust within team contexts, how the team leader can affect team trust and how this relates to team outcomes.
Participants will reflect on their own team leadership and the challenges they specifically face in their own teams. Through undertaking a team leadership diagnostic participants will gain greater into their own effectiveness in their role as a team leader. We will also consider how virtual teams bring a separate set of challenges for effective team leadership and practical strategies and techniques to address these.
The Self as a Relational Leader
Self-awareness is one of the most important qualities in effective leadership that enables better decision making, improved trusting relationships, authenticity, and integrity. This 3-day course is aimed at upcoming managers and current leaders who want to expand their leadership skills. You will gain insight into your personal impact as a leader through a reflective and interactive learning experience. You will understand your own personal leadership style and its effectiveness, gain insights into what is working well and where you need to make changes and help to build your resilience as a leader. Good leadership is influenced by skills, experience, emotional intelligence, and adaptability and this course will help to increase your self-awareness in all these critical leadership domains.
Content
Participants will complete psychometric tests prior to attending the module to understand how their own personality and value preferences can affect how they approach the task of leadership. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own leadership style and what it means to be a leader in small group exercises. Key concepts from authentic, relational and transformational perspectives on leadership will be presented as alternative perspectives for understanding how leadership can bring about influence and change within personal relationships. More recent ideas on inclusive leadership will be used to frame discussion on unconscious bias with examples of how this may affect leader judgements and decisions.
Key take aways are that participants understand how helpful these leadership concepts can be applied within their own contexts. Participants will explore models to assist decision making for structured and unstructured decisions and gain insights into how their own decision style could influence how they address challenges or problems.
Developing Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence has been shown to be an important characteristic of leaders that is associated with bringing about significant leadership impacts. Viewed as a set of 4 key cognitive emotional abilities, emotional intelligence enables leaders to build high quality relationships with their followers, regulate their and others’ emotions that affects influence and motivation and recognise how their emotional states can affect their decision-making. Importantly, there is evidence that emotional intelligence can be developed through engaging and practising using emotional intelligence abilities.
Content
This 2-day course will enable you to understand what emotional intelligence is and importantly what it is not, and its importance for leadership. Drawing upon concepts from positive psychology, the course is highly interactive and participative. Before commencing the course you will complete a validated measure of EI to gain an understanding of your own emotional intelligence. Based upon research that has demonstrated what techniques actually work in developing EI, you will engage in group activities that are designed to develop your EI abilities relating to perceiving emotions, using emotions to facilitate thinking and regulating emotions in yourself and those you lead. The course will also draw upon our understanding of conflict at work and how this can be positively managed to gain insights into EI abilities in action. Given the course is highly participative there is considerable use of role play in this course. Following the course participants should expect to be more aware of how their emotional intelligence is affecting their leadership effectiveness on a day to day basis.
Satisfaction Guarantee
This is a Paragraph. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to start editing the content.