Team Leadership, Manager Development and Effective Performance Management   

Leadership

Taking leadership is not easy.  In fact it can be downright scary and lonely.  And it means taking the occasional risk: letting others know what you think before you know what they think.  Persuading people to trust you and be guided, influenced and looked after by you.

Yet without Leadership many of us feel lost and bereft of direction.  Its comforting to think someone is in charge: someone knows what they are doing: there is a right answer.  Hence the criticism if leaders don’t appear to be meeting people’s expectations

Sometimes it can be very energising to be a leader.  People will seek you out, want your advice and welcome your views.  Other times they want you to make them feel better, reassure them that you know what you are doing and that everything will work out.  And when you do they might even say thanks although often it is taken for granted.

This sums up the Leadership Challenge.  What are the key skills that will help you join the “good leader” group?  We believe good leaders all have similar skills in the six areas listed above which they mix and match into their Leadership Style.  Using your Leadership Style in a particular way will enable you to support your team to meet the demands of a fast changing industrial and commercial world.

Outcomes - Individual

•   A shared and agreed view of Leadership
•   Create your own Leadership style and use it to manage and influence
•   Relate the agreed styles to the culture of your business
•   Choose the most effective style to solve everyday business problems
•   Define clearly your goals and achieve them using the six Leadership areas

Outcomes Corporate

• Create and manage your company culture with complimentary leader styles and best practices
• In management and project meetings use your style to agree actions to ensure project success
• Build productivity, satisfaction, engagement and Health & well-being using the six key leadership skills

Benefits

• Effective Management Teams that deliver consistent and reliable customer satisfaction
• Increased productivity through more efficient use of time
• Equal treatment of all staff through a consistent and recognisable approach
• Reduced sickness absence. low staff turnover and high customer satisfaction

Style of Workshop

Prior to the training event each leader will get a report about their unique mix of the six key areas of effective Leadership (see above under leadership competencies).

Each Workshop will be an experiential learning event following the Learning Cycle to structure your day.  Thus you can expect to talk about your experiences, reflect, experiment and seek feedback with lecture style input kept to a minimum.  Practical exercises will place your Leadership learning in context and create some practical tips, skills and techniques that you can use in your everyday work.  To finish each event we will design and agree some back-at-work projects that you can use to accelerate your development.

Programme Content

•     Setting our Leadership Climate
•     Key, effective Leadership actions for creating & managing change
•     The Six Key Areas for effective Leaders
•     Identifying Different Types Of Problem and how Leaders solve them
•     Using the “known to be effective” actions.
•     Managing the conflict
•     Reacting to the danger signals

Managing Work Relationships

This is a very much underrated skill.  Mainly, we believe, because everyone likes to think they are good at getting along with people.  And of course by and large you are right.  Only now and then you come across someone that is just that bit more difficult to collaborate with.  They make you feel uncomfortable: not seem to listen: tend to want their own way: always know best.

Or, something important goes wrong, emotions run high and then life at work becomes a tad more difficult.  Now you need those relationship building skills!  I say that because relationships are never built and then that’s that.  They require constant maintenance, effort and sensitivity. 

In fact that is one of the topics on our Relationship Building Workshops looks at who are your high or low maintenance customers, colleagues and contacts.  You might like to think about it now.  Give them a rating between 1 = Low Maintenance and 10 = High Maintenance.  Now you are ready to attend one our Workshops and begin to widen your repertoire of ways to deal with each of those individuals.  Have a look at a typical Workshop design here.  As one of my swimming teachers used to say “It’s no use waiting until you fall in the water to decide you want to learn to swim!”   So a good time to hone your Relationship Building is when most things are going well and you are getting along with everybody or if things are tough and you want to take time out to reflect and build your skills.

Conflict Management

This is a whole topic in itself.  We all have our preferred way to solve conflicts ranging from avoidance to attack and all point in between.  Most of the people who have been on one of our courses are surprised that there is a whole range of styles you can use to solve conflicts.  The course covers them all and if you want to see a sample workshop now click here.

When we speak to Directors and Executives they are know how much time can be wasted on long running and often unavoidable conflicts, arguments and disputes.  I have worked in organisations where the Finance Director doesn’t speak to the Sales Director except when asked to talk about numbers.  Such situations can arise as part of the normal working day; how long they go on for, how much they increase costs and whether they can be used as an opportunity for growth and learning is about how many ways people can find to resolve their differences.  Scott Peck talks about emotional control being something we have to learn.  Conflict Management is all about emotional control: ways to get, ways to keep it and ways to avoid winding others up!  And all run in a supportive, challenging and safe Workshop where you will have the chance to look at the issues you face both individually and from an company view.