Mastering Leadership

Day One

• Effective management and leadership: Explore concepts and principles from a variety of experts on what makes good managers and what the difference is between management and leadership. Discuss factors as to when each should be used and then do a deep dive into qualities of effective leaders. This segment serves as the foundation for the rest of the topics over the three days.
• Self-awareness and leadership: The key to being an effective leader is truly understanding one’s own leadership and personality style. Use the Johari window as a construct for identifying our own strengths and areas for development and will dive deep into the topic of Styles of leadership from Daniel Goleman and the MBTI, which participants will take in advance.
• Creating and articulating a compelling vision: Review the difference between a Mission and a Vision and explore the Visions of the organizations the participants work with. Each participant creates a Vision for their own department or function and practices articulating it and will receive feedback from their peers. This section will also provide framing by starting with an environmental assessment and a SWOT analysis.
• Guest speakers: Learners will have the opportunity to hear about the leadership journey and philosophy of the guest speakers. At least one guest will discuss the importance of creating and sharing a vision and how they used their vision to drive organizational performance. There will be a Q&A section for each presentation.

Day Two

• Effective communication: Learn the importance of effective communication in working with others, with a focus on active listening. In this segment, we explore our own contributions to communication breakdowns and discuss techniques to avoid them.
• Motivating and developing employees: Learn how to motivate, recognize and develop employees to increase engagement, productivity and retention. This segment will include research on what motivates employees, a model for determining how to best assign work and support employees and how to coach high performing employees.
• High-performing teams: Teams are the basic unit of collaboration in today’s organizations and knowing how to build and foster an effective team is critical for leaders to master. Theories about team development, team leadership and team membership will be explored, and the group will put these concepts into practice by engaging in an interactive team exercise.
• Giving effective feedback: An essential skill both to guide team performance, as well as to drive individual performance, this segment on feedback equips the participants with an easy to use model for giving feedback. Case studies and roleplays enables them to practice these skills and focus on application at work.
• Panel of guest speakers: The panel will focus on challenges and successes the guest leaders have had with building high performing teams and the lessons they have learned. There will be time for a Q&A built into the session.

Day Three

• Leading change: One of the most challenges roles is to be an effective and inspiring leader of change. Review various models for leading change effectively, dive into the theory of adoption of change and explore why people resist change and how to bring them along.
• Guest speaker: The focus will be on how the speaker led change effectively.
• Power and influence: Participants explore the various sources of power and identify which they are using and which they could utilize more to motivate and inspire their employees. Influence without authority is required when one doesn’t have “positional power” and using concepts from various expert’s participants will gain confidence and competence in influence and persuasion. They will work on an actual “influence opportunity” they have at work and make progress by applying the concepts.
• Handling conflict: Conflict abounds at work and most of us would prefer to avoid it. Using the TKI model participants learn about 5 conflict modes, which they tend to use most often, and importantly which approach is best to use for what type of situations. Participants also explore their own contribution to conflict and gain insights into their patterns of behavior. Participants will take the TKI assessment in advance of the session.
• Challenge circles: This exercise will give the participants an opportunity to coach each other on their real-world challenges and gain insight from their peers, as well as practice in coaching and consulting with each other.
• Goal setting: During this final segment, participants will be encouraged to review all the material they have covered over the last three days and identify 2–3 goals they want to pursue over the next 6–12 months.

Pre-Work Required

1. Read the Art of Persuasion by John Kotter, to be distributed in advance.
2. Come prepared to discuss a work challenge you are facing.
3. Bring the Vision and the Mission of your organization.