Why Leadership and Management training is important

Leadership and Management Training shown as two converging grey arrows becoming one blue arrow pointing forwards.

We see a lot of organisations that invest time and money into training their staff but don’t do the same for their managers. They are often expected to grow into their role naturally. You can be highly skilled in the job, but you will not necessarily be able to get the most out of your team without developing your people management skills.

You may be an experienced manager who wants to unlearn some bad habits or improve a specific skill set. Or, you may be new to management and need to learn how to manage a team of people who used to be your friends. Sometimes, it’s just about having the confidence of knowing that you are doing it the right way.

Our approach

Three interlocking cogs. We will create a training solution that addresses those areas that will have the biggest impact on your performance, by adopting a coaching-led approach. Our programmes normally include a combination of workshops, seminars and action learning sets. We will select the models and techniques that are best suited to your organisation’s culture.

If you would like to understand the difference between a workshop and a seminar, there is an article here that explains the labels that we use.

The bespoke nature of our Leadership and Management training means that the only thing we can say for sure is that you will not always enjoy it!
We design our training to be engaging. It will be fun at times, but we will likely push you out of your comfort zone. Challenging you to reach your potential.

The first step is to understand if training is going to deliver what you want. Let’s talk.

Some examples of what we do

We don’t do ‘off the shelf’ training. However, we do find that certain topics come up quite regularly. To give you a flavour of what we’re about, here are some examples of the kinds of modules that we develop for Leadership and Management training:

Is that a SMART thing to do?

This is probably our most common module. We often find that the challenges managers talk about stem from a lack of clarity. We will explore: how to use the SMART technique, common language traps, the most important elements of setting clear tasks, how to link SMART tasks to a culture of effective feedback, and using the language to create shared responsibility for getting things done. This session is normally a half-day seminar, introduced in the early in the programme schedule. We regularly spark discussions and ideas by using animated scenarios, contextualised to the organisation. We then explore real-life scenarios, demonstrating how to improve task management.

There is a video on our YouTube channel that may be of interest to you. It outlines our preferred version of SMART and shares some language tips.

Challenging Conversations

We have run a few versions of this workshop both as half-day and full-day sessions. If you want this session to be really exciting, we recommend that we involve our Drama Dude. As you would expect, the session deals with challenging conversations. We talk about: what makes a conversation challenging, how to prepare for having a challenging conversation, dealing with surprises, understanding your behaviours, emotional responses and triggers, and how to build a culture where challenging conversations are no longer challenging.

Me at My Best

A half-day session designed to support your personal development as a Manager. The key themes are: developing a growth mind-set, exploring the ‘inner’ language that you use and how it can impact upon your behaviour, exploring what pushes your buttons in the workplace, the impact on your behaviour, and coping strategies.

Feedback: No Sandwiches Please

A half-day session on how to give effective feedback. We have had great success (and fun) in the past by extending this to a full day workshop and running through some challenging scenarios with our Drama Dude. We’ve also helped to create some light-bulb moments by presenting common challenges as animated scenarios. We cover: why feedback sandwiches don’t work, key ingredients of great feedback, and strategies for dealing with different reactions to feedback.

Model Making for Beginners

Usually run as a one-day workshop, this session explores tools and techniques for shaping strategy. You can use them to develop new strategies, re-engineer your business model, define operating models, or ensure cohesion in strategic partnerships. Some of the tools that we use in this session are explained on our YouTube channel.

As well as working with leadership teams, we have also successfully delivered variants of this workshop to Marketing teams. Using the tools to inform and develop cost effective campaigns.

 


Want us to develop a workshop for you? Let us have your number and we’ll drop you a line. Let’s talk.