Advanced Leadership Skills

“A leader leads by example not by force.”

Sun Tzu

Getting the most from people and organisations requires strong leadership skills. As products and services become more complex and the role of knowledge workers becomes more critical in the success of an organisation, it is essential to know how to lead and how to motivate.

Great leaders are known for their strong vision, the care they offer for their team, sheer passion for their cause and the tremendous support they provide to help people grow and become better at what they do.

This course covers a variety of topics on leadership and communication skills. It is ideal for those who have had some experience in managing or supervising people and want to improve their skills further. The course follows from Leadership Skills and it is assumed that delegates are already familiar with the concepts discussed in that course.

Since delegates already have some experience in management, this course is designed to address various practical issues that managers encounter every day and provides strategies on handling them. It is packed with exercises, examples and case studies so delegates are constantly pushed to think and re-examine their own attitudes when dealing with people. They learn numerous techniques that will help them improve their interactions and to build trust. A great part of a leader’s role is motivating his team and people around him. This is strongly reflected in various techniques used throughout the course as delegates come across this concept over and over again.

The course provides examples on decision making, delegation skills, managing people and resources, managing brainstorming sessions, crisis management and so on. In addition, delegates get to practice giving short talks to their team or clients in order to improve their public speaking skills.

The course contains various optional content and exercises that can easily be used to extend the course to 1.5 days or even more depending on your requirements.

In this highly practical course participants will learn:

Managing Your Team’s Aspirations

• How to set effective goals for your team
• How to prepare for brainstorming sessions
• How to help your team to generate ideas so you can benefit from everyone’s inputs

Systematic Planning

• Why some managers are known to be too confusing or demanding? How can you avoid this?
• What is the 5-steps planning technique and how can it be used for problem solving, brainstorming and general planning?
• How can you use business planning guidelines to improve your leadership?

Giving a Speech

• How can you improve your public speaking and presentation skills?
• How can these strategies benefit you when addressing your team?
• What strategies help you improve the opening of your public talks, whether addressing your team, your clients or your stakeholders?

Crisis Management

• What is a crisis?
• What types of crisis exist and what are the qualities of each type?
• What do you need to consider when handling a crisis?
• What areas do you need to consider when planning for crisis management?
• What is a contingency plan?
• What is risk management?
• What are your options when responding to risks and how can you incorporate these into your contingency plan?
• How does critical decision making relate to crisis management?

Managing People

• How can you improve your communication skills with your team by putting yourself in their position?
• What strategies help you gather more information about difficult cases, before expressing your dissatisfaction or saying something that you could regret afterwards?

Forgiving People

• What are the benefits of forgiving people?
• How to use forgiveness to empower your team
• What stops you from forgiving others?
• What are wrong attitudes toward forgiveness and how can you change them?
• How to use the 6-steps forgiveness sequence when forgiving people?

Delegation Skills

• What are various levels of delegation and what can you delegate in each level?
• How to select a delegation level based on how much control you want to retain and how much time you want to save
• What strategies help you formulate your request when delegating a task to motivate the person?
• What strategies help you minimise disruption to other team members so you can manage your team effectively as a whole?

Audience: This course is ideal for those who already have some experience in management.

Prerequisites: Leadership Skills

Course Duration: 1 or 1.5 Day. Optional content and exercises are provided that can be used to extend the course.

Course Level: Advanced

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Understand your team’s aspirations and set goals in a way to get them more committed and motivated to achieve these goals
• Systematically plan using the 5-steps planning technique to improve your brainstorming and problem solving meetings
• Improve your speech and public speaking to express your vision more effectively to your team, clients and stakeholders
• Analyse risks, draw contingency plans to prepare for a crisis and manage it as it unfolds
• Improve your communication skills to provide better feedback, reduce misunderstandings and help people grow and become more productive
• Overcome your fears and discomfort in forgiving people and learn how to forgive using a proven step-by-step technique
• Delegate at the right level to the right people while formulating your request in a way that motivates people and get the most from them