Leadership and Management

Only 30% of Leaders and Managers find joy in their work. It's stressful, long hours, lack of support, inexperienced colleagues, complex projects, constant uncertainty, constant meetings, low funding, negative outcomes - it never ends.

Why do 30% often excel in their work? What are they doing that gets them stellar results? You too can navigate this complex path and transcend yourself and your outcomes. 

Take a two-minute tour of this page and see if it's the course that will change your personal and professional destiny. If it is, send us a message from the Contacts page or sign up directly on a scheduled date (at the top of the page). I look forward to working with you - Banu.

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Today’s leader or manager is time-poor with an unending to-do list. A fast-changing external environment necessitates organisations to be proactive, innovative and prepared for change.

As organisational structures evolve, becoming a flatter and more group-based, so must the way leaders communicate their vision and manage people.

To bring to life the concepts you'll be learning during the two days, consider the case study below.

Summit Tradition Systems (STS) is a small software provider with clients all around the world. Mark is the CEO and founder who created the company 25 years ago. He leads a strong team of senior executives, most of whom have remained with the firm since its inception.

STS has grown rapidly over the past five years, especially after it bought an interesting new technology platform from a rival company. Its rapid growth was great for profits but it's put a lot of strain on the team.

There is a need to hire more people but everyone is too busy to spend time training or nurturing new talent. Mark understands the importance of training and mentoring in the workplace and wants to find a way to create a culture where it becomes part of the firm’s DNA. It also reduces the reliance on a few key people in the business.

Mark’s also looking ahead to the next five years by which time he and his co-founders will be looking to retire or at least go part-time. He’s keen to start his succession planning and ensure a seamless transition occurs when the time is right.

Anita is currently Head of Client Relationships and has shown outstanding skills in leading her team to new business wins with excellent client feedback. She’s been with the company from the outset and understands its culture. Mark sees her potential for progress and wants to prepare her for greater involvement in strategic decisions.

Jay is a young salesman who joined the firm three years ago. He’s great with clients and has a track record of consistently high-performance. Mark sees potential in Jay to take on more responsibility and lead a sales team. He hopes that he will recruit more salespeople like him and nurture them to become high performers too. It means he does less selling and more people management.

Let’s take a look at some of the adjustments Mark, Anita and Jay will need to make as they engineer a slow transition from their current roles to their new ones.

If you could start your business again with a blank canvas - how would it look? 

Who would be sitting around the table? What would be your company vision? What would be your top priorities?

Day 1: What it takes to become a great leader and manager

Leaders and managers serve different purposes. Our world needs both. In the words of management guru Peter Drucker, Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

You'll learn:

• why leadership comes first and understand what it means to be a leader. Anita will have to transition from executing on an agreed strategy to becoming the person who leads the vision and the mission for the business. How to start with yourself, i.e. understand self-leadership and its importance to your success as an influencer. Anita will have to learn how to interact, communicate and influence her team in a way that turns them into believers and followers.
• how to transition from “doing” to “leading”. Jay will have to make this transition from being responsible for his own sales targets to leading a team of salespeople to collectively deliver on their individual sales targets. He may find he misses the adrenalin of making the sale and finds managing a team of people far harder than dealing with customers.
• how to make decisions even when you don’t have all the facts or control over the outcomes. As Anita learns to look at the big picture, she will find that she must take a long view with little certainty. She will have to factor in a number of unknown variables and yet be clear and decisive.
• how to build trust and nurture loyalty in your followers and team members. This may be more of a challenge for Jay than for Anita, but both will be outside their comfort zones and need to find their own way of engaging with the people who work for them.
• why delegation is so important and how to do it well. Delegating well and consistently creates more time for other more value-adding tasks and also gives others a chance to take on more responsibility in a safe way.
• how to create a great team by tapping into complementary skills and through collaboration. Being aware of your own strengths and weaknesses is an important starting point. Not everyone in your team needs to be good at everything. Create an ecosystem that allows people to discover what they’re really good at, and then connect different skillsets in a way that generates value for your clients and for your business.how to give and receive feedback in a constructive manner. Becoming a leader and manager can feel uncomfortable because you have to deal with people’s failings and emotions. Doing so in an empathetic manner will make all the difference.t
• the importance of training, mentoring and coaching and how to create a great return on investment from it. Mark is a thoughtful leader and is willing to invest in the personal and professional development of his people. He’s created a network on internal mentors and encourages his staff to join external mentorship programmes to accelerate their personal and professional growth. As a result of this, his firm has low staff turnover.
• how to overcome setbacks and resolve conflicts. Learning to deal with conflict (internal or external) and avoiding any escalation can save business costs and time. It is also better for the mental wellbeing of the people who work there.

Day 2: How to practice the art of great leadership and management

On the second day, you'll reflect on the previous day's work and discover how it can be put into practice in real-time, in the real world with real people who have complex needs, aspirations and priorities.

You'll learn:

• how to practise assertiveness without it turning into aggression. Becoming a leader or team manager is a position of great responsibility and can be lonely. Not everyone in your team will agree with you, or like you. Yet, your job is to make tough decisions in a professional manner even if it is not popular.
• how to say “no” without offending or creating conflict. Your time is limited and precious. First, understand what you’re saying “yes” to. This will make it easier to know what to say “no” to in the most constructive possible way.
• the power of language and how to use it effectively as a leader. Clear and consistent internal communication is key to a business running smoothly. You can communicate your vision, your strategy, the progress and also any setbacks in a way that keeps the team pulling in the same direction. The language you use will make all the difference.
• how to elicit employee engagement in the workplace. Happy and engaged employees are significantly more productive than their unhappy counterparts. It makes economic sense to actively create workplace happiness.
• how to empower employees through acknowledgement, autonomy and accountability. You will learn simple ways in which to achieve greater engagement by how you treat people and how you make them feel.
• how to motivate, not manipulate. Jay will have to find out what motivates every individual member of his team because not every one of them will be motivated by the same things. Salary is not a primary motivator. A leader’s job is even tougher. How do you get the best out of a disparate group of talented people who don’t want to be managed?
• how to avoid, identify and treat burn out. Recognising the signs of burn out is always easier after the event and can be very expensive. Being proactive means taking the necessary steps to alleviate stress and deal with those affected by it in a sensitive and non-patronizing way.
• how to create an actionable plan that you can take with you into your workplace and practise what you learnt right away.

Take action now!

If this is the course that will change your personal and professional destiny. If it is, send us a message from the Contacts page or sign up directly on a scheduled date (at the top of the page). I look forward to working with you - Banu.

Hear what some of Banu's inspired students said about the course below:

In summary:

Specialist trainers: friendly, qualified and empathetic

Quality and easily accessible venues at King's Cross and Holborn, London

Outstanding outcomes

Question 1: What is critical for you to resolve right now?

Question 2: What's going to happen if you don't sort it out?

This is an ideal course for young managers and leaders. Adopting the correct mindset, the correct language and creating the correct relationships with colleagues and clients is essential to success. In two short days, your daily work can change from chaos to clarity. That will be a huge benefit to you and your company colleagues.

For more details, click on the Contact tab on the right of the page, or to sign up you can scroll to the top of the page and the details are on the right.