Leadership Skills - a package of 10 Knowledge Bits

Change is inevitable. Disruptive technologies, globalisation, ever-increasing competition and uncertainties in the political and economic contexts all result in change upon change to the organisations in which we work.

It is quite natural to fear change and want to cling on to the security of the status quo - change can be difficult and stressful and it can cause us a lot of anxiety. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Change can also bring opportunities of which we can take advantage: progress and growth on individual, organisational and societal levels all come from change.

This course looks at positive responses to change so that the individual and the organisation can prosper through change and use it to their advantage.

Skilful delegation is one of the most important management skills and yet it is notoriously difficult for managers to crack. When done well, the benefits are huge for the manager, the employee delegated to and for the organisation as a whole.

It enables staff to learn and grow, frees up the manager’s time to enable them to take on new responsibilities and finds the most efficient and cost-effective use of the organisation’s resources.

Giving feedback, if done well, is a very powerful tool for developing your individual staff members and improving your team’s performance. However, it is not always easy to do and we have probably all had experiences where it has not gone well.

The good news is that it is a skill and, as such, can be learnt. Best practice does exist and it is possible to learn ways of giving even the most difficult of feedback. If you want to learn how to give feedback in such a way that the other person is grateful for it and it really improves their performance, then this is the course for you.

As a finance manager providing finance services and partnership to your business colleagues you are seeing an acceleration in the pace of technological change. The revolution, driven by digitalised business models and new tools, will have the potential to change the scope and augmented skillsets of Finance Business Partner roles. This short module will provide you with a bite-sized explanation of the impact of digital and will allow you to reflect on the shape of a future business partner role.

During this course we’ll have a brief look at theory of Leadership. There are many books that are being written and we’ve distilled some of those key theory papers while bringing it up to date and talk about some of the current trends to look at a team. We’ll look at How to lead a team successfully? How to put a team together successfully? How to make sure your team works and consider the individuals within that team or entity that you are managing on an individual basis? Also to have a look at you as an individual and what you bring to the role of leadership?

Aimed at line managers, this course focuses on the practicalities of dealing with difficult members of staff. The courses discusses different types of difficulty a manager may encounter, the motivation of the member of staff concerned and how a team may react to the member of staff. It also covers practical steps needed to deal with both the short and longer term implications.

All of us will at times feel reluctant to deliver bad news or to broach sensitive or contentious issues with others. Yet whether in our personal or professional lives we will, in our lifetimes, need to hold many such conversations. Being able to hold them with fairness and equanimity is an invaluable and much-admired skill. Our course aims to provide you with the tools to approach such conversations with greater confidence and to be able to plan and conduct them in such a way that relationships are preserved and where possible a mutually acceptable way forward found.

During this course you’ll look at techniques to make sure that you identify the right project for your organisation. Secondly looking at understanding some of the project dynamics making sure the governor’s structure is right and the project structure’s right ensuring that you’ve got the right skills in place to be able to complete the project successfully.In addition we’ll cover the key elements of stakeholder engagement, who to talk to, when to talk to, and the sorts of people you may need to engage with, and how to engage with them, as well. We’ll have a look at a couple of the methodologies that are currently out there, those that are very structured and quite bureaucratic, to those that are much more free flowing. Finally the importance of going back and reviewing the project and making sure you learn the lessons from whatever project you’ve undertaken.

Starting to manage or lead a team from scratch can be very daunting. This course provides the vital practical tools and techniques for delegates to manage and develop themselves and their teams to ensure that their departmental and organisational goals are achieved.