Universal Leadership Skills

Many people become leaders by accident - often because they were good at their last job and were promoted to a position where they became responsible for people. Often leaders are launched on unsuspecting followers with little or no leadership training. On the other hand, if you look in the business section of any bookshop, you will see shelves full of books about leadership.

Universal Leadership Skills cuts through all the hype. You will consider your existing leadership styles and practices and learn tried-and-tested models and skills to help you improve. The course combines input on the ideas and philosophies underpinning leadership with practices and techniques that can be immediately applied back in the workplace.

It doesn't matter about the nature of your organisation. Previous participants have come from very large, very small, for profit, not for profit, charities, public sector, private sector, long-established, new start-ups - the list goes on. The only real requirement is that you lead a team at a managerial level.

Every leader should remember that it is YOU your people talk about in the pub with their colleagues and around the dinner table with their families. What would you like them to say about you as their boss?

Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Alsager October 2023		Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Maastricht June 2023		Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Brisbane December 2022		Universal Leadership Skills for Broadland Housing Group June 2022

Duration and who should attend

Duration

3 days

Who should attend?

•	Chief Executives
•	Directors
•	Direct Reports to Directors
•	Departmental Heads
•	Other leaders of large or complex teams

Universal Leadership Skills is not just for new or inexperienced leaders. Many previous participants have led teams for years and still found the course invaluable. Indeed we have a number of senior leaders who re-attend every few years as they find the course provides thinking time and an opportunity to refocus and reassess their leadership practices in ever-changing circumstances.

People who do not line manage a team should not attend.

We also run this as a public course

Style and structure of the course

Universal Leadership Skills is highly participative and practical. Participants are asked to apply what they are learning to their own real-life scenarios for each session. This includes the opportunity to reflect on your existing leadership habits, pick the brains of the Consultants running the course and, of course, interact with the other participants.

This is an unusual course as we find that each person has a different 'light bulb moment'. After several years of observing this, we finally realised that this is because what is going on for each individual, their team and their organisation is different for everybody. What is certain is that you will have at least one very bright light bulb moment.

To help you back in the workplace, participants receive our highly practical and comprehensive manual, The Complete Guide to Leadership and access to further on-line resources.

Universal Leadership Skills for Broadland Housing Group March 2022		Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Maastricht June 2019		Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Alsager February 2019		Universal Leadership Skills Public course in Brisbane October 2018

What you will learn

Leadership and management - the background to the ideas

•	Where the ideas come from The work of the early thinkers - Frederick Taylor, Kurt Lewin, Douglas McGregor and Mary Parker Follett - the pioneers of leadership theory
•	Why leadership is needed
•	The difference between leadership and management ...and the difference between management and supervision
•	The link between leadership and the Sigmoid Curve ...and why leadership practices in your organisation may be putting you out of business

Motivation

Twenty tips for motivating your employees - that's what a typical 1 day course on motivation offers. We won't be doing this - instead we suggest you don't even bother trying to motivate the people who work for you. Want to know why? You need to know:

•	The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
•	How a leader can de-motivate people
•	Satisfiers and dissatisfiers in the workplace and what you can do about them
•	Why reading for pizza is bad and that chimpanzees like to paint

Flexible Leadership

The Flexible Leadership model looks at different leadership styles and puts the idea that 'one style fits all' in the dustbin. After this session, if anyone ever asks you what your leadership style is, you will always answer "it depends". The basis of the Flexible Leadership model is that when leading an individual you need to adopt a leadership style based on the ability and competence of that individual and the nature of the task in hand. We will examine the resulting leadership styles and match these to your own real-life situations. Then we will identify the actions associated with each.

Leading individuals

We will introduce a series of key principles for leading individuals. We will also provide a person-by-person checklist to help you understand the people who work for you. We will do some work around how to structure a 1-1 and offer an alternative to traditional performance appraisal.

Finally, we will give you some tips on how to lead through others. This is important because how the people who report to you lead the people who report to them is your responsibility, not theirs.

Leading your team

This is about leading your team as a whole rather than as a group of individuals. We will look at when to utilise individual effort and when to use the team collectively. This session includes:

•	An analysis of how effective your team is and the areas you need to focus on to improve
•	The Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model of developmental stages for a team, how to assess where your team is currently and what you as a leader need to do to move them forward
•	The skill and practicalities of preparing and delivering a Leader Speaks for your team
•	If time allows we will also examine your team structure and see how the Organisation Chart is helping or hindering getting things done

Leading your boss

It is the relationship with your boss that can make or break how happy you are at work. To finish the course we will have a look at the realities of what you can and can't do to improve this relationship.

Download

Click here for the Universal Leadership Skills Briefing Note.