Leading and managing your team

• Introductions – confidentiality, research base
• Leadership and management behaviours, skills and knowledge
• Developing a flexible leadership style
• Understanding Action-centred leadership, balance the needs of the Task, Team and Individual

Engagement and Emotional Intelligence

• Engagement science – understanding engagement of teams and motivating individuals
• The top 12 predictors of staff engagement
• The 12 categories and 4 domains of emotional intelligence
• The link between emotional intelligence and effective leadership
• Ways to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence in yourself and your team
• Giving and receiving feedback – down, across and up

Building team culture

• Identifying the culture you’d like to create, and the legacy you’d like to leave at your organisation outside of your science / technical / operational role?
• Focusing on ‘how’ we work, as well as ‘what’ we do
• Understanding what it means to lead and live your organisation’s values
• What do we mean by psychological safety and why is it so important?
• Identifying ways of building psychological safety in teams
• Creating a blame-free culture
• Building an effective team
• Identifying ways to collaborate within teams and across the organisation

Creating a diverse workforce

• Discussing how we create a diverse workforce, including (& not limited to) gender, disabilities, BAME, neurodiversity, LGBTQplus
• Unconscious bias
• Understanding what different generations need in a leader
• Maximising the benefits of cognitive diversity through constructive disagreement

Personal reflection and action planning

A practical session developing skills to empower the team to solve problems, make decisions and use their initiative more

Review – What have you used since last time?

Developing competence and confidence in your team

• The competence / confidence grid
• Using the Lead / Manage / Do triangle
• ‘Do we delegate to develop or dump through despair?’ – delegating effectively
• 1:1s and supervisions

Setting goals and objectives

• Setting specific, measurable and time-bound goals
• Recognising when setting goals can be hard in a research culture

Introduction to coaching skills

• Introduction to coaching and mentoring skills
• What are coaching and mentoring skills and how do they fit into the leadership tool kit?
• Recognising the difference between coaching and mentoring
• Understanding the ‘push / pull’ continuum

Powerful listening and questioning skills

• The power of listening
• Developing a range of core and advanced questioning skills to encourage the team member to think and problem-solve for themselves more
• ‘Managing the Kitten’
• Closed questions

Using the GROW model

• Understanding the GROW model
• Using a powerful 4-step model that enables the team to think for themselves more rather than rely on / come to the manager for the answers to issues
• How to avoid jumping with solutions
• Practical demonstration of the GROW model

Extended skills practice using the GROW model

• Using these skills in 1:1s to coach each other with a work-related issue

Personal reflection and action planning

Review – What have you used since last time?

Different types of challenging conversations

• Different types of tricky conversations and how to manage them
• How to set clear expectations, including knowing when to say ‘no’
• Handling difficult attitudes and strong emotions
• Selecting the appropriate approach when providing difficult feedback

Managing behaviour under pressure

• The role of words, tone and body language
• Identify your own trigger points and how to manage these
• How to gain the other person’s attention / buy-in
• Increasing your emotional intelligence

Preparing for your own challenging conversation

• Questions to consider before you have a challenging conversation
• Anticipating the other person’s responses and how you’ll respond

Extended skills practice using scenarios written for your own organisation

Influencing styles

• Discovering your natural influencing style.
• Developing a flexible influencing style to increase your impact
• Managing up – working productively with your manager and senior colleagues

Personal reflection and action planning

Review – What have you used since last time?

Personal impact

• Circle of control – identifying what you can control and influence, and what you can’t do anything about.
• Adapting your tone and body language to create the impressions you choose.
• The difference between intention and behaviour.
• Increasing your visibility

Strategy

• Where would you like to get to, and how are you going to get there?
• Thinking strategically about your career
• Planning strategically for yourself and your team
• Working ‘on the business’ as well as ‘in the business’
• Seeing the bigger picture

Widening your influence and stakeholder network

• Identifying your key stakeholders
• Power and politics – understanding the political landscape and how to influence it
• Increasing your personal visibility at work
• Building networks, coalitions and support processes
• Making the most of networking opportunities at conferences etc.
• Developing an influencing strategy

Developing personal resilience

• Increasing wellbeing and resilience
• Managing your energy throughout the working day and week
• Reframing and Cognitive Restructuring – identifying thinking patterns to build pragmatism and perspective
• Building wellbeing in your team
• Talking to your team members about wellbeing inc. case studies

Personal reflection and programme action planning inc. pair coaching