Leadership Learning
As careers progress, people often move into leadership roles because they excelled in their previous position. The catch? The skill set for effective leadership differs from the skills that made you an effective individual contributor. This course was created to help you and your team learn the essential skills needed to make the transition and scale your organisation.
Backed by research, these practices positively impact team learning, growth and productivity, enhancing relationships and performance. As leaders grow in confidence and competence they:
- Build effective leadership knowledge, skills and practice
- Develop team relationships
- Improve productivity
Structure of Essential Skills for Leadership Impact
The course has 9 modules with linked reading, reflection and workbooks. They’re here for you to come back to and check in with so in time they become part of your everyday leadership life. The course is research-backed, there are thousands of books about leadership but I’ve distilled, based on evidence and research, the skills great leaders demonstrate every day and includes ideas you can put into practice immediately.
Actively Listening
Actively listening lies at the heart of connection. This session explores how we can develop active listening skills enhancing our leadership everyday. Good listening underpins team engagement and empathy, and is foundational for all successful leaders. Research underpinning this session includes work by Alan Sieler and Brené Brown.
Asking Questions
Building a culture of enquiry and curiosity helps us continually improve and is essential to ensuring we and our teams continue to learn at pace. This session explores how the quantity and quality of questions asked distinguishes great leaders from good and offers suggestions for questions to try out.
Reflecting Back
Often, when someone begins talking through an issue, thoughts are messy; especially when strong emotions are involved. Reflecting back helps ensure you understand their concerns and brings clarity to our conversations and the work. This session walks you through how we can include this in everyday work, and evidences the benefits including preventing costly mis-understandings and building trust. Research underpinning the session includes work by Carl Rogers and Alan Sieler.
Building Clarity
Ever left a meeting wondering what it was really all about? Great leaders build clarity - they listen, ask questions, reflect back - and build clarity where they can enabling their teams to focus on the right work. In this session we look at how ambiguity can be recognised and how as leaders we can build clarity preventing miscommunication, improve the quality of feedback and learning, and swiftly improve decision making.
Creating a Sense of Belonging
All of the previous skills in this series help leaders lead and teams to thrive. In addition we have to show we care, creating a sense of belonging between team members. We build trust in our teams by doing this frequently and consistently in lots of micro-interactions. The linked research shows this reduces stress and builds productivity. In the session you can learn how in everyday interactions you can focus both on the work in hand and building a sense of belonging through what you say and do.
Explicit Connection with Goals
How do you support the creativity and enthusiasm of your team while still focusing on the most important work? Great leaders make explicit connections between actions and goals. This creates alignment faster, enables autonomy and helps you gain buy-in faster. In the session we work through how you can do this through everyday interactions in 1:1s, team meetings and informal conversations.
Learning to Pause
Can you think of a time when you rushed to action and later really wished you’d waited? Great leaders know when to act swiftly and when to act slowly. They learn self-containment, and pause. The linked research shows how this helps create sustained productivity, resolve conflict faster and helps us innovate at pace. We draw on research by Daniel Goleman and learn how learning to pause can be a great ally in our leadership.
Always Learning
All organisations are dependent on the pace at which they continue to learn and implement changes as a result of their most recent learning. And, all leaders need to be leaders of learning. Why? Because it enables us to stay relevant, credible and effective and helps develop our self awareness - essential for effective leadership. This session explores the research and gives practical ideas for implementation.
Developing Self-Awareness
In his seminal work on Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman showed how developing self awareness is critical to effective leadership. This session reviews research by Dunning and Kruger showing regardless of our competence being high or low, our self assessment is often off kilter, but accurate emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment and grounded confidence can be great allies as we work towards great insight and awareness. This is essential for us to learn and grow, enables good decision making based on values and goals and helps us impact positively on those around us, critical for leaders to continue making sustained positive impact.
What people say
If you're serious about improving your leadership skills, I highly recommend this course. Helen is a gifted facilitator, and she provides a wealth of practical advice that you can use immediately.
Veuve CrossBritish Embassy, BakuHelen's expertise and understanding of education is unparalleled. She stays updated with the latest research and trends, providing relevant guidance for informed decision-making. Working with her aligns start-up leaders with a vision of transforming education for future generations.
Asher SilvermanDirector of Education & Partnerships, YourGamePlanWhat’s included
- AdaptingDeveloping self-awareness
- SkillsActively listening, building clarity, and learning to pause
- CultureCreating a sense of belonging
- ApproachesExplicitly connecting with goals and reflecting back
- Content9 Modules including videos, downloadable slides, workbooks and linked reading/resources for you to use with your teams
- LifetimeGet lifetime access to the online training course after signing up, available to view any place, any time, at your convenience
Let’s talk
If you’re navigating growth, change or complexity, I’d be glad to hear what you’re working on.