Strategic Leadership Skills
Without critical analysis or thoughtful insight, leadership becomes hit and miss. Most leaders underestimate the impact of their influence over their teams; passively agree to goals and objectives that are not aligned with their corporate values and mission; or become too focussed on outcomes while destroying morale. Poor leadership is often at the forefront of disastrous processes. How can leaders promote quality assurance, develop human capital and support innovation, but not bother to invest in their own continuous learning? Have you ever wondered why great leaders are the few and not the many?
This program will highlight key components of successful leadership that are common in all great leaders. You will learn effective strategic and operational decision making skills within ever-changing environments that have converging and competing variables in demanding pressures of time, risk and reward. Great leaders also build contingencies and flexibility in each decision as they understand that there are many paths to success, some of which are not under their control. Equally critical is your ability to develop leaders at every level. Through focused and deliberate communication strategies, you can build a performance based organization by fostering a culture of innovation, purpose and drive.
Great leaders have the strategic capacity and vision to position their organization in order to take advantage of circumstances that may not have been forecasted. They have the ability to predict turning points and have the agility to reposition their organization. This ability to envision a future in the present by utilizing a methodological approach may determine the very economic viability, or sustainability of your organization.
In this three day program, through discussions and case studies, you will learn effective strategies that will immediately enhance your leadership skills. Leadership is not a specific responsibility or task; rather, it is a way of thinking, learning and doing!
Learning Objectives
- Developing your leadership strategy
- Identifying your leadership components
- How to develop multiple futures
- Understanding how to reset your organizational culture
- Developing the ability to think strategically
- Learning how to conduct an effective environmental scan
- Understanding why metacognition is critical to every successful leader
- Developing strategic alignment
- Setting your leadership communication strategy
- Developing your strategic leadership decision making skills
Three Day Program Content
Critical leadership components
- Learning to lead people
- Knowing when to use a different leadership style
- Understanding the essence of leadership – Three key components
- What is the effect of time on your leadership style?
- Understanding when it is appropriate to lead
- Helping your employees develop an organizational leadership philosophy
- Can leaders unknowingly contribute to a negative environment?
- Learning to think strategically
Leadership & organizational culture
- What is organizational culture?
- Understanding how organizational culture develops
- Understanding how poor change initiatives can lead to “never adopters”
- Why reinforcement is critical for sustained change
- Understanding why some employees will never accept change
- Building a culture of accountability
- Employing change management models that work
- Understanding the components of culture
Effective decision making skills
- Using the decision making model
- Formulating options and a contingency plan
- ‘Paralysis by analysis’ – Knowing when you need to act
- Aligning decisions to mission/value statements
- Utilizing the risk/certainty model in developing organizational capacity and tolerance
- Setting strategic priorities
- Building consensus when making unpopular decisions
- Decision making and risk
- Utilizing the decision making process
- Piloting critical decisions
Understanding strategy – What is strategic thinking
- Recognizing the difference between strategy & strategic thinking
- Identifying tactical vs. technical strategies
- Why both strategy and strategic thinking are so important
- Identifying the strategies process
- Balancing the current and future states
- Defining the levels of strategic thinking
Leadership & strategic thinking
- Learning the ten components of strategic thinking
- Defining corporate obstacles to strategic thinking
- What are the mega, macro and micro strategic priorities?
- What are the five steps to an effective strategic plan?
- Using a process of ‘environmental scanning’ to gain competitive knowledge
- Fostering employee engagement
Constructing futures
- Holding multiple futures simultaneously
- Conceptualizing ‘what if’ scenarios
- Positioning your organization in continuous change
- Anticipating future demographic
- Leveraging turning points to create urgency and action
- Developing coherent stories of the future
- Creating a value proposition for your organization
Ensuring strategic alignment
- Aligning the mission, vision and values
- Aligning strategy, tactics and operations
- Ensuring internal and external consistency
- Developing alignment throughout the value chain
- Engaging supplier and service providers in your organizational strategy
- Managing alignment expectations and communications
- Critically assessing outlier or non-core opportunities
Leadership communication strategies
- Developing a plan
- Designing communications that are cognitively attractive
- What is the ‘Art of Persuasion’?
- Using personal and social influences
- Understanding why ‘top down’ communication strategies don’t always work
- Leading by influence vs. authority and power
- Defining the key elements to successful communications
General Information
Why should you attend?
- Learn how to do it right the first time
- Negotiation mistakes are costly
- Keep your organization viable
- Ensure that you have the tools to succeed
Who Should Attend?
- Negotiators – for management and unions
- Negotiations team
- Owner operators
- Financial managers
- Union Shop Stewards, Business Agents and Presidents
- Board members
General Program Information
- Breakfast and lunch are included daily
- Program materials will be provided
- Please bring your laptops for the simulation
- Certificates will be presented upon completion of the program
- Program is in session from 9am to 4 pm
- Teams may choose to continue preparing their case into the early evening of Day Two
