Learning to Lead

Making the transition to leadership

The transition from being a great individual contributor to being a leader of others is one of the most important and challenging career stages. If this first leadership transition does not go well, it often delivers a negative ripple effect that can dim future career prospects. The bad news is, more than 50% of first-time managers get lower performance evaluations as leaders, than they did as individual contributors. The good news is, when the transition goes well, it can produce positive career results that are amplified far into the future.

Learning to Lead is designed to help first time managers understand the nature of the transition from being a great individual contributor to being a team leader and to develop the critical people skills that often make the difference between longer-term career success or failure.

How you benefit

• Assess your leadership skills: Develop clear insights into your strengths and weaknesses as a leader.
• Evolve your toolkit: Acquire confidence and tools to create vision and set direction for greater success.
• Learn the art of motivation: Master frameworks for inspiring people and motivating them to perform better.

Content Overview

As a first time-manager, you will need a new set of communication skills to motivate and inspire your team. Some of the most critical skills include: setting effective goals, diagnosing motivation problems, providing feedback, reinforcing good performance, correcting undesired behaviour and resolving conflicts. Research suggests that mastering interpersonal skills early in your career can create a lasting effect on your reputation and ability as a leader.

Mastering these aspects of effective management requires an experiential rather than just a conceptual approach to learning and development – actively engaging in role plays, peer feedback, case discussions and team exercises.

Designed with your training needs in mind, Learning to Lead focuses on four key managerial roles.

Director

• Set effective goals and expectations within your team
• Translate organisational vision and strategy into individual action plans for your team
• Examine the benefits and limits of goal setting

Motivator

• Learn tools and techniques to analyse motivation problems
• Leverage reward systems
• Manage high and low performers effectively

Enabler

• Diagnose performance problems
• Provide constructive feedback
• Effectively resolve conflicts

Coach

• Provide effective coaching and development
• Assess individual capabilities and team contributions
• Leverage team diversity and build team spirit
• Chart your leadership future