The Boston Global Leaders Programme

Course Introduction

This training programme will equip you – whether you are a senior manager, leader or executive – with the very latest insights, models, tools and skills to boost your effectiveness, stand out from your colleagues and so transform your performance and reputation and those of your department and organisation.

This will be achieved by making explicit both the differences and the complementarities of both managing and leading. The expansive and, sadly, poorly defined art and science of management is one of the least understood and inadequately implemented organisational functions essential to all operations. This Oxford training programme has therefore been designed to help you cover the full range of management functions using a dynamic, powerful and highly practical new model of management practice – the Q-OPD Full-Range Management Model^© .

Similarly, the critical role of leadership will be covered by looking at the five leadership approaches that are required of you in today’s organisations using the comprehensive Q-OPD Full-Range Leadership Model^©. Special emphasis will be placed upon ‘transformational leadership’ as it is increasingly the style that is expected by followers – especially those belonging to demographic generations Y and Z in the workplace. This leadership style is designed to not only transform the performance of your staff but also their aspirations, skills and engagement.

You will enjoy the highly dynamic and interactive nature of the programme as it uses contemporary approaches to learning, including experiential group activities, individual exercises, mini-case studies, role plays and syndicate discussions to enable you to fully master and apply the material to your own situation.

Not only will this Oxford training programme make the key functions and requisite skills for outstanding management and leadership very clear, it will also provide you with the tools and techniques required to achieve world-class competence and confidence in carrying them out in any situation in the workplace.

This Oxford Management Centre training course will highlight for you:

• The critical differences between management and leadership and, paradoxically, how they complement each other
• The five pairs of management functions that are required in today’s organisations
• The ‘meta’ core skills that need to be mastered by both managers and leaders
• The psychology of management
• Disruptive new management practices and principles
• The five leadership approaches that are required in today’s organisations
• The psychology of influence, good communication and motivation
• The essence of effective strategic thinking, planning, implementation and monitoring
• The principles of disruptive change compared with competitive positioning
• How to manage the first impressions you make, choose your subsequent behaviours and curate your reputation to clearly signal your leadership legitimacy?

Training Methodology

This training course will use a range of approaches to learning, including experiential group activities, individual exercises, mini-case studies, role plays and syndicate discussions. Graphical materials and stimulating explanations will be used to introduce underlying models. A key part of the learning process is sharing the different experiences and insights you and the other participants bring, as well as experimenting with novel – and sometimes challenging – techniques.

Who Should Attend?

This training course is suitable to a wide range of Ambitious Professionals , but will greatly benefit:

• Leaders, Managers and Supervisors aspiring to more senior positions
• Individuals who are making the transition to a senior management team or board-level role
• Supervisors who wish to add to their directing and monitoring remit
• Junior to Middle-level Managers who want to optimise their management skills
• Senior Managers who want to be able to develop more junior managers
• Managers who fulfil a purely management role
• Staff who have a joint leadership / management role
• Individuals who are making the transition to the senior management team

Course Outline

MODULE I – The Boston Advanced Operational Management Programme

DAY 1

Clearly Distinguishing Managing from Leading and Looking at their Shared Core Skills

Defining the Unique, Essential and Noble Functions of Management

• Clearly Differentiating Management from Leadership
• Rediscovering the Critical Importance of Effective Management: Traditional vs. Contemporary Views
• Inappropriate Metaphors of Managers: The Need to Change Mind-sets
• The Key Management Functions: The Q-OPD Full-Range Management Model^©

The Four, Over-arching Core Skills for both Managers and Leaders

• Developing Personal, Social and Organisational Awareness
• Tailored, Multi-channel Communication
• Powerful and Targeted Influence and Persuasion
• Emotional Intelligence (EI) & Political Intelligence (PI)

DAY 2

Directing and Delegating: The Heart of Management

Operationalising & Directing

• The Manager’s Crucial Operationalisation Remit
• Translating the Strategic Plan into an Implementation Plan
• Powerful Processes to Direct Your Staff
• Using Goals, Objectives, Outcomes and Behavioural Metrics

Delegating & Problem-solving

• The Delegation Imperative: Making Yourself Dispensible, Creating New Leaders and Succession Planning
• Relinquishing Authority and Responsibility: Setting Your Staff-up for Success
• Creative, Rational and Soft-system Problem-solving Approaches
• Deciding between Alternative Solutions whilst considering the Operational and Political Dimensions of Your Actions

DAY 3

Resourcing and Monitoring: Facilitating Achievement

Resourcing & Supporting

• Identifying the Resources Available to Your Staff and Using Them to Develop their Capability
• Selecting Staff for their Talent and Potential
• Supporting Your Staff: Engagement and Empowerment
• The Five Essential Support Needs of Your Staff to Ensure their continuing Discretionary Effort

Monitoring & Controlling / Coordinating

• The Essential Nature of Monitoring and Controlling
• Soft and Hard Processes: Individual Development and Goal-achievement
• Deciding on Your Key Metrics: ‘What you measure is what you get!’
• Designing Monitoring Systems / Performance Dashboards

DAY 4

Encouraging and Engaging Your Staff

Feeding Back / Reporting & Redirecting

• The Value of Timely, Relevant, Actionable Feedback
• The 3 Feedback Principles and Structuring Motivational, Developmental and Critical Feedback
• Re-directing Behaviours and Setting-up Positive Responses
• Harnessing the Power of Activators, Behaviours and Consequences

The Manager as Catalyst

• Understanding and Appreciating the New Management Paradigm
• Using the Gallup Q-12 to Powerfully Manage your Staff
• Playing to your Staff’s Strengths and Helping them Manage their Weaknesses – as a Team
• Managing Employee Aspirations by Helping them Find their Ideal Roles

DAY 5

Proactively Harnessing Your Talent and Realising Your Full Potential

Managing Your Own Career as a Manager

• Planning in the Emerging, New Employment Reality: The Changing World, Workplace and Corporate Governance
• Identifying Your Specific Career Anchors: What you are good at? What you value and what motivates you?
• Constructing Your Personal Career Advancement Strategy
• Prioritising and Engaging in the Important Career Advancement Activities
• Becoming Politically Adept

MODULE II – The Boston Advanced Leadership Programme

DAY 6

Displaying Outstanding Leadership

• Recognising the Differences between Management and Leadership
• Appreciating the Five Essential Leadership Approaches and Corresponding Styles
• Displaying Transformational Leadership Behaviours
• Comprehending the Corporate Governance Responsibilities of the Board
• Demonstrating Ethical Behaviour, Living Your Values and Maintaining Your Personal Integrity
• Developing Your Political Awareness and Mastering the Five Core Political Skills

DAY 7

Mastering the Psychology of the Workplace

• Using Personality Insights to Communicate and Influence Others Better
• Displaying Personal Power and Self-confidence in All Situations
• Optimising the Development and Management of Teams
• Evolving Organisational Cultures and Applying the Neuroscience of Change
• Managing Your Own and Others’ Attitudes, Emotions, States and Behaviours
• Understanding the Nature of Organisational Psychopaths and Limiting their Detrimental Effects

DAY 8

Developing a Winning Corporate Strategy

• Understanding the Five Elements of Strategic Management: Strategic Thinking, Planning, Implementation, Monitoring and Emergence
• Competitive Positioning: The Five Processes that Populate a SWOT Analysis
• The Value of Scenario Planning in Designing Detailed Stories Around Different Possible and Plausible Futures You Might Be Faced With
• Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create a Strategy Matrix, Strategy Map and an Implementation Plan
• Prioritising Your Initiatives, Filtering Them and Balancing Your Portfolio
• Implementing and Monitoring the Plan and Utilising Emergent Trends

DAY 9

Using both Sustaining and Disruptive Innovations to Evolve and Grow your Products and Services

• The Four Kinds of Innovation: Disrupting vs. Transforming Businesses
• Using Lateral Thinking Techniques to Increase Creativity, Innovation and Inventiveness
• The Nature of ‘Innovation-driven Growth’: ‘disruptive’ (stealthy) vs. ‘sustaining’ (incremental) innovations and ‘Low-end’ vs. ‘new-market’ footholds
• Product / Service Performance Trajectories and Customer Demand Trajectories
• Succeeding as a Disruptive Innovator / Defending Against a Disruptive Challenger and Ensuring Your Organization is Capable of Disruptive Growth
• Common Pitfalls in the Application of Disruption Theory and Its Incorporation into Wider Strategic Planning

DAY 10

Manifesting Executive Presence, Gravitas and Charisma

• Appreciating the Need to Display Executive Presence and Its Relationship to Organisational Politics
• The Three Dimensions of Executive Presence
• Displaying Gravitas, Charisma, Impactful Communication and An Appropriate Appearance
• Specific Challenges Faced by Female Leaders and Managers
• Chairing Effective, Efficient and Satisfying Meetings
• Researching, Designing and Delivering Compelling and Memorable Presentations