Leadership Development Programme – Previous

The Alchemy Leadership Development Programme – Live Online

INTRODUCTION

A highly interactive, online leadership development programme for our times, this pragmatic programme has grown from its previous success as an in-person course over the past few years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the workplace for many of us, and whilst the long-term changes are still unclear,  as leaders, it is incumbent on us to be agile and responsive while staying grounded, to cultivate resilience in ourselves and our people, and also to reflect and grow personally.

This programme provides an environment for the exploration and development of leadership skills and capabilities, enabling participants to look with confidence towards uncertainty, and make that step change into leadership.

OBJECTIVE & EXPECTATIONS

The primary objective of the Alchemy Leadership Development programme is to provide a mixture of theory and practice so that participants can improve how they lead and manage; and to provide useful ideas and tools to further their development. This is achieved via inputs, discussions, exercises and group work. By sharing their experiences and completing exercises with other managers participants will broaden their range of skills, ideas, tools and opportunities.

There is an expectation that participants will be willing to share their experiences, to learn with others and to contribute to the workshops. It is an explicit expectation of the tutors that all participants will ensure they are able to attend each workshop and to complete any pre and inter workshop work.

OUTCOMES & BENEFITS

Results for participants:

• Gain a range of key management skills
• Put new skills into practice in your own role
• Build your leadership capabilities
• Motivate and engage teams, manage relationships confidently
• Develop your leadership skills using your own knowledge, values and motivations
• The four individual coaching sessions – which take place between workshops, will help to embed learning and enable greater stretch, and challenge targets to be reached.

IMPACT FOR YOUR EMPLOYER

• Effective and confident managers
• Better relationships and communication in teams
• Measurable results: workplace-based assessment ensures new skills are effectively transferred to your business.

WHO IS IT FOR?

This programme is ideal if you are have management responsibilities but no or little formal training, and are serious about developing your abilities. It is also appropriate for managers with experience who want to learn more formal leadership and management ideas, so that they have make a step change in their capability.

Download the programme

Design Criteria

Each workshop will last a full day and will have the following elements:

• Inputs on the topics illustrated below. Materials to take away, pre and follow-up reading
• A session (s) to practice key aspects of the workshop material together with exercises for participants to continue after the workshop
• A session on “Applying material and practice” to each individual’s situation, together with how will they (and their own manager) measure progress and success
• Exploring and agreeing next steps

Over the complete set of workshops the following are seen as key areas for development:

• Building confidence and competence, especially leadership and management
• Assessing current skills and setting personal targets for improvement and growth
• Acknowledging differences and finding ways to more effectively manage difference
• Learning from each other and valuing the experiences of others in ‘apparently’ very different departments
• Explore personal behaviours and patterns of behaviour with the use of psychometric tools

The Workshops

Day 1. Personal Leadership

OBJECTIVE:  To set the scene for the series of workshops and then focus on individual aspects of leading and managing.

• Managing self and Leadership styles
• Managing time
• The difference between Strategy and Tactics
• Managing upwards
• Giving and receiving feedback
• “letting go of control” and Delegation
• Setting performance standards for self and others
• Judging [recognising] Performance – good and not good

Day 2. Effective communications

OBJECTIVE: To understand the how, what and why of effective communication. To begin learning about ‘the leader as coach’

• Different types of communication
• Managing the communications with clients, customers and other stakeholders
• Use of language and the impact of language on relationships
• Meetings – running them and being effective in meetings
• Delivering effective presentations
• Being effective when people have different communication preferences
• Exploring the consequences of poor communication
• The Leader as coach

Day 3. Building teams & organisations

OBJECTIVE: Understanding what makes a team and how to begin the journey towards being a high performing team.

• What is my team and what teams am I in as a member? Being an effective player
• Where does what I do impact others in my team?
• How does my team impact other teams
• The benefits of working more effectively together
• Making the team more than the sum of the parts
• Producing a vision for my team
• Setting goals to become a High Performing team

Day 4. Developing people

OBJECTIVE: Understanding what is needed for the leader/manager to develop their staff and to create initial action plans for their own people’s development

• Everyone is different – how to respond effectively to differing styles and needs
• Setting development targets for me and members of my team
• How to manage the development of members of my team
• Sharing ideas for development that have worked for me or people I know
• Giving feedback as a means to aid personal development
• Appraisal processes
• Induction

Day 5. Handling difficult conversations

OBJECTIVE:  How to manage difficult conversations with team members e.g. poor performance, lack of motivation, failure to deliver what has been agreed, inappropriate behaviours.

• What are the challenges of difficult conversations?
• How to prepare for a difficult conversation
• What are the common difficult conversations?
• Giving bad or challenging news to clients, customers and stakeholders as well as team members
• Practicing difficult conversations

Day 6. Pulling it all together and action plans for the future

OBJECTIVE:  To consolidate learning from days 1-5 and create action plans to continue their learning and development.

• What have I learned?
• What next for my personal development?
• What happens when I go back to the workplace? How do I update my boss/team on the programme?
• How do I monitor myself and measure my own growth and performance?
• Keeping the relationships formed during the programme going

The Logistics

Fees

The programme will cost £3,500 per person + VAT. The price includes the six one day workshops, three 1-to-1 coaching sessions with highly qualified Alchemy coaches, and all programme materials.  It also includes the provision of a psychometric assessment (NEO PI-3) and an individual feedback session on the results.

Location

The workshops will be run entirely online, using the Zoom platform.  All materials will be provided, and in flexible formats to ensure ease of access, and different preferences and IT provision amongst the participants.

Timing & Programme Size

It is planned to run the workshops again for the next group in Spring 2022; dates are being finalised. To provide for the right balance of teaching and participation, we may limit the size of the group.

Tutors

There will be two primary tutors on the programme, led by Dr Paul Hedley who was an Associate Fellow at Said Business School from 2013 to 2019, with a particular specialism in leadership development.  Paul is an experienced coach, a Director of Alchemy of Coaching and Managing Director of Leadership & Performance Development Ltd.  Penny Tunnell is an experienced Business Development Advisor and Executive Coach. Penny has helped the senior teams of more than 50 businesses in the past few years achieve their goals, and she has a broad corporate background across public, charity and commercial sectors. A profile for each of the tutors is available.

The benefits of including coaching in the programme

We believe that adding 1 to 1 coaching to the programme and making it an integral element has a number of significant benefits:

• It helps to embed learning
• It enables the setting of higher stretch goals as these can be followed up in the 1 to 1 sessions
• It provides the opportunity to work on issues inappropriate to a ‘classroom’
• It creates opportunities to link learning more directly to their work place as the coaching could take place at their place of work (if a suitable confidential space is available)
• There will be an opportunity for participants to extend their coaching beyond the 4 sessions included in the programme and this will be quoted on an individual basis

Dates

Programme dates for the first 3 months will be fixed in advance and are being finalised currently whilst the final 3 workshop dates will be confirmed before the start of the programme and in discussion with participants.

Contact and Booking

To book a place or to hear more about the programme please contact Penny Tunnell on 07921 744121 or email penny@pennytunnell.co.uk