Inspirational Leadership

• Ground rules – In this initial session the participants will discuss and evaluate the need for a set of ground rules. Participants will understand that the ground rules provide guidance and clarity for the team and, in doing so, establish a set of behavioural expectations that are aligned to the overarching business vision.

• Leadership vs Management –The aim of this session is to separate the commonly entwined terms of leadership and management. It will examine the skills, attributes and behaviours of effective leadership and management and provide definitions for both. It will help the participants to identify their current individual preferences for either leadership or management and begin to address the concept of leadership flexibility, one of the programme’s underlying themes.

• Introducing the Golden Rules of Leadership – Following our in-depth examination of both management and leadership we will introduce the ‘Golden Rules’ and how they are delivered through the skills, attributes and behaviours of inspirational leaders.

• Developing people and the role of the Action Centred Leader – In this session the participants will discuss the concept of Action Centred Leadership. We will examine the key action centred leadership principles ‘Achieve the Task’, ‘Build the Team’ and ‘Develop the Individual’ and discuss their practical application. We will then consider where the participants currently spend the majority of their time and the historical drivers that underpin their preference before discussing the impact of a lack of a ‘helicopter’ approach on motivation and long term task achievement

• Situational Leadership – In this session we will introduce Blanchard’s Situational Leadership II theory. We will examine the four distinct development stages an individual goes through as they learn a new task before considering the appropriate leadership style that needs to be applied to be able to delegate effectively. We will then examine the participants’ individual Situational Leadership preferences, analysing the impact of applying the inappropriate leadership style.

• Feedback – The purpose of this session is to explore the role of feedback in the people development process and the links to Situational Leadership II. We will consider the purpose of feedback and the different types of feedback we need to give before examining the participants’ current beliefs and emotions regarding both ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ feedback. We will then introduce a tool that will enable the participants to structure and deliver quality evidence driven feedback before finally discussing people’s reactions to ‘change’ feedback.


• Coaching – We will now begin to investigate the leaders’ role as a coach. The participants will examine definitions of coaching and discuss some of the common misconceptions that surround coaching. In addition we will explore some of the barriers to coaching and how they can be overcome. We will then introduce the GROW coaching framework and begin a practical exercise that considers the questions that en effective coach needs to ask at each stage of the process.

• Assessing performance – This session begins with the participants examining the link between effective performance management, individual and team motivation and overall business performance. They will investigate who, in reality, they actually ‘performance manage’ on a day to day basis, with particular reference to four different performance types. We will then create a practical performance management framework that utilises the tools that we have previously explored, highlighting the importance of clear and effective communication at every stage of the cycle.