Successful Leadership

Course overview

Why choose the Mastering the art of leadership written self study course?

It is now accepted that leaders are made not born and this course can prove it, and improve your leadership skills.

If you have the potential to lead you can benefit from a combined total of almost 100 years experience of advising leaders around the world and take an important step ahead in your career with Falconbury's new ten-part leadership course.

You'll gain a valuable overview of leadership theory, both classic and cutting-edge, practical advice and proven techniques on translating theory into practice – winning trust, inspiring and motivating your team, overcoming problems and tapping into creativity. Above all, you'll learn more about yourself, your own leadership style and how to turn it to your advantage.

And finally, this course offers you the added benefit of a summary of the thoughts and writing of 22 of the world's top leadership gurus and a searching self-assessment questionnaire to be completed at the start of the course and again at its completion. You can then easily measure the effectiveness of the course and yourself as a leader

7 Important reasons for choosing this course

1 QUICK TO COMPLETE: just nine modules to give you a total grasp of the key principles
2 JARGON-FREE: no management-speak, just clear explanation of how to turn theory into action
3 APPROACHABLE: easy to work through and to start to apply
4 PRACTICAL: emphasises what you need to do and how to do it
5 EXPERT: the authors are internationally recognised consultants and speakers.
6 CONVENIENT: learn at your own pace, when and where you like
7 INVALUABLE: a goldmine of ideas gathered together in one accessible course

Give yourself a leading edge

-Boost your confidence through newly-acquired knowledge and techniques

• Increase your value as a strategic contributor to the organisation
• Empower yourself to deal with colleagues from a position of strength
• Make a quantum leap in your career development

Maximise Leadership Effectiveness in 10 Modules

This course will:
Start by allowing you to assess your current leadership styles
Finish by again giving you the chance to assess your leadership style but this time having had the benefit of the course and its insights into being a high-performing leader

Throughout the course the aim is to enhance your skills to help you to be an effective and inspirational leader rather than merely the boss.

How does this distance learning programme work and what do you get?

• Ten modules, each requiring between 3 to 4 hours study to be completed as you choose
• The course and its modules start at any time to suit you
• Modules may be downloaded to study on your PC or to print hard copies. (You may also opt to receive them printed-and-bound from us.)
• Each module has self-assessment progress questions and model answers
• The course has an optional on-line multiple choice assessment at the end, with a certificate of completion being awarded

Who should enrol

-Newly-appointed team leaders seeking the best available advice at the start of their leadership career

• Senior executives who believe they can learn from acknowledged experts and who wish to review their leadership style
• Those with ambitions to lead in the future and the wish to give themselves the best-possible chance of success
• Anyone who aspires to be a truly inspiring and effective leader

*For more information call Customer Services on +44 (0)20 7729 6677 or visit our contact page.

Course modules

MODULE 1 -LEADERSHIP SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

• Complete a self-assessment questionnaire to measure your leadership skills in:
  • Essentials of leadership
  • Engaging people's heads and hearts
  • Leader self awareness and self development
  • The leader's awareness of others
  • Job tensions

MODULE 2 – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Leadership theories, role models and common sense
  • Professor John Adair
  • Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard
  • Noel Tichy
  • Jim Collins

• Low-key thinking leadership
• Experience and theory – a necessary synthesis
• Leadership and the achievement ethic
• The work of Professor Tom Paterson
• The leader's role
• Facilitator/follower
• Leaders as 're-inventors'
• The 4 styles of leadership
• Leadership skills – defining the task, planning, briefing, controlling, evaluating, motivating, organising, setting and example

MODULE 3 – WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

• Buy-in, not by-pass: the rules of engagement
• The leader's role in engaging people and securing buy-in
• Knowledge and skill strategy
• Consolidation
• Reward strategy
• Managing performance
• Pitfalls in implementing any performance management process
• Agreeing the purpose of the role
• Setting individual objectives and establishing commitment
• How to develop effective objectives
• Monitoring and evaluating performance
• Key result areas
• Influencing people
• Classic influencing styles and their characteristics –
  • Assertiveness, intuitive/creative, logical, supportive, judgemental

• Clarifying others positions
• Using power to influence others
• Learning to delegate effectively
• Managing poor performers
• The 10 rules of feedback
• Managing meetings productively
• Controlling forceful/dominant characters

MODULE 4 – GETTING THE BEST FROM INDIVIDUALS

• Great leaders develop more great leaders
• What do we mean by talent?
• When leaders strengths become weaknesses
• Leadership potential
• Motivation and leadership
• Adair's 8 rules of motivating people
• 50:50 rule
• Needs and motivation:
  • Maslow's hierarchy of needs, McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y; Herzberg's motivation – hygiene theory; The three circles model

• Managers/leaders and motivation
• Motivation and decision-making
• Getting the best from people
• Be motivated yourself
• Jacob's ladder model
• Create a motivating environment
• Fair rewards and recognition

MODULE 5 – GETTING THE BEST FROM TEAMS

• Leading the innovative team
• The value of team working
• Versatile and adaptive leadership
• What distinguishes successful, high achieving teams?
• Drivers and driver behaviour
• Managing and developing a high performing team
• The classic team development cycle: forming, storming, norming, performing
• How to start up a team building process
• A strategy for day-to-day teamworking
• Recognising why teams fail
• Understanding your team roles: Belbin's team types

MODULE 6 – DECISION-MAKING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

• The manager as decision-maker
• Key elements of effective thinking and decision-making
• Other useful approaches
• The concept of value in decision-making
• Decision-making and weighing up the options
• Decisions – that's what leaders are paid for…
• The realities of problem analysis and decision-making
• Different personalities – different leadership – different decisions
• Some tools and techniques
• Solving problems and making choices
• Making choices
• Communicating and Implementing the decision
• Evaluating the outcome

MODULE 7 – CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

• Leading innovation – taking the organisation forward
• What inhibits or stimulates innovation
• STRETCH objectives: the stuff of innovation
• Imagination and creativity
• Innovation: risk – reward correlations
• Recruiting creative people
• Encouragement of creativity in teams
• Overcoming obstacles to innovation
• Organisation and innovation
• The generation of ideas
• Characteristics of innovators
• Planning, managing, implementing and completing projects

MODULE 8 – COMMUNICATION SKILLS

• What is communication?
• Why and how we communicate within organisations and why we should do it better
• Other characteristics of good internal communications
• What is communication
• Communicaton and presentation
• Issues in communication
• Listening, reading and writing skills
• Effective speaking/Presentation skills
• One-to-one interviews
• Within your organisation
• Face-to-face communications
• Six fundamental questions you can ask yourself about your communication style
• Remember the facts about communications
• Listening and communicating to others – some basic rules
• Applying classic questionning techniques
• Understanding the impact of non-verbal communications
• Channels of communication

MODULE 9 – LEADERSHIP GURUS ON LEADERSHIP

• John Adair
• Warren Bennis
• Robert Blake and Jane Moulton
• Ken Blanchard
• Peter Drucker
• Fred Fiedler
• Daniel Goleman
• Paul Hersey
• Manfred Kets de Vries
• John Kotter
• James M Kouzes and Barry Posner
• Nicolo Machiavelli
• Abraham Maslow
• Douglas McGregor
• David McClelland
• Tom Peters
• WJ Reddin
• Tannenbaum and Schmidt
• Abraham Zaleznik

MODULE 10 – QUESTIONNAIRE AND SELF RE-ASSESSMENT

• Making it happen – the leader's job
• The leadership arenas
• Leaders as net workers
• Leading the way to tomorrow
• What have you learned and continue to learn – from, about being a leader?