Leading with Excellence

Introduction:

The environment of current competitive business requires an increased focus on skills in negotiating and communication, and new processes such as planning and organizing work tasks to improve productivity. Additional skills such as delegating to empower staff to higher performance, and change management also help today’s modern leader create success.

Negotiation is inevitably at the heart of every process to achieve what you want or need to build an alliance, or work with consultants or suppliers. At the end of each negotiation, the goal is to seek a win-win agreement. Negotiation, Persuasion and Critical Thinking are the skills covered in the first half of this course.

Businesses and indeed, all organizations, find themselves needing more productive methods of planning, more appropriate goals and effective means of accomplishing work. A focus on using productive best practices allows for effective and efficient management of work and making changes in the organization. Planning and Organizing Work, and Delegating to build a strong team are the skills learned in the second half of this course.

Targeted Groups:

• Head of departments
• Managers
• Supervisors
• Team leaders
• Project managers
• Employees who are potential to be promoted to a managerial or supervisory position

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Recognize aims for key alliances – how to develop and manage them
• Develop an effective plan and strategy for negotiations
• Practice and develop skills for influencing others – especially those who are vital to your long-term business development strategy
• Gain confidence as a trusted negotiator who knows which behaviors to adopt for each stage of the negotiation
• Successfully apply the principles of persuasion to key negotiation situations
• Recognize and counter the most common negotiating ploys
• Recognize internal and external influences on our daily planning
• Understand and develop skills necessary to complete work on time
• Learn how to organize work and projects to complete them successfully
• Understand the characteristics of colleagues who do work in our teams
• Develop positive interpersonal techniques for better team relationships
• Practice and develop skills for influencing others
• Build and maintain effective and efficient procedures in the organization
• Develop skills in managers which will raise the capability, skill and morale of colleagues
• Improved preparedness to deal with work task contingencies
• Establish organizational and personal planning capabilities
• Improved performance in personal and team organization
• Improve individual and team performance by establishing productive, effective and efficient management procedures
• Learn to develop effective work and project plans for individuals and teams
• Learn management techniques to plan and organize work
• Develop skills in interpersonal interaction to better teamwork
• Acquire useful planning, organization and delegation management skills
• Adds personal value and competency to an organization

Targeted Competencies:

• Leadership skills
• Management skills
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking
• Decision making
• Negotiation skills 
• Performance management
• Planning management
• Personal Organization
• Delegation skills
• Time management

Course Content:

Unit 1: Developing Alliances:

• Characteristics of a strategic alliance – effects of market dominance
• Culture and perception – and effects in building alliances
• Building trust through communication and achieving results for the alliance (bearing in mind its “life cycle”)
• Personality - strengths & weaknesses in negotiations
• Minimizing communication blockers to maintain relationships
• Development review and action planning

Unit 2: Influence & Persuasion Skills in Managing The Alliance:

• Challenges of meetings – group and individual strategies
• Positive influence of listening in challenging situations - good and bad news!
• Applying rules of influential presentations to maximize impact
• Maintaining compatible body language & using logic, credibility and passion
• Feedback and action planning

Unit 3: Strategy in Negotiation Skills for Partners and Allies:

• Steps in win/win negotiation
• The keys to collaborative bargaining in partnering
• Leverage: What it is and how to use it
• Negotiation tactics and ploys
• Dealing with difficult negotiators and barriers
• Ethics in negotiation

Unit 4: Higher Level Negotiation Skills for Challenging Situations:

• Listening and responding to signals and informal information
• Recovering from reversals, errors and challenges
• Developing a climate of trust
• Higher-level conversation techniques
• Concentrating action on the needs of alliance partners

Unit 5: Critical Thinking for Decision Making:

• Gaining control and using information – formal and informal
• Identifying sources and testing assumptions
• Framing the problem
• Decision making under pressure

Unit 6: Creating an Attitude to Change How We Plan and Organize Work:

• New systems & strategic thinking
• Overview and context of organizational change and the impact on planning and organization
• Identifying a standard of excellence in the organization, team and personal work
• Review of management processes and skill areas
• Using a planning process to set goals and get projects started

Unit 7: Importance of Planning Management:

• Integrating goals, scope, work structure and management planning
• Identifying initial resource requirements
• Identifying risk techniques that affect work assignments, priorities, and deadlines
• Communication that responds to who, what where, when, how, why
• Understanding the importance of quality planning in work assignments

Unit 8: Delegation, Personal Organization, and Setting Priorities:

• Understanding how people approach their work
• Planning for time management, scheduling and meeting deadlines
• Using proper delegation skills to empower staff
• Improving prioritizing of work and work tasks
• Planning for delegation responsibility and authority

Unit 9: Planning Effectively with Your Team:

• Identifying the skills required to obtain the help of others
• The importance of group skills to achieve team success
• The importance of interpersonal skills in making personal and team decisions
• Empowering the team through the development of interpersonal skills
• The importance of versatility in team relations

Unit 10: Developing Personal and Team Change Plans:

• Innovation and improvement for personal and team change
• Identification of change processes and human change
• Techniques to set personal and team change goals
• Dealing with people who do not want to change
• Developing an action plan for personal and team change