Advanced Leadership of High-Impact Teams for Managers

Advanced Leadership of High-Impact Teams for Experienced Managers is a 1-week course for managers who lead several teams, or lead the people who lead them. It goes past single-team basics to diagnosing dysfunction, aligning teams with each other, empowering leaders below you and keeping performance high over time. You build a Multi-Team Performance Plan, and this advanced team leadership course is delivered by Mercury Training Center.

About This Course

Once you manage more than one team, problems hide between teams: duplicated effort, competing goals and leaders who wait for your decisions. To follow, you should already have led a team for some years. You practice on cases from operations and service settings and apply each tool to your own area.

Who It Is For

• Managers responsible for two or more teams and the leaders who run them.
• Department heads who must align several functions behind one set of goals.
• Program and project directors who coordinate teams across units.
• Senior supervisors stepping up to lead other supervisors.
• HR and development partners who support managers with team problems.

This course is not for first-time team leaders still learning to run one team, who will gain more from a core team leadership course, nor for executives setting company strategy, who are better served by a strategic leadership course.

Competencies You Will Build

• Team Diagnosis: you spot the signs of a struggling team and name the cause before acting.
• Cross-Team Alignment: you link the goals and indicators of several teams so they pull the same way.
• Leader Empowerment: you delegate decisions to the leaders below you and stop being the bottleneck.
• Influence Without Authority: you move peers and other units using rapport, evidence and clear requests.
• Sustained Performance: you set review routines that keep results up after the first push.
• Conflict Use: you turn disagreement between teams into better decisions.

What You Will Be Able to Do

By the end of the course you will be able to:

• From observations and team data, diagnose why a team is underperforming and choose a response.
• Given the goals of several teams, build one set of aligned objectives and indicators.
• Using a delegation map, decide which decisions to hand to your team leaders and how to support them.
• Given a conflict between two units, plan the conversation that resolves it.
• From customer feedback and performance figures, define what high performance means for your area.
• Using a coaching plan, develop one of your team leaders over the next quarter.

Course Content

Day 1: Leading Leaders

• Teams, Leaders and Managers When You Lead More Than One Team
• Key Leadership Tasks at the Multi-Team Level
• Influence, Authority and Power Across Units
• Leadership Style Flexibility for Different Teams and Situations
• Self-Awareness, Emotional Intelligence and Rapport With Peer Managers

Day 2: Vision and Cross-Team Alignment

• Shared Vision Built Across Several Teams
• Aims, Objectives and Goal Alignment Between Units
• Meaningful Objectives and Indicators for Linked Teams
• Divergent Problem-Solving Approaches for Cross-Team Issues
• Communicating a Compelling Vision and Delivering Challenging Messages

Day 3: Diagnosing Team Dynamics

• Team Development Stages Used to Diagnose a Struggling Team
• The Sociology of the Team and Signs of Dysfunction
• Characteristics of High-Performing Teams as a Diagnostic Checklist
• Balancing Team Roles and Non-Traditional Team Structures
• Delegation and Empowerment Maps for Team Leaders

Day 4: Developing Teams and Their Leaders

• Learning and Competence Plans for a Group of Teams
• Building a Coherent Team From Merged or Restructured Units
• Self-Managing Teams and the Challenges They Raise
• Coaching, Mentoring and Self-Directed Learning for Team Leaders
• Feedback and Appraisal Conversations That Use Team Strengths

Day 5: Sustaining Performance in Practice

• Exercise: Defining Performance Through the Eyes of the Customer
• Exercise: Team and Individual Performance Measures Balanced Between Science and Art
• Exercise: Conflict Between Two Units Used as a Catalyst for Development
• Exercise: Handling Challenging Interpersonal Relations Between Team Leaders
• Multi-Team Performance Plan Completed for Your Own Area

Case Studies and Exercises

The following are suggested activities and may be adapted to the group.

• Case study: a hospital where the day and night nursing teams blame each other for missed handovers; you diagnose the cause and decide the first fix.
• Case study: a manufacturing plant whose maintenance and production teams chase different targets; you build shared objectives.
• Exercise: a customer service center where team leaders escalate every decision; you produce a delegation map.
• Exercise: a software delivery unit after a merger of two teams; you plan how to build one coherent team.

What You Take Back

You take back the Multi-Team Performance Plan, a working plan for leading your group of teams over the next quarter. In your first month back you use it to agree shared objectives with your team leaders, hand over the first delegated decisions and start the review routine.

• A diagnosis of each team you lead with its main issue.
• Aligned objectives and indicators across your teams.
• A delegation map and coaching plan for your team leaders.
• A monthly performance review routine.

Quick Answers (FAQ)

What experience do I need before advanced leadership of high-impact teams?

You should have led at least one team for several years and now lead, or are about to lead, more than one team or other team leaders. The basics of goal setting and feedback are assumed.

How does advanced leadership of high-impact teams differ from a core team leadership course?

A core course teaches how to lead one team well. The advanced level deals with leading several teams and their leaders: diagnosing dysfunction, aligning teams with each other, delegating to leaders and sustaining performance over time.

Why do high-performing teams lose performance over time?

Performance often fades when goals drift apart between teams, leaders stop receiving feedback, and decisions flow back up to one manager. Regular reviews, clear delegation and shared indicators help keep results steady.

What do I take back from advanced leadership of high-impact teams?

You take back a Multi-Team Performance Plan with a diagnosis of each team, aligned objectives, a delegation map, a coaching plan for your leaders and a review routine.

For Your Manager

After this course, your team member can diagnose problems across several teams, align their goals, delegate decisions to team leaders and keep performance steady over time. They return with a Multi-Team Performance Plan for their area, first used to agree shared objectives with team leaders and launch a monthly review routine.