Women in Leadership Course: Foundation Skills

Leadership. Inspiring and enabling organisations to create and realise optimal value.

This women in leadership course will give you the tools to improve your leadership skills, addressing challenges unique to women in leadership and leveraging your unique attributes.

Great leaders motivate, inspire and empower their teams. Women in leadership positions may face a number of challenges unique to female leaders. Learn how to identify and deal with these challenges as you aim to perform at your peak. You will also learn how to boost your credibility, influence as you step into a new leadership role, and discover how to build engagement and motivation in a team. Finally, you will learn how to master the tactics for creating positive team dynamics and culture.

This course is suitable for anyone looking to enhance their leadership capabilities. It is followed by our Women in Leadership Course: Advanced Skills.

Aims

This course aims to equip newly appointed female leaders to make the most of their roles. It focuses on practical techniques women can use to build their credibility, presence and influence when entering the leadership arena.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• discuss common challenges that may impact your effectiveness as a woman in a leadership position
• design strategies for dealing with those challenges
• build a vision which will inspire your team to commit to their roles
• use motivation models to improve your own leadership performance
• track and shift group dynamics, so you can build a healthy team or business culture
• complete a gender and leadership assessment, so you can pinpoint your strengths and development goals as female leader.

Content

Topic 1: Introduction to women in leadership

What does it take for women to experience success in leadership roles? Women in leadership roles face a range of challenges. In many organisations, the first challenge is simply gaining visibility and credibility. The next is addressing systemic or cultural factors which block success. Assess which factors are impacting your leadership role and then design strategies for addressing them.

Topic 2: Establishing your credibility as a leader

Many new female leaders struggle with 'the credibility issue'. In this section of the course, you’ll learn how to use four communication tactics to boost your credibility. These strategies include framing and boundary-setting, showcasing your expertise, redirecting conversational dynamics and actively managing your responses to others' mindsets or stereotypes.

Topic 3: Creating a compelling vision

Research has shown that female leaders are frequently perceived to lack visioning skills. Find out what might be creating this perception and then learn how to shift this perception. In this session you will:

• get hands-on experience running a vision interview
• design your own leadership vision
• learn how to 'push back' when your vision meets with resistance.

Topic 4: Communicating and influencing

Conversational norms can be used to establish dominance, power and status within groups. As a female leader, you need to understand this. Hear what sociologists and gender studies experts have discovered about gender, authority and communication. We will consider examples of behavioural dynamics that may impact on female leaders' credibility and authority. We will also discuss how to actively shape perceptions of your leadership 'brand' by using effective communication patterns.

Topic 5: Motivating and engaging your people

Great female leaders shape workplace culture in ways that promote engagement and motivation. They tap into employee strengths and hold people accountable for their behaviours. You will learn how to use strengths interviews to bring out the best in your people. We will then discuss ways to build a strengths focus into your employee review and development systems.

Topic 6: Creating positive team dynamics

Establishing positive team dynamics is critical to your success as a woman in a leadership role. Yet, many new female leaders hesitate to address negative team dynamics. Learn how to shift team communication and behaviour patterns, using techniques from positive leadership theory. This session will include a case study on transforming toxic team dynamics, using the psychological capital model.

Intended audience

Suitable for all managers, team leaders, supervisors and individuals wishing to enhance and develop their leadership skills.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught workshop
• Online workshop via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

Delivered as an interactive workshop covering the why, what and how of leadership. You’ll learn through a variety of methods including:

• small group discussions
• role plays or simulations
• written exercises where you will apply key concepts
• question and answer sessions with the facilitator.

You will get the most from this course if you are:

• willing to contribute to group discussions
• confident communicating verbally
• willing to participate in role play style activities.

Materials

Course materials are provided electronically using Dropbox