Here is a selection of our current courses and workshops. They have all received fabulous feedback and are designed to be delivered across sectors. Our courses are bespoke and so can be adapted for you – they can run as 1 day or short sessions, with a small group and elements from the courses can be delivered according to your needs. Our courses can all be delivered online. Please contact us to ask for further details – we would be delighted to discuss how we can help.
Leading Hybrid Teams
If you are running a team and planning to work together from different locations, this 3 hour online session will help you plan how to do this brilliantly.
What we cover
- How to carry out a place and time audit to determine how your hybrid team should operate
- Why tasks and activities need to be our focus when making hybrid working a success
- How to communicate and collaborate to ensure you are all in sync
- How to keep up your active listening skills and lead your team in an inclusive way
- How to manage for results not activity
- Feedback – the building block to a high performing hybrid team
- The feedback questions you should always ask when your team are hybrid working
- Tips and techniques to keeping virtual meetings engaging and allowing all to have a voice
- How to make high quality and inclusive decisions when your team is remote from each other
Contact us if you are interested in this session being delivered for your organisation. It is also available as an open course, more details here: Leading Hybrid Teams
Effective Strategic Decision Making
Research shows that only one in 10 organisations is effectively achieving its strategic goals Many companies have strategies which look fantastic, yet there is often no clear plan to make sure they become a reality.
This 3 hour virtual session will help you look at the choices you are making and understand how to make decisions to turn your organisational aims and objectives into successful outcomes. You will leave the session with practical information and techniques you can use immediately.
What we cover
- Principles for successful decision making
- Do you really have a strategy? – the importance of defining your challenges and problems
- Questions to ask to avoid bias in decision making
- Assessing plans for value and feasibility to make realistic decisions
- Too many initiatives? How to cultivate an organisational mindset to avoid over commitment
- Communicating decisions for engagement – what is your feedback loop (and does it work?)
The High Impact Leader
This course is aimed at people who work at a Senior Leadership level who want space to think about how they are leading.
The session will support you in considering the organisational culture you are creating, how to ensure people are collaborating and able to innovate effectively, and you will gain an understanding of how to motivate and engage teams after a period of huge uncertainty.
You will be given assessment tools to use following the session that will allow you to critique your approach and gain feedback from your teams to ensure the approach you are taking is motivating and challenging whilst supportive. This course also runs as an open session – details here High Impact Leader
What we cover
- Understanding the core qualities of senior leadership to motivate your team: what type of leader are you, what do you want to develop or adapt?
- How do you talk about values and purpose? Why is this fundamental to high employee engagement?
- Nine questions to help you assess how well you are leading your team at a senior level
- How to make your leadership inclusive – looking at options from directive through to non directive support
- Six questions to ask yourself to ensure you are effectively listening as a leader
- How to stem the great resignation – areas for strategic planning and four actions to take to help inspire and retain people within your organisation.
- How to make strategic choices, take great decisions without bias and leave space for innovation
- How to develop your own diverse network and how this will improve your performance.
Plan, Prioritise, Adapt – how to bring focus to your workload
We are all working in new ways and dealing with unpredictable situations, this makes it even more difficult to manage our everyday work. As soon as we have started a task, things change. People are often too busy to plan – which can bring lots of ad hoc demands and result in workload feeling out of control. This online interactive session gives you space to explore where things are going wrong, gives practical information and offers techniques and best practice to help you manage your workload. These will help bring focus so you can plan, prioritise and adapt to make your day less overwhelming and more productive.
What we cover
- Accepting uncertainty
- Six domains of resilience
- Working out what is essential – defining priorities
- Outlining the scope of your work
- Producing a realistic plan
- Linking tasks to resource – tips and tools
- Contingency planning – and keeping a focus on core priorities when things change
- Managing competing demands
- Learning to say no – leaving space for innovation
Contact us if you are interested in this session being delivered for your organisation. It is also available as an open course, more details here: Plan, Prioritise, Adapt
Everything You Need to be a Fantastic People Manager – in 12 Hours
We have developed a comprehensive four modular programme, each online session lasting 3 hours. These can be run as stand alone modules or as an ongoing development programme. The modules will give anyone with management responsibilities a complete toolkit to run a highly motivated and high performing team, ensuring focus in rapidly changing times.
The four modules cover:
- How to Brilliantly Manage your Team
- How to have Honest and Challenging Conversations that get Results
- Developing a High Performing Culture
- Thriving in a Changing World
Contact us if you are interested in this programme being delivered for your organisation. It is also available as an open course, more details here: Everything you need
Making your Strategy a Reality – achieving practical outcomes through projects
59% of senior executives say their organisations struggle to bridge the strategy-implementation gap, Choosing the right projects and delivering them effectively can be the difference between failure and success.
Sometimes there are too many initiatives planned without considering what is feasible, and even when projects are linked to your strategy, they can struggle if there is a lack of leadership understanding of roles and processes.
This short course will help you look at the choices you are making and understand how to use projects to turn your organisational aims and objectives into successful project outcomes.
What we cover
- Aligning Projects with Organisational Strategy
- Making Effective Choices – assessing projects for value and feasibility
- Clarity on Project Roles and Responsibilities
- The importance of a Project Sponsor and the link with your Project Managers
- Communicating your Strategy for Engagement
- Guidance, Reporting and Assurance through phases of a project
- Ending projects well and incorporating learning
- Project Management Maturity – where do you want to aim for?
Contact us if you are interested in this session being delivered for your organisation. It is also available as an open course, details here: Making your strategy a reality
HR Essentials for People Managers
Are you responsible for recruiting and managing people, want to do it brilliantly but unsure of the employment law knowledge you need to do it well? This workshop will help you understand your responsibilities, ensure you understand the fundamental legislation within the UK and show you where to access up to date information. We will look at good practice for engaging with your people throughout the lifecycle of their time with your organisation, particular things to consider when managing in a hybrid environment and the frameworks you need to follow to be a great people manager.
- Fundamental employment rights and where to get up to date advice
- Employer responsibilities for employees – both in the workplace and for home working
- Recruitment and induction – understanding different types of discrimination, avoiding assumptions in the recruitment process, interviewing and inducting your new recruit
- Managing the probationary period – setting clear targets, documenting progress, giving effective feedback
- Managing performance – how to carry out regular 1-1s, plan performance improvement plans and support people with their learning and development
- Managing discipline and grievance – how to spot when formal action is necessary
- Managing absence effectively, keeping in contact and supporting people to return
- Managing the exit – gathering and acting on feedback
This session also runs as an open course HR Essentials for People Managers
Assertiveness for Women
This course provides a space for women to consider assertiveness and the impact of gender stereotypes, to learn how to project confidence and develop resilience to help accomplish more in their career. This course will give a unique opportunity to think about managing your inner dialogue and learn how to project confidence even when you are not feeling it. You will gain an understanding of the latest research on gender stereotypes around assertiveness and you will leave the day with practical methods to help you flourish by becoming more assertive.
What we cover
- An understanding of gender stereotypes and how this may impact your behaviour in the workplace
- How you help or hinder your performance, and what you can do about it
- Making requests assertively and learning how to say no.
- Practical models for assertive delivery of feedback, goal setting
- Strategies to develop your resilience and project confidence
- Staying positive in challenging situations
- Language of influence and active listening
- Ways to develop a powerful network
Leading on Gender Equality
This course will show you how to plan a gender equality strategy and to ensure your company is groundbreaking, innovative and in the headlines for all the right reasons. If we are to have real gender equality in the workplace, it is essential that leaders of a company (male and female) come together to formulate a coherent strategy for how this can be done, rather than just ticking the boxes of the gender pay gap requirements.
This course will give you up to date information on gender in leadership and will show you how you can lead your organisation in attracting, retaining and developing women leaders. It will allow you to examine your own organisational culture and biases and how it may help or hinder progression of women leaders.
We will use the latest research on gender parity and its economic impact, to show why closing the gender pay gap makes great business sense and how to make the business case for equality to your organisation. We will ensure that thinking on the day links to how you can practically change and develop your business plans.
You will leave the day with five questions that your company needs to be able to answer at a strategic level and a practical plan to ensure you can make clear changes within your company.
What we cover
- The three biggest cultural challenges – unconscious bias, organisational stereotypes, role models – and what you can do about them
- The top ten ways to combat hidden bias and how to take the bias out of your recruitment and interviews
- Why change has to be led from the top and ingrained in every aspect of your business
- How to make the business case for equality – is gender diversity a strategic priority for your organisation?
- Case studies from businesses that have achieved a culture of equal gender diversity
- Five questions you need to have the answers to and five things you need to implement as foundations for equality
Stepping up to Senior Management
Designed to give you a concise but deep insight into the challenges of senior management, the mind set and practical tools that will enable you to succeed. You will explore where your leadership comes from, what your personal values are, and how to think and act strategically in your role.
What we cover
- How to prepare for a senior role – exploring and challenging the ways of thinking that might be holding you back
- How to work with and develop your team, how to communicate your vision
- How to deliver the results your organisation needs
Creating a High Performing Team
A practical and challenging day that allows you to plan how to transform your team so a culture is created where people want to perform and are highly engaged.
What we cover
- How to challenge performance effectively and set stretching targets
- How to be more authentic as a leader
- How to create the right climate for a high performing team
Confident Coaching
This course will give an understanding of what coaching is and why it is important. It is designed to equip participants with coaching skills so they have a confident understanding of how coaching fits into their leadership approach and how best to use it.
What we cover
- What is coaching and when is it appropriate?
- Coaching models/frameworks to develop a coaching approach
- Using coaching to develop individual and team capacity
Making Meetings Effective
This session will help you to think about what causes meetings to be ineffective, what this costs your business and how to identify practical measures to make meetings more worthwhile for all participants and your organisation.
What we cover
- Causes of ineffective meetings
- How to plan meetings using five clear themes of Aims, Preparation, People, Leadership and Environment
- Practical tips to help manage personalities and make meetings more effective
Thriving in a Changing Organisation
This course will equip participants with change management skills to effectively articulate and lead changes within your organisation.
What we cover
- The types of behaviours people display during change and the principles of how people move through change
- Strategies to move a team through a change process
- How to implement lasting change at an individual, team and organisational level
Project Management Bootcamp
This one day course will lead you through the essentials of project management, why it is needed and what makes a project run well. The focus will be on techniques and actions needed to deliver high quality projects on time and budget. Delegates will leave the day with a comprehensive overview of project management and practical skills and templates to help your organisation accomplish success.
What we cover
- Differences between a project and business as usual
- Benefits of project management
- Project lifecycle and features of a successful project
- Roles within a project and project teams
- Producing a project plan
- Scheduling and resource management
- Monitoring and reporting
- Communications
- Stakeholder management
- Risk and issue management – and what to do if things go wrong
- How to successfully conclude a project.
Contact us if you are interested in this session being delivered for your organisation. This course runs regularly as an open session with HQN – more details here Project Management Bootcamp
People Skills for Project Management
People are vital to the success of every project. Without their engagement and buy-in, even the best project processes and planning may not produce benefits. This is an area often neglected in project management literature and training – which provides little guidance on the essential skills needed to motivate and manage people involved in your project.
This course will draw on research and proven methods from both the fields of project management and organisational development. It covers key people skills needed at different stages of the project lifecycle and you will leave the day with practical tools and tips you can put into practice in your organisation.
What we cover
- Current research on effective motivation and engagement in projects
- The vital link between strategy and projects
- Essential skillset of an excellent project manager
- How to build and motivate your project team
- Engaging and negotiating with stakeholders
- Influencing without authority- working with people you don’t manage
- Getting the best out of limited resources and encouraging innovation
This course is ideal for those who have already gained an understanding of the essentials of project management and who want to work more effectively with the people on their projects. It is also a useful follow up to the Project Management Bootcamp one day course. We have open sessions available, details here: People Skills for Project Managers
Women in Leadership
A unique opportunity to think about leadership, personal values and how you can overcome barriers to succeed as a woman leader.
What we cover
- Current leadership thinking and the key challenges facing women leaders today
- Why language matters – how gender messages can impact on your behaviour as a leader
- Enhancing your strengths and communicating with confidence
- How to influence at a business strategy level and lead culture change
Contact us if you are interested in this session being delivered for your organisation. It is also available as an open course, more details here: Women Advancing in Leadership
Successful Report Writing
Well-written reports deliver information that is concise and clear, easily understood and helpful to decision makers. This course will build on your skills to help you write better reports, applying what you have learned directly to the work you are doing.
What we cover
- Identifying key messages and using them to create a logical structure.
- The importance of thinking and planning before you write.
- How to identify and use the right tone and style for your audience.
- Getting rid of jargon, summarising well and editing for impact
- How to use plain English well and to be relentlessly clear in what you say
- Tips for summarising
- How to use graphs, tables and charts well
Strategic Away Days
We design and facilitate events for boards and senior management teams to support them in developing their organisational vision and strategic plans. We help teams focus on their performance and relationship with each other. Please let us know if you want to discuss how we could support you in running similar events
Recruitment & Selection
We work with organisations to redesign their Recruitment & Selection approach – feedback has been fantastic, people have told us their confidence when interviewing has hugely improved. We can design and deliver a 1 or 2 day course, bespoke to your organisation. If you want to discuss how this could work for you, please contact us.
Management Toolbox
We have developed a leadership development modular programme containing many of the workshops above. This can be run as a whole three day package, or we can deliver half-day modules as appropriate for your individual or organisational needs
Writing clearly and confidently at work.
This half day course will help you to confidently use a clear, modern business writing style, an essential step in writing things that people want to read. From bids to reports to emails, this session will help you to choose the best tone and language – and stop procrastinating and start writing.
What we cover
- How to identify your key messages
- Thinking and planning before you write
- Writing well for busy people
- Finding the right structure for your audience
- How to stop worrying about grammar
- Effective use of plain English