Steady in the senior seat
Politics, managing up, risk, culture and self-compassion.
A day on staying steady in the senior seat: negotiation and coalition building, personal effectiveness, managing up and sideways, risk and the board, culture, and self-compassion under pressure.
- Level
- Immerse
- Learning time
- 7 hours
- Where
- Strategy and the future
- Price
- £249
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
New and established directors and senior managers in public and voluntary sector bodies
Overview
New directors meet political terrain, board scrutiny and personal pressure all at once. The second part of the flagship Taking the director's chair begins with influence: negotiating pay, contracts and collective agreements, then coalition building, the pre-meeting and the Grameen Bank case. It turns to personal effectiveness through Drucker's The Effective Executive and Charan and Bossidy's Execution, and managing upward and sideways with Gabarro and Kotter. Risk follows, from the ISO 31000 process and the Airbus case to risk appetite and Wells Fargo, then culture through Schein, Enron and Timpson. It concludes with Kristin Neff's self-compassion, Self-Determination Theory and Seligman's model of wellbeing.
Aims
Its purpose is to help directors build steadiness as a skill: managing up and across with integrity, holding risk honestly with their board, reading culture accurately, and looking after themselves under sustained pressure so they can keep others steady too.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Use coalition building and the pre-meeting to prepare the ground for the decisions and negotiations that matter most.
- Assess risk appetite with your board, drawing on ISO 31000 and the contrasting lessons of Airbus and Wells Fargo.
- Apply self-compassion and Self-Determination Theory to sustain your own motivation and wellbeing in a demanding senior role.
What you'll develop
By the end of this Immerse, you will be able to:
- Distinguish the distributive and integrative elements of a deal, and create value by trading issues that each side values differently.
- Map stakeholders on a power and interest grid and plan how to engage each quadrant.
- Apply Gabarro and Kotter's four steps to understand your manager's world and build an upward relationship based on mutual dependence.
- Use Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and the Structured What If Technique to identify risks precisely, asking how a process could fail rather than whether it will.
- Distinguish risk appetite, risk tolerance and risk capacity and explain why a board needs all three.
- Explain what organisational culture is, using Schein's definition, and distinguish it from climate and from employer brand.
- Describe Neff's three components of self-compassion and distinguish self-compassion from self-pity, excuse making and lowered standards.
- Explain Self-Determination Theory's three basic needs and identify what it looks like when each goes unmet.
Built from 5 parts.
7 hours of learning.
- 01Alliances and corridorsCoalition building and office politicsBitesize · Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation2 modules
- 02Effective at every levelDrucker's effective executive and managing upBitesize · High Performing Managers2 modules
- 03How much risk is enough?Risk assessment and board risk appetiteBitesize · Strategic Risk2 modules
- 04How things really get done hereOrganisational culture: positive and toxicBitesize · Culture in Organisations2 modules
- 05Kinder to yourselfSelf-compassion and motivation under pressureBitesize · Resilience, Wellbeing and Adaptability2 modules