Taking the director’s chair
First Time Director Programme.
A flagship for people in their first director or head of service seat: strategic leadership, the board and the top team, and looking after yourself at the top.
- Level
- Flagship
- Learning time
- 15 hours
- Where
- Strategy and the future
- Price
- £459
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
Newly appointed directors and heads of service
Overview
Taking the director's chair is built for the first months in a director or head of service seat, when the scope widens, the board becomes part of the job and the support around you thins. This flagship brings together strategic leadership, Cynefin and the discipline of making strategy stick, the chair, chief executive and board relationship, and what makes a top team more than a group of heads. It covers managing upward and sideways with Gabarro and Kotter, Drucker's effective executive, risk appetite, healthy and toxic cultures, and closes with self-compassion and Self-Determination Theory: how to stay well and motivated in a role that can isolate.
Aims
This programme aims to help newly appointed directors and heads of service grow into the role with confidence: thinking and acting strategically, earning their place on the top team and with the board, navigating the political terrain with integrity, and sustaining themselves so they can lead well over the long term.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how the director role differs from senior management, including your strategic contribution, your relationship with the board and your place on the top team.
- Apply strategy, risk and influence tools to turn a strategic priority into owned action, building coalitions upward, sideways and across your service.
- Plan how you will sustain your own effectiveness, motivation and wellbeing in the role, drawing on self-compassion, Self-Determination Theory and the discipline of the effective executive.
What you'll develop
Through the programme, you will be able to:
- Compare the planning, positioning, emergent and kernel schools of strategy and assess whether a strategy contains a genuine diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent action.
- Distinguish the five Cynefin domains and describe the decision-making approach each one calls for.
- Identify which frameworks, including the Strategic Choice Approach, Cynefin, Five Forces, Blue Ocean and Rumelt's kernel, were in play in each of the three cases.
- Apply team lenses such as voice, purpose and teaming to a real case, reading it forwards rather than with hindsight.
- Map stakeholders on a power and interest grid and plan how to engage each quadrant.
- 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.
- Explain what organisational culture is, using Schein's definition, and distinguish it from climate and from employer brand.
- Explain Self-Determination Theory's three basic needs and identify what it looks like when each goes unmet.
Built from 11 parts.
15 hours of learning.
- 01Setting the directionStrategic leadership for senior leadersBitesize · Leadership1 module
- 02Leading from the inside outValues-based leadership, ethics and identityBitesize · Leadership1 module
- 03Seeing the bigger pictureStrategic thinking and environmental scanningBitesize · Strategic Thinking2 modules
- 04Making it stickStrategy implementation and deliveryBitesize · Strategic Thinking2 modules
- 05The top tableRoles of the chair, chief executive and boardBitesize · Good Governance1 module
- 06At the top tableSenior leadership team developmentBitesize · Team Development2 modules
- 07Alliances and corridorsCoalition building and office politicsBitesize · Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation2 modules
- 08Effective at every levelDrucker's effective executive and managing upBitesize · High Performing Managers2 modules
- 09How much risk is enough?Risk assessment and board risk appetiteBitesize · Strategic Risk2 modules
- 10How things really get done hereOrganisational culture: positive and toxicBitesize · Culture in Organisations2 modules
- 11Kinder to yourselfSelf-compassion and motivation under pressureBitesize · Resilience, Wellbeing and Adaptability2 modules