Smart Team Leadership

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
— Peter Drucker

Workshop Description

You can measure the health of your organization by how well negative information flows up the chain of command. This is not easy to get right. The problem? Nothing lowers conversational capacity more predictably than the presence of authority. The focus of this workshop is to help managers learn to carry their authority in a way that lifts rather than lowers the conversational capacity of the people and teams they manage. 

A Management Competence

“No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager,” said management and strategy expert Henry Mintzberg. “It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.” 

It is for this reason that carrying one’s authority competently is a pivotal competence for an effective manager – be they a line supervisor or a CEO. If a manager behaves in a way – intentionally or unintentionally – that limits the ability of their people to bring their best ideas to the team, they are, by definition, managing incompetently. 

If management’s business is building organizations that work, after all, then a manager making it difficult for their people to bring their best work to the business isn’t doing their job. 

A Leadership Competence

“An organization is a community of discourse,” said psychologist Robert Kegan. “Leadership is about shaping the nature of the discourse.” This is an essential workshop for supervisors, team and project leaders, managers, administrators, or executives who want to do a better job of carrying their authority in a way that makes their teams smarter, stronger, and more purpose-driven. 

Learning Objectives:

Participants will learn to help their people and teams bring their A-game to the business in a consistent way. They’ll do this by

  • Identifying the sins of omission that make it difficult for people to remain candid and curious in their presence.
  • Identifying the sins of commission that have the same counterproductive effect.
  • Adopting practices that help the people who report them bring their best thinking and biggest concerns to the table – even in high-pressure circumstances that conspire against it.
  • Performing their management role in a more curious, humble, and purposeful way.
  • Learning to wield their authority in a way that builds their own conversational capacity and that of the team they manage.
  • Updating their personal and application plans to help sustain the learning and practice beyond the workshop.

Complementary Workshops

This course works well in conjunction with these courses:

Length: 2 hours

Format: Virtual or in-person