2-Day Program

Learning to Lead

Essentials for New Leaders

About the Program

Learning to Lead is designed to help new managers make the transition from individual contributor to effective leader. Employees are often promoted into a management position because of their expertise and superior performance as individual contributors, yet this knowledge is an insufficient basis to lead teams.

This interactive 2-day program focuses on the most critical foundations of effective leadership and management, enabling new managers to overcome the challenges they will encounter during this transition. In this program, you will:

  • Learn the benefits of, and techniques for, leading with meaning.
  • Broaden your repertoire of communication and motivational tools to inspire your team and enable them to reach their potential. Simulations and exercises will be used to promote active learning.
  • Learn tools and techniques for effectively managing talent including: effective ways of hiring, managing performance, and helping your employees stay aligned with the larger organizational strategy and culture.

You will leave the program with the knowledge and skills necessary to both inspire others and manage the daily fundamentals in your team.

Who Should Attend

Learning to Lead is tailored to recently-promoted managers who have been in their roles for less than two years, as well as those who are soon to be promoted to management roles.

Personal benefits

This program will help new leaders learn the ropes of leading and managing employees:

  • Develop a deep understanding of the challenges that emerging leaders encounter
  • Broaden your repertoire of communication skills and learn to motivate and inspire employees
  • Help employees find meaning in their daily work
  • Find meaning in your role as emerging leader
  • Learn how to use motivation tools for the recruitment, selection, development, and retention of employees
  • Become an effective manager of employee performance by leveraging human capital management
  • Create long-term commitment between your followers and yourself
  • Learn how to continue to develop yourself as a leader over time

Organizational benefits

Organizations will benefit from new leaders who inspire followers and who are more effective in their day-to-day role as managers. They will:

  • Experience less friction during transition periods in which team leadership changes
  • Develop leaders of tomorrow in their first steps towards becoming a leader in your organization
  • Create strategic alignment between the goals of employees, leaders, and the entire organization
  • Enhance creativity and innovation in the organization
  • Reduce turnover amongst emerging leaders and in their respective teams
  • Become an employer of choice by ensuring a successful transition of employees into emerging leaders

Program content

The program leverages the educational power of multiple teaching tools, including class discussions, role play simulation, and exchange of ideas and perspectives with faculty and fellow participants.

Program curriculum

Day 1: Leading with Meaning

Day 1 of the program will focus on the leadership of teams. Participants will learn how to create meaning for themselves and their followers:

  • Understand the psychological needs of your followers
  • Motivate followers by promoting psychological experiences of autonomy, relatedness, and competence
  • Promote creativity and innovation through intrinsically motivated followers
  • Cultivate positive emotions in yourself and your followers
  • Inspire followers with a growth mindset
  • Understand how organizational structures create meaning for followers
  • Change the conversation from ‘what’ to ‘why’
  • Develop a broader understanding of how your team contributes to the organization and society at large
  • Develop yourself as an emotionally intelligent leader

Day 2: Managing Your Talent

Day 2 of the program builds upon the leadership fundamentals by showing you how to put them in action through the management of your human capital.

  • Understand how to choose new talent to prioritize alignment with your organizational goals and needs
  • Develop the skills for effectively recruiting and hiring new employees
  • Learn to identify and manage conflict as well as employees who are behaving in dysfunctional ways
  • Develop the knowledge and skills necessary to manage employees’ performance with ongoing coaching, performance assessments, and performance improvement discussions
  • Identify and manage your team’s performance through goal-setting and alignment with the larger organization

Session leaders include senior professors from Smith School of Business and knowledgeable experts from industry. These outstanding teachers are constantly in touch with today's business world through real-world business experience, Board memberships and their own consulting practices.

Jana Raver

Jana Raver is an Associate Professor and E. Marie Shantz Faculty Fellow in Organizational Behaviour at Smith School of Business. She is an award winning researcher whose primary area of expertise focuses on interpersonal relations and group processes at work. A second stream of her research focuses on the integration of diverse or dissimilar employees into work groups and organizations. She has consulted and conducted applied research in several organizations in both the public and private sectors in the U.S. and Canada. Jana’s work has been profiled in national and international media and she is regularly invited to speak to associations of academics, policy makers, and employees.  

Matthias Spitzmuller

Matthias Spitzmuller is an authority on team leadership and how leadership can be performed effectively by team members who are not in a formal position of authority. He has been a lecturer for Harvard Business School Publishing since 2012 and has consulted with various organizations on their leadership development programs, including American Express and The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region. He serves as a member of the Advisory Board for Foerster & Netzwerk, a German consulting firm specialized on leadership development. He holds a PhD in Organizational Behaviour from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Before joining the Smith School of Business, Matthias worked as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore.

Enroll Now
Katie Parks

Speak to a member of our team.
Call 1.888.393.2338 or
Monday to Friday. 8:30 am - 4:00 pm EDT

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Upcoming Sessions

    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    SmithToronto
    200 Front St West, Suite 3020
  • Dec 3 to Dec 4

Fees

$2,300 CAD (plus applicable taxes)