Many do not realise, but the transition from leading a single team to overseeing multiple teams is a significant shift in leadership complexity and responsibility. This programme is specifically designed to equip participants with the skills and insights needed to navigate this transition effectively. Stepping into the role of organizational leader, requires expanding the understanding of the strategies that once worked for managing a single team, to something different to address the broader scope of leading an entire department or multiple teams.

One key challenge is ensuring that your communication as a Head of Department reaches all levels, particularly the frontline team members, who are the one to do the actual work of strategy execution.

Participants will explore various approaches to enhance your communication channels to cut through bureaucracy, to ensure their messages are clear, consistent, and impactful (as intended) across the entire department.

Participants will also appreciate that Visibility and Transparency in their leadership are not buzzwords, but essential components that can significantly boost employee engagement and motivation. They will explore techniques and methods to increase the visibility of your leadership, and understand the profound impact transparency can have on your department’s performance; and indirectly create a culture of trust and accountability.

This is then in recognition that the leaders under them are an extension of them, as serve as their advocates. Therefore, the quality of their team leaders is crucial for your success as a Head of Department (HOD). This programme will dive into what the HOD can do to develop their team leaders with the necessary competencies to make sound decisions and lead effectively at their level.

Finally, participants will come to appreciate why they have to proactively shape the culture of your department. This involves having a clear vision and direction, be able to articulate the core values to be adopted by all employees, and to regularly speak, encourage, and also put into process that culture, in order to amplify their leadership across the department.

This is to be better position them to balance strategic vision with operational implementation, manage and influence stakeholders, and foster a workplace culture that supports continuous improvement and sustainable and reliable performance levels.

Each participant will receive a copy of Daniel’s First Time Leadership book as a post-workshop resource. The book contains 30 leadership principles revealed in stories based on real-life experiences of successful leaders from 37 countries.

Objective

By the end of this programme, participants will be able to:

1. Appreciate the leadership complexity in leading multiple teams.
2. Know what they have to do to ensure their communication reaches to the frontline team members doing the work.
3. Apply the ‘Exposure effect’ principle and leading with transparency to boost employee engagement and motivation.
4. Recognise why Team leaders are their advocates, their ability to implement vision and make sound decisions are crucial, and what to do about it.
5. Understand why their department culture has to be intentionally crafted, while balancing the strategic vision with operational implementation amidst managing and influencing stakeholders.

Outline

1 – From Team leader to HOD

• Opening and icebreaker
• Differentiate the leadership competencies when leading one team vs leading multiple teams as a result of Cognitive complexity.
• Why a department vision is a must, and the downstream implications of not having one.
• Tying your department vision into translatable business goals and specific KPIs for your team leaders to achieve measurable success.

2 – Communication across your department

• Why HODs have to exercise Internal communication to overcome the Barriers of communication and Information loss that occur complex organization structure.
• How VUCA and BANI constantly erode the flow of information that is vital for your department, and what you can do about it.
• Appreciating the worlds that different management levels inhabit, and how they should be spoken with to make to convince, persuade, and inspire buy-in.

3 – Impactful visibility and transparency

• Why HODs have to employ the Mere exposure effect to communicate the tough / hard messages to your department, obtain unfiltered feedback, and inevitably boost the employee engagement and motivation of your frontline team members.
• How any HOD can build trust with their department using Visibility and Transparency to increase their Referent power, and be seen as admired and respected by their team members.
• Learn the right questions to ask your team members during skip-level meetings to gather the right information for better fact checking and decision making.

4 – Quality of your leaders

• Understand why the 7 Self-leadership areas are essential for high quality team leaders who can be a HOD’s advocates in decision making and strategy execution.
• Working through the consequences of poor self-leadership, how that affects team leaders’ ability to engage and motivate their teams, and the possible solutions a HOD has available.
• Elevate your leaders’ mind and skillset through coaching using the OSKAR model, to ensure they are driving results through their teams, while balancing strategic vision with operational implementation.

5 – Your department culture matters

• Why articulating your department culture matters, and how to go about embedding it into your workplace through language and processes.
• What you have to do to move from current to ideal work culture in your department, why culture is not core values but feelings, to create a workplace that has sustainable high performing, protects your time for deep thinking, and empowering others to execute.
• Tuckman’s model of group development: Addressing the challenges at each stage of your department’s development, and what you and your team leaders can do to know about and address them?
• Summary and closing

Who should attend

Testimonial

Daniel Lee's Profile

He Simplifies Employee Engagement for Team Leaders and Heads of Departments.

Over 20 years of working in Australia and Singapore, Daniel Lee has accumulated a vast experience and know-how in speaking, training, and coaching participants from different cultures and work backgrounds.

He started his career with the Singapore Police Force and achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant. After which he pursued his Masters in Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. During that time, Daniel started his career in Human Resources, eventually focusing on Learning and Development across the Manufacturing, Professional services, and Facilities Management industries in Australia, and with Banking and Finance in Singapore.

From 2017 onwards, Daniel did a career switch with a focus on the education industry working with youths, and later from mid-2018 onwards, to working with adult learners. Daniel has run both in-house and public programmes for Accenture, American Express, PPG Industries, Bank of Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, BNP Paribas, Daimler Trucks, Bollore Logistics, DHL, Shiseido, Standard Chartered, Telkom Indonesia, Beam Suntory, Cornerstone, Singapore Police Force, UTAC, Nexia Singapore, and many more.

Having become a published author in 2021 with his book ‘First Time Leadership’, he knows that leadership is simply an amalgamation of a range of skillsets and mindsets. The key to unleashing one’s leadership is to realise that leadership competencies are interrelated, and to know how to employ them across the various people-related situations.

Since 2022, Daniel has been interviewing Heads of Departments in his latest research, leading from the Middle, to uncover what it takes to be an effective leader of leaders.

With deep theoretical understanding on team and organization leadership and its practical real-world applications, he takes the view that learners already subconsciously know how to achieve the desired outcomes. His role is to bring awareness to the learners, so they can become intentional professionals in their own fields. Daniel has received many positive testimonials from the programmes and workshops he has conducted.