Public Sector Strategy and Leadership Essentials

By attending this course, you will be able to successfully lead public services to achieve service excellence and community objectives. You will:

• Consider the approach to the medium/long term funding of the authority to ensure financial resilience year-on-year.
• Consider the approach to the medium/long term planning to ensure the authority meets all of the expectations of its stakeholders.
• Gain an overview of programme and change management for those senior officers who will be looking to employ and manage specific skilled staff and/or consultants to help achieve their organizational change objectives.

This course embarks into the essential fundamental aspects of leadership on your career pathway. Set over the course using a combination of discussion debates, case studies, research and immersion sessions, you will explore experientially how to emerge more fully as a leader and to harness the workforce to transform.

The course will wrap with a summary of the key learning points, followed by an action planning exercise with a view to apply the acquired knowledge and skills immediately upon your return to work. Post-course support is also available in relation to the implementation of your action plan, up to six (6) months following course completion.

Public Sector Finance Strategy

• Funding Strategic Priorities
• Revenue Resilience
• Managing Reserves
• Crises and Contingency Planning

Public Sector Strategic Planning

• The Strategic Planning Cycle
• The Political Cycle and its Impact on Strategy
• Review and Refresh
• Incremental adjustments vs major restructure

Public Sector – Leading Strategic Change

• The Drivers of Change
• Building and Gaining Support
• Project Management
• Change Management

Crises Management

• The emergency response
• Taking control
• Working in partnership
• Restoring normality

Leadership – The Pursuit of Excellence

• Excellence in Leadership
• Mission to Be the Best
• Managing Change by Raising Standards
• Leader board Comparative Analysis

Key Leadership Qualities

• Leadership Characteristics and Traits
• What Makes Great Leaders
• Psychological Mindset of Leaders
• Leading with Ration, Logic and Emotions

Decision-Making Skills

• The Decision-Making Process
• How to Skilfully Persuade
• Team-led Approaches to Decision-Making
• Structured Critical Thinking

Managing Stakeholder Expectations

• Principles in Engaging Stakeholders
• Aligning from Grassroots to Boardroom
• Mobilizing Stakeholder Support
• Managing Expectations

Course Review

• Summary and recap of key learning objectives
• Action Planning

This course is suitable for:

• Directors and Deputy Directors, and all other public sector senior officers who are responsible for achieving the authority’s strategic objectives and can commit the resources to achieve them.
• Directors and Heads of Departments.
• Senior Managers and High Performance Executives.

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• ‘Step-up’ to lead the whole service.
• Define service outcomes.
• Understand the responsibilities of the service ‘end-to-end’ manager.
• Comprehensively understand leadership principles and apply them.
• Explore the leadership styles and the psychological basis that underpins great leadership.
• Apply high level decision-making approaches to deliver robust leadership strategies.
• Implement an Action Plan at your workplace using the knowledge and skills acquired through the course.