Leadership Development: Transitioning from Manager to Leader

Hello my dear manager,

May I ask you how do you cope with the current challenges? Like:

– Post-pandemic New reality,

– Big Resignation and initiatives coming from employees regarding more and more flexibility,

– Raising global inflation and other chaotic issues we currently live in?

Yeah, don’t ask me, hmm?

And, have you may be noticed that employees are more often starting either to turn to the supervisors asking for direction and support, or, they just completely “close up” if there is no first well-established deep connection and trust?

And then – some smart guy will come to you and say: “People don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers”.

Honestly, the bar has raised to another level for all of us.

– Employees are requiring more and more information,

– They would like to participate in decision making and being empowered,

– They demand coaching and to be enrolled instead to be told what to do,

– And many other aspects that exceed pure managerial relationship – they demand leadership more than ever!

To answer that challenge, we believe you should explore more about:

– How to pursue the way in this ambiguity;

– Model the way for others;

– Deeply connect to your tribe by sharing the common values, purpose and dreams,

– Learn how to empower and enroll them and similar – simply, learn how to give them what they really want – at the end of the day – it’s just a skill like any other;

That’s why, we are going to share with you our own thoughts how to do that – after all, I have spent 15 years dealing with all sort of managers and leaders, from an autocratic style to more (let’s say) sophisticated one, while also being a manager by myself for a while. Good one? I really hope so, but for sure I made all sorts of mistakes on my path of learning and practicing leadership.

If you are interested to explore more about this topic of transitioning from manager to leader, just watch few open videos and see if this resonates with you. We are going to help you with self-management secrets, how to navigate information, people and action realms, and help you to overcome the most common leadership fallacies. And, that’s not the end – first and foremost, leadership is a daily practice of influencing people, mostly one person at a time – that’s why we have created a lot of interesting tasks for you, a sort of a Leadership Work-Out Program – some interesting reads, video clips to watch, challenges to interact with your own people, perform some tests, and similar.

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If you would like to study a leadership – the most common approach is to explore a sort of a leadership process or behavior – meaning how to explore new possibilities, challenge the status quo, model the way, inspire a shared vision and mission, mobilize and unite people, and work on their individual motivation. And, we did it in our own way.

Simply, our intention is to go a bit deeper compared to this standard practice.

That’s why – this course is about studying the content all business leaders have to navigate – information realm, people, action realm and self-realm, within their own unit or company, and outside that terrain, as shown at the picture bellow.

To better understand the necessity of this approach – we are going to open discussion with the most common Leadership fallacies – that will stretch your thinking and hopefully, open new perspectives on the subject of business leadership. As we believe, that is the hearth of distinguishing a manager from a true business leader.

Next, we are going deeper – to answer a challenge on how do you deal with your team’s dynamics when you are not even there.

At a surface, Information realm is more focused on a simple, basic concepts like communication and control – here, leadership activities are instrumental in nature and based on using information to drive people to specific ends. We are going to talk about vision and mission, shaping culture and values and leading the change on a group level. And, most likely – it will open for you an ethical question – is this just a dealing with ideology and indoctrination, or an honest process of helping people to work together on pursuing the better future. We will share our own answer to this question for sure.

Next, People realm is focused on leading the people inside your Unit and linking the unit to the outside world – the key is to understand that managing and leading is more than just giving instructions and controlling execution or results. Since it is mostly one-on-one or one-on-many activity, we are going to pay a lot of attention on motivating your people, helping them to grow, how to create a cohesive team and to study all aspects of power and influence. Of course, handling external affairs is extremely important topic as well.

Action realm is focused on you doing different things inside your Unit, and dealing with outside pressures and opportunities. Yes, leading assumes doing through or alongside others (depending on your perspective), yet in order to stay informed, engaged and similar, you have to use (let’s say) “your hands” as well and give an example.

And finally, within a Self-realm, we are going to focus on your own perception (meaning framing like conceiving strategies, setting goals and priorities, and scheduling meaning time distribution for yourself and others – as your inside work) and (on top of perception) behavior (meaning actions like establishing context for everyone else, self-positioning, and similar – meaning dealing with your outside world). Most likely, studying the self is where all leadership starts. However – in order to help you see different perspectives first, we decided to close the discussion on leadership with this topic. As we believe – that’s the best way to help you to find your own voice and shape your own leadership philosophy.

And, as promised, we have created a lot of interesting tasks for you all over the course, a sort of a Leadership Work-Out Program – some interesting reads, video clips to watch, challenges to interact with your people, perform some easy tests, and similar.

I really hope you are going to enjoy it. See you on the other side.

Bye!