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.

Objective

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

1. Appreciate the shift in complexity going from leading one team (Team leadership), to leading multiple teams (Organisation leadership).
2. Know that different approaches are needed to ensure that your communication as a Head of Department reaches to the frontline team members, where the work actually happens.
3. Apply techniques that will increase the visibility of their leadership across the department, and understand why transparency in their leadership can boost employee engagement and motivation.
4. Recognise that their Team leaders are their advocates, and thus a need to ensure they are developed with the required leadership competencies to make sound decisions at their level.
5. Understand why they have to proactively shape the culture of their department, be clear on the steps needed to do so, while balancing 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.
• What is your department vision, why clarity is essential, and its downstream implications when you are not clear on where you are leading to.
• Translating Strategic vision into business strategies with operational implementation for your teams, and finally determining KPIs with your team leaders to monitor and measure success.

2 – Communication across your department
• Exploring the different ways of drive communication effectively across your department, and why you have to ensure that what you communicate reaches down to the frontline team member, as intended.
• Seeking feedback from the frontline through skip-level meetings to counter-check that things are going according to plan, while not overruling your team leaders.
• Why Consistency in how, what, when, whom, and where sets a tone for how your employees will communicate in your workplace.

3 – Impactful visibility and transparency
• 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 to know about them, and be seen as addressing them?
• Why Transparency and Visibility are needed companions to enable you 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.
• Addressing opaqueness with the inner workings of your department, and what you can do to put in place a culture of transparency using processes, so you can make better informed decisions.

4 – Quality of your leaders
• Why you cannot outsource the development of your team leaders to HR?
• Ensuring that team leaders are of the right Quality, have clear roles and responsibilities to be Decisive, and to be accountable for making decisions with aligning to the vision.
• Effective Decision making for you and your team leaders. Who decides what, and why you have to be very selective in making any decision as a HOD?

5 – Your department culture matters
• What you have to do to move from current to ideal work culture in your department.
• In between the many things going on, what can you do to Balance strategic vision with operational implementation while leading through change.
• Summary and closing

Who should attend

1. Team leaders transitioning from leading one team to leading multiple teams as the next step in their career.
2. Newly appointed Heads of Departments who want to rapidly upgrade their leadership competencies to lead in their current realities.
3. Department Heads, Middle leaders, or Director level leaders (who are already leading multiple teams) seeking to refresh their leadership knowledge to better lead other leaders.

Methodology

Interactive and experiential trainer-led workshop with participant-led small group discussions and case studies drawn from the First Time Leadership book co-authored by the trainer.

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 off real-life experiences of successful leaders from 37 countries.

Testimonial

I like the practical approach to explaining the transition from team leader to BU leader.

Building the organisation culture and navigating through various types of cultures

He helped us with the key skills required at different levels, BU vs Team Lead and the practical ways it was demonstrated.

Discuss the role of middle management because it will take us to think what we are now and what we should do more.

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.