Leadership Mastered: Build Influence, Impact & Strategy

Intro to Module 1

Welcome to Module 1

In this level one, we're looking to really gain mastery of the basics. Common sense is not always common practice. So we will be looking at three main areas in this module.

• Understanding yourself. Who are you? What do you want to be? What does your picture of success look like? How do you interact with others?

• Understanding others. Why do people behave the way they do? How can you start to uncover? Those reasons. How can you really improve the interactions that you're having with others as well?

• Understanding your role as a leader. We'll start to look at understanding what your role of leading is. And giving you some really useful techniques to relax into that role in the way that you want to.

Good luck, take it step by step.

Why understand yourself?

Download your 90-day short-term development plan

The more you know and understand yourself and your motivations for the way you behave, whether those are conscious or unconscious. The more impact you can have and the more effective you are at leading, inspiring, motivating and coaching your people. Download this plan. Build a plan for your development that allows you to start having both short and long-term objectives to drive you to become the leader you want to be.

Define Your Picture of Success

Think Forward, Not Back

When using this tool, it’s essential to adopt a forward-thinking mindset. Rather than reflecting on past experiences or achievements, focus your attention on what lies ahead. Imagine your ideal future — where do you see yourself in 10 or 20 years? Who are you becoming? What kind of life are you leading, both personally and professionally?

This is your opportunity to define success on your own terms. Visualise the version of yourself that you aspire to be — the roles you play, the impact you make, the values you live by, and the environment you thrive in. Be bold, be specific, and don’t limit yourself to what seems realistic today. The purpose of this exercise is to create a compelling and inspiring picture that pulls you forward, helps you set meaningful goals, and guides your decisions.

Remember, your Picture of Success should be energising and motivating. It’s not about fixing the past — it’s about designing a future that excites you.

Circles - finding your sweet spot

Building your user manual

Download - Building your user manual

This is a tool that allows you to clarify and articulate how to get the best out of you. Work through the questions in the download and then share this with people. This will allow you to operate effectively and also share a tool with others that can help them collaborate brilliantly.

Use the resource to create your own lifeline

Take this assessment to start to understand what motivates you.

What is Enough?

The tool talks about money but it is equally applicable to power, influence, fame etc. so use it in a way that aligns with your drivers.

Exercise

Spend 15 minutes writing about the leader you want to be. If you are struggling to detail the type of leader you want to be, start thinking about the leader you don't want to be. Carry on writing until you are able to distil your ideas into a clear picture of the type of leader you want to be.

Once you have this description of the type of leader you want to be, see if you can identify 3 words that describe this style. This will become your leadership manta and ensure that you are working towards developing into the great leader you want to be.

How do you build your Executive Presence?

As leaders we often just who we are and we have not deliberately thought about our presence and what we need to do to build it and curate it for each situation.

Download the worksheet and work through each section to deliberately define your Executive Presence.

How your Brain works

Understanding your brain

In this video, we look at the Neurosequential Model of the brain developed by Bruce Perry. The reason we use this model is that it is simple yet powerful. Below is a video where Dr Perry talks about the use of this framework in education. Now I am not implying that leaders are dealing with people, but often we are attempting to connect with others to help them learn and therefore it is highly relevant to your role as a leader to understand how best to use the brain to your advantage.

Finding the edge of your comfort zone

Where is the edge of your comfort zone?

Download the worksheet and start identifying 3-4 ways that you can push yourself outside your comfort zone. Aim to do 1 a week. Keep the worksheetwith you so you can ensure that you are pushing yourself and then once you have completed the list, identify another 3-4 activities that you can use to extend the size of your comfort zone.

Why do I need to understand others?

Understanding others

Why is that important? To lead, we have to connect. We have to communicate. We have to collaborate. We have to engage with people. So understanding how people tick is critically important.

Fact vs Opinions

How can you shift yourself and people to understand the facts vs just the opinion?

Questions you can use to help someone separate fact from opinion:

• Can you talk me through the facts that support your opinion as I am curious to learn more?

• What sources can I research to find out more about your thoughts and perspectives?

• I think I understand the perspective you are sharing but I am keen to dive deeper and understand the data you have used to find this perspective.

• Thank you for sharing your view, I am excited to hear as many perspectives as I can. Any data you can share whilst I gather additional input would be greatly appreciated.

Are you a great listener?

Learn about the two main types of listening and the impact that they have.

Activity

Start building that self-awareness of how often you listen to respond, Or how often you listen to understand. Write down how you think you did on a scale of 0-10 after critical conversations. 0 being you spent all the time listening to respond and 10 being you spent all the time listening to understand.

Download the worksheet to make you reflect further on your listening

What does performance mean to you?

Activity

Define what performance means to you. Download the worksheet and spend some time defining performance for yourself and then work with your team to do the same.

How can good enough performance create high-performing teams?

High-performance teams are not teams that are high-performing all of the time. They are teams that act as one unit allowing for people to be human in a way that actually overall performance and productivity are raised.

Intention vs Impact

Download the worksheet

A simple tweak to make you a better communicator

The harsh reality is that the intention behind our communication is irrelevant if the impact of our message sucks. You have to start thinking about how your audience will feel when they hear your message and how can you change your delivery to make your message be heard in the way you want it to.

The four roles of a leader

Manager, Leader, Coach and Sounding Board

How can you balance the 4 roles that a leader needs to play to make yourself effective and impactful?

The 6 aspects of leadership

6 aspects of Leadership

Below are the 6 aspects of leadership that you and your team need to master to ensure that you have the right people in the right places, doing the right things at the right time, consistently.

What is Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership

The ability for you to lead an organisation to be agile and to meet new opportunities with speed by enabling fast change of skills, behaviours, processes and systems.

What is Risk Management?

Risk management

How do you keep your eyes on the horizon as a leader and find the silver linings in any clouds that might appear?

What is Customer-Focused Leadership

Customer Focused Leadership

How much time do you spend focused on the customer? Are all of your activities and projects centred on delivering value to your customers?

What is Culture of Openness

What is Culture of Openness and how do we define it?

Openness is both how you treat and engage with your people as an organisation as well as the effort you put into ensuring that data is available as low to the company as possible, giving easy access to the information people need to do their jobs.

What is Optimising Productivity?

Optimising Productivity

Yes, get your calendar sorted but how often do you look at your process and your systems to see if they are fit for purpose?

What is managing well-being

Yes, sleep is important and so is exercise but that is not everything about well-being. As a leader, you need to think about engagement and ease of work for your people as the smallest obstacles can create great frustration for people.

Company Values

We all have them but what do they mean? And what are your values and how do these align?

There are 2 worksheets for this video.

1. to define your values

2. to see how your values align with your company values and how you can embed these within your behaviours and that of your team.

What if I can't impact the whole company culture?

How do you consider your position in the structure & scope of your organisation when you are trying to impact the company culture?

Technology - Threat or Opportunity?

At the time of recording this, the debate of AI and whether it is going to take everyone's job and what's it going to mean for the workplace of the future is in full swing. And I don't think it's going to go any way anytime soon, but technology has always been a threat and an opportunity.

Well Done! You have completed Module 1

Congratulations!

You have reached the end of Module 1. Take time to ensure that you have completed all the activities and worksheets before moving on to Module 2.

Welcome to Module 2

In this module, we are taking the skills and behaviours you need to cultivate to become a great leader to the next level. We will be focusing on how to:

• Lead yourself - how can you deepen your awareness and put into action your plan

• Lead others - how can you learn to communicate with impact

• Owning your role - how can you master your stakeholders

Why lead yourself?

What do we mean by "lead yourself"

Setting yourself up as a role model to others requires discipline and consistency, so adopting the right mindset and habits is vital as a leader.

What is your stress mindset?

Keeping a stress journal

As we examine our Stress mindset it is useful to keep notes on how we think and the labels we give our emotions when we are stressed. Over the next 2 weeks, take 5 minutes 3 times during the day just to note the label you are giving your emotions about stress and think about how you can shift this mindset to something that supports you and your health more.

Below is a great video from Kelly McGonigal about how making stress your friend can be truly beneficial

Managing Stress

Yes, this is a long video. But...

Here you can quickly learn some tricks to help you manage your stress that will have a major impact on you and your performance.

• Get 7-9 hours of sleep a night and make this a priority

• Book time in your calendar for firefighting 3 times a week

• Breathe - use the techniques in the video "Regaining your composure" to learn these

• What meetings can be done over the phone rather than via video conference or face-to-face

• Book a 20min walk at lunchtime most days

• Move for 5 minutes every hour to combat the impact of sitting

• When travelling use natural light early in the day to help reset your body clock

• Try meditation - there are hundreds of apps or you can just set a timer on your clock for 15-20 minutes and practice the breathing techniques we recommend

Decision making

Do you know how you make decisions?

If you cannot articulate this clearly how can you build trust in others in your decision-making process?

Define what risk means to you

How do you define risk?

Spend some time considering what you view as a risk and also what you don't. Use the worksheet to help you articulate your definition of risk.

Measure your risk tolerance

Your team's definition of risk

Use the worksheet in the lesson above with your team to start to understand their definitions of risk and where are there misunderstandings or misalignments.

Setting your boundaries

Boundaries

Setting boundaries is never easy, but it is critically important to your well-being, your success and the resilience and adaptability you have as a leader.

Only You Can Do

How ruthless are you with your To Do list?

Regaining composure

Use your breath

We all lose our cool every so often, or we get close to it. Simple breathing techniques are a powerful way to regain our composure as a leader.

Take control of your calendar

Who is in control?

Who is actually in control of your time? If you do not control and manage your calendar effectively then it is not you...

How to lead others

Leading others

There is a big difference between a boss and a leader who focuses on gaining followers. This course will help you understand how to gain followers and ensure that your people feel appreciated and valued.

The juicy topic of Trust

Ask yourself and answer these questions.

Use the download to support your reflection

• What does trust mean to you?

• What are the conditions around trust?

• When is trust unconditional?

• How can your trust be broken?

• What are the behaviours, skills or capabilities that build trust in you?

• What are the skills, behaviours and capabilities that you really want to role model to others to build trust as well?

What is communication?

How do you define communication? What does it mean to you?

The power of a story

Stories make you:

• Memorable

• Build your brand

• Drive Action

• Give Context

• Share the Bigger Picture

How to build stories

How do you want people to feel?

Use the image below to help you identify emotions you want to create in others. This image is available for download with this lesson as well.

Audience Planning

As a leader, you will spend your time communicating with audiences of different sizes. How do you plan for a 1:1 differently from a large conference keynote? Learn some tips here and remember what we all learnt at school; beginning, middle and end.

Great leaders ask great questions

Your ability to use questions directly impacts your ability to lead successfully. So shifting your mindset from telling to questioning instantly improves your impact.

Learn about different question types

What type of questions do you know? What type of questions do you use and how can you use questions more effectively?

Use the download to build your knowledge of question types

Convincing people is often touted as the role of a leader but it is just another word for change, so we need to think about our language and how we restrain from pushing people who may not want to be pushed.

Do you feel empowered?

What does feeling empowered allow you to do? When do you not feel empowered? Gaining awareness of your own empowerment will help you build this sense in others.

Giving others power

Actively empowering people also helps you understand what blockers might be in the way of them excelling in their roles.

Do you know all your strengths?

There are lots of different assessments available for you to determine your strengths, we even have one ourselves. But if you don't have access to these resources, what can you do to assess your strengths and those of your team?

Make sure you celebrate the small things

Creating a habit of celebration makes people feel valued and appreciated but it takes effort to create this habit to begin with as we are so used to just celebrating at set times of the year.

Starting to own your role allows you to relax into the part of a leader and shift your focus externally and strategically.

The Questions to answer before you start a transformational journey:

• Where do we want to go?

• Why do we need to make this journey?

• Where are we starting from?

• What’s the weather forecast?

• How do we get there?

• How long have we got?

• What baggage do we have?

• What is our plan?

• How will we track and evaluate change and impact?

Internal Customer

Use the worksheet to identify your internal customers and deepen your understanding of how you can work highly effectively together.

Do you know your top customer?

Can you reel them off by heart? If not then you have some work to do.

List your top competitors as well as any new players so that you can start to differentiate yourselves effectively now and in the future.

Stakeholder Mapping

This exercise helps you to think through where you invest your time. When you do this exercise think through three categories

1. People whose support is critical to your success in your business life

2. People whose support is critical to your success in your personal life

3. Yourself (this sounds odd but if you are not investing time and effort in yourself you will fail)

Questions to answer

• Who are the key people for me in each of those categories?

• What are their goals?

• What drives them?

• What do they want from me?

• What do I want from them?

• How often do I need to interact with them? How much time do I have for them?

Download the Stakeholder Mapping Tool.

What do people say when you are not in the room?

This is the basis of your reputation and your influence on your stakeholders.

Common sense is not always common practice, so revisit how to build a plan to make sure you have not missed any steps.

Assessing the skills of your people is vital but you must be assessing against your long-term goals as well as what is needed now.

Congratulations!

You have reached the end of module 2. Spend some time consolidating and practising your new skills before diving into Module 3.

Congratulations

I don't say that lightly. I know how hard it is as a leader to find time to develop yourself. So far you have gone through over 65 lessons.

If you want additional support, please feel free to get in contact with us and book some one-to-one coaching. There is a very special price that we offer to people who are going through this course because we know how difficult some of these changes can be, but also how tough the role of a leader really is.

And if you ever need us, feel free to contact us either in the comments below or at info@defyexpectations.co.uk.

Mastering self is all about discipline and consistency even when it gets tough.

Answer these questions below to determine what makes you feel safe:

• What makes us feel safe?

• When do you feel safe?

• What behaviours make you feel unsafe?

• What behaviours make you feel safe?

How can you use the four roles of a leader to ensure that you are achieving what needs to be done but in a way that is consistent with the leadership style that you have chosen?

Becoming present

Simple techniques like feeling your toes and letting your weight sink into the chair can bring you back to the moment when your brain has disappeared onto a different topic or a meeting in the future.

Open and Honest

This is something that we all strive to be but how do we manage that as a leader? No one said a leader's job was easy and this is a tough balance to manage.

This is an important distinction to remember, just because someone doesn't feel safe, doesn't mean they don't trust you and visa versa.

Please download and complete the activity to help you identify 5 behaviours or responses that you want to change. Once you have this list spend a week or 2 looking to identify the cue/trigger that causes this response and the reward you get from the behaviour. The cue or reward may not be initially obvious so reflect back on the situation. What were you feeling before the response and how did you feel afterwards?

Download the worksheet to start building your plan to change your habits.

Blindspots - we all have them

But being aware of them is the biggest hurdle. Blindspots are called blindspots for a reason, deepening your self-awareness gives you insight into what might be holding you back.

No one's mentioned EQ yet...

No, and for a very good reason.

Have you ever had a bad leader?

Most of us have so we all know the impact that bad leadership has on people and their personal lives.

Learn to embrace conflict as an opportunity to drive creativity and innovation as well as deepen understanding in your organisation.

Adult, Parent, Child

Transactional Analysis gives us a great framework to understand our behaviour and that of others to ensure we have the impact we need. Attached is a chapter from our book Defy Expectations on Transactional Analysis.

For a deeper understanding view the links in the resources section

A special thank you to David Rock for this great framework to help us engage with conflict and change successfully.

Letting go of the outcome

When we start to think about how we want to develop others and coach others, putting on that hat of the coach as one of those four roles of a leader, the first thing we have to do is let go of the outcome.

Difficult conversations are difficult because they are difficult, but how can you prepare to make these more effective and productive?

Grief in the workplace

It is not a regular conversation but one that is critical to have. To dive deeper into this topic, read our blog post in the resources section

The 3 Rs of Leadership

Regulate, Relate, Reason

Avoid being a broken record

Do you ever find you are repeating yourself? Use a structured approach to delivering key development points to increase your impact but remember to Regulate, Relate and Reason first!

Thanks to Ali Abdaal for the image in the resources section

Elements of Safety

• Admit

• Learn

• Share

Elements of Trust

• Positive relationships

• Good judgment

• Consistency

Sometimes it feels that people don't want to listen

That can be the case, resist from trying to change someone and see what happens.

How can you get SMARTer with your expectation setting?

Truly mastering your role allows you to step back further and take a step closer to that Picture of Success that you defined in Module 1

PESTEL

Structure can give you insight.

Watch this video before you dive into doing your PESTEL research

Spend time looking at the horizon, it is part of the role of leader to know what is coming!

Activity:

Spend 15 minutes 3 times a week talk to and listening to people you would not normally interact with across your organisation.

Download the worksheet and spend time planning what skills you are going to need in the future. This can also be done as a team exercise to use as many perspectives as possible.

Adopt the mantra:

"What's in it for the customer? What value are we giving to our customers?"

Starting to step back as a leader

Download the worksheet and start identifying 3-4 ways that you can push yourself outside your comfort zone so you can step back from your team and trust that they can do the role you have developed them to do.

What do you need to do to create an organisation that is fit for purpose?

Congratulations!

You have made it to the end of this course. You are now on the path to gaining mastery in leadership.

You will shortly receive your badge and certificate and an email with some suggested next steps.