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Foundations of Leadership

Module 1

Preparation for Module 1

• Think about someone you know personally whom you admire as a leader but who you have not been managed by. This might be in a work context or in your personal life, someone senior, a peer or even someone junior to you. Prepare a 1 minute presentation about them, that you will give on the first day of the module, without slides: “A leader I admire and why”

• Take some time to review and reflect on the results of your Leadership Profile, and the Development Goals that you have begun to set for yourself from the coaching session on your Profile Results. You will be spending some time refining these in this Module.

• Module 1 is designed around the two Foundation Elements of the Vital Leader Framework, Individuality and Insight. These are explored in Chapters 1 and 2 of the book, The Vital Leader, which you can download as a PDF (link to download here). We will be not be working through the chapters explicitly in the session, but you can read them for further stimulus or thinking around these two key elements

Following Module 1

There are several things outlined below for you to do in the time between Modules 1 and 2 to continue your FOL Development Journey.

Please also visit the Module 2page on this Portal for specific preparation and to watch the video mentioned below.

And for the two pairs who have the Leadership Briefs for Initiate and Involve, you will be running your sessions in Module 2 so please be prepared to do so.

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Follow on actions

  • Meet with your Line Manager to share your personal learning insights and your action plan, and be specific about support you want from them. We recommend you book a time to see them just for this conversation, not as part of any operational updates you may have with them. In that meeting you could also explore the next point together…
  • Identify a business challenge to work on in the next module.We will be exploring the Leadership Capabilities of Initiate and Involve, so look for a real challenge, project or workstream that is either current or imminent for you to lead on, where you need to initiate and/or involve people. You will get to work on this in several ways in the sessions, practicing a number of different leadership tools, so it will be very valuable for you to choose something real as your challenge.
  • Meet up with your Peer Coach to share progress on applying your learnings from the module, and support/challenge one another on how to keep taking opportunities to pursue your development goals. It might well be that now you understand one another and the work contexts you operate in better, you can help each other make those development goals SMARTER. Also remember to send your Peer Coach the selfie video you made at the end of Module 1 (as if you were reporting back in Module 2) – and use this as the basis for checking progress with one another.
  • ‘Do It Now’ cards. Have a look at the Individuality and Insight cards in the pack you were sent – and pick a couple that it would be interesting or stretching to do. Or maybe that are in line with one of your development goals. Don’t spend to long deliberating which to pick – they are called ‘Do It Now’ cards for a reason! At the next module we’ll be interested to hear what value you made for yourself out of playing with the cards.