Leading Under Pressure

Courses Syllabus

Introduction

This highly participative course will help you to develop your leadership skills to lead others in times of pressure, stress and crisis. You will become more aware of your strengths and limitations when you experience workplace pressure. In this course you will obtain the latest insights into what make a leader able to manage themselves and others during times of pressure and stress.

This course covers the best practices and the proven way of successfully dealing with a crisis. Delegates will gain tangible results with up-to-date case studies and exercises to reinforce key learning points for immediate implementation at their workplaces. This course will ensure you do not make the same mistakes of those other Crisis Managers.

This course will feature:

• Leadership Skills for Handling Pressure & Stress
• Leading with Confidence During Challenging Times
• Best practice advise drawing on the expertise of crisis researchers, analysts and practitioners
• Getting the maximum from emergency responders and crisis management teams
• How to avoid mis-management and so make a bad situation worse

Objectives

• Develop leadership skills for handling pressure
• Explain how  different personality styles respond to stress and pressure
• Acquire an in-depth knowledge of the key aspects of Strategic Crisis Management
• Develop strategies so ensuring you and your organisation responds efficiently and effectively
• Understand the five deadly leadership behaviours and six winning strategies in a crisis

Contents

Module 1
Leadership Excellence in Handling Pressure & Stress Day One

Personal Leadership Skills for Handling Pressure & Stress

• Stress and its effects on the body, mind and spirit
• Holistic response to stress
• Relationship between mind and body
• Personality styles and response to stress
• Understanding Introvert and Extravert responses to stress
• Turning stressful challenges into opportunities

Day Two

Enhancing Communication Skills in Times of Stress

• Passive & aggressive responses
• Assertive communication during stressful times
• Managing conflicts during times of stress
• Giving and receiving criticisms during stressful moments
• Resolving conflicts constructively during times of pressure
• Creative solutions in times of stress

Day Three

Leading with Confidence during Challenging Times

• Coping with sudden change
• Leading others during sudden changes
• Recognizing the symptoms of short term and long term effects of stress
• Motivating yourself and others under pressure
• Building confidence during stressful times
• Leading others with confidence

Day Four

Improving Leadership Effectiveness in Managing Crisis

• Crisis management skills
• Recognizing opportunities for change in a crisis
• Helping the team look for creative opportunities
• Practicing creative leadership in facing a crisis
• Removing blocks to creative solutions in a crisis
• Creative leadership effectiveness

Day Five

Developing & Training Your Team to Handle Pressure, Stress & Crisis

• Training and developing employees to handle stress and pressure
• Stress handling techniques for you and your employees
• Helping the team to see the positive side of change in the workplace
• Implementing creative problem solving skills for your team when facing crisis
• Enhancing team effectiveness during stress
• Developing a personal action plan

Module 2
Strategic Crisis Management Day Six

What should be in place before the event?

• Understanding Crisis Management and how to manage a Crisis
• Consider the complete range of risks facing businesses in the 21^st century
• Crisis Managers – Roles & Responsibilities – manage the issue before it becomes a Crisis
• Who else inside and outside the organisation should be involved?
• Five deadly Leadership behaviours & Six winning strategies
• Understanding ‘denial-curve’ and ‘group-think’ syndromes

Day Seven

Pre-planning, who and what else should be considered?

• Case Studies, why some companies fail and others survive?
• Who owns the mitigation process?
• Developing and Implementing Emergency Plans
• Crisis Management and Communications. Emergency Centre/s
• Developing and implementing a Business Continuity Management (BCM) strategy
• Business Impact Analysis. Case Study and Workshop

Day Eight

Dealing with a crisis – the ‘communications’ perspective

• Command and Control Issues. Operational, Tactical and Strategic
• On Scene Crisis Management, essential elements for success
• Reputation Management – Managing the Media.
• Organising a Press Conference & step by step guidance on how to conduct TV interviews
• BP Press Conferences – What went wrong?
• Exercise: Crisis Communications Strategy

Day Nine

Incident Management & Aftermath

• Alerting and Warning. Case Studies. What can go right and what can go wrong
• Corporate Case Study – BP Texas 2005; BP Alaska 2006; BP Gulf of Mexico 2010.
• Major Incident Simulation – Role Playing Workshop
• Potential Psychological & Welfare problems in Crisis Management
• How to improve staff morale and confidence in the process
• Questionnaire, are your batteries in good condition?

Day Ten

Essential post incident actions

• Exercises: a programme of learning and of validating plans and procedures;
• How to get advantageous results from an exercise
• Post Incident evaluations, de-briefing skills – managing the de-briefs – hot and cold
• Critique report writing, executive summaries and recommendations
• Closing the loop. Implementing the recommendations, continuing the process
• 3 disastrous Case Studies with the same cause, are we learning from others?