Lead Teams

This learning series is designed to help learners leverage their leadership style in bringing people together to advance organizational objectives. Courses support leaders in developing skills to engage diverse perspectives, enhance creativity, and embed strategy in the day-to-day work of the team. Learners will gain tools and techniques for co-creating a compelling, shared identity for teams and projects, applying systemic and appreciative mindsets, and making group decisions and implementing plans. Learning outcomes support several of UVic’s competencies and Strategic Plan priorities.

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Lead Teams

Lead Team Series Snapshot (6 core courses):

Lead Change: Plan for and lead your employees through change.

Strategic Planning: Lead your team through a collaborative strategic planning process.

Rethinking Service as a Leader: Create a service culture, including systems and processes to support it.

Build Teams that Flourish: Build great teams around purpose, structures and relationships focusing on the strengths and diversity of employees.

Facilitate Collaboration: Discover facilitation techniques to bring diverse perspectives together around either common or complex challenges.

Systems Thinking: Think more strategically by seeing the patterns and relationships in complex organizational systems.

Two electives: Select two electives (3.5 hours of learning each) from the list or submit an alternative for consideration.

Learning Themes

  • Connecting your leadership style to the influence you have on your team and its development
  • Recognizing your role as the champion for organizational identity (vision, mission, values, purpose, culture) and clearly connecting this to the day to day work of your team
  • Planning, creating space for, and hosting productive dialogue in service of collaborative change
  • Leveraging the wisdom of diverse perspectives in both decision making and implementation
  • Selecting and applying the appropriate tools in developing and operationalizing strategy

Intended Audience

This content is specifically designed for UVic employees who lead teams or provide oversight and influence on project initiatives, committees, or service areas. Those with personal and professional development goals pertaining to team leadership, project leadership, change management and strategic planning, may have a particular interest.

Detailed Course Descriptions

Lead Change: Plan for and lead your employees through change.

Organizational change is no longer a linear one-time event. Multiple changes of varying size, scope, and impact on employees happen simultaneously. As our world and our organizations become more complex, leading people through change is a primary function in any leadership role.

You will learn how to assess individual team and organizational needs along three change frames, and how to apply tools and communication strategies to help your change initiative succeed. We'll discuss how you can support your team through the emotional sides of change and go over some practical ways you can make the technical sides of change happen. By the end of the session, you will be able to align your change initiatives to organizational strategy, assess employee readiness for the change and create your own plan for a successful change process.

Learning Objectives

  • Describe the three frames of change and how they influence experiences of individuals moving through change
  • Practice applying models and tools in each of the three frames to plan for change initiatives
  • Apply the concepts in a change cycle to engage, support and communicate with your team through change
  • Discuss our lived experience as leaders of holding uncertainty through change

Strategic Planning: Lead your team through a collaborative strategic planning process.

The words “strategic planning” can mean different things to different people, and at UVic we have a Strategic Framework, so how should leaders develop a strategic plan for their department? We will consider different models of strategic planning and identify elements that apply to your departmental planning process at UVic.

This course will help you reframe your thinking about strategic planning away from a traditional corporate model towards a more collaborative approach where the process of stakeholder engagement and inclusive decision making provides as much value as the resulting plan itself. You will learn a four step model to develop a departmental strategic plan, including tools and techniques to engage your team and other stakeholders in context scanning, future forecasting, prioritization and decision making to create a plan that works for you, your department and UVic.

Learning Objectives

  • Review various models of strategic planning and identify those that apply to the Uvic context
  • Apply a four step model to your own strategic planning process
  • Explore a variety of tools and techniques for context scanning, forecasting and prioritization that you can use to engage your stakeholders in the process

Rethinking Service as a Leader: Create a service culture, including systems and processes to support it.

Our approach to service often evolves over time, without oversight or intention to address the changing needs and expectations of students, employees or community members. This course will help you reimagine service from the perspective of those who access the services of your unit. The course will help you develop a service vision and philosophy, embed that vision into the service ecosystem, and evaluate the effectiveness of services. You will explore how to engage others in service design with a focus on how to use an equity centred lens to improve outcomes. 

Learning Objectives

  • Increase awareness of how using a people-centred service design and evaluation creates a better experience for all users
  • Engage diverse perspectives to better understand how your services are experienced by internal and external stakeholders and to address systemic barriers and unconscious bias
  • Re-imagine your area’s service vision and philosophy of service to create a culture that supports the university and your department’s strategic objectives
  • Support employees with the guidance, support and coaching they need to realize your service philosophy and respond appropriately to service issues

Build Teams that Flourish: Build great teams around purpose, structures and relationships focusing on the strengths and diversity of employees.

Leaders in any organization want to be able to build and develop an engaged team, one where people are excited to be at work and are working well together. But how do you do that? And what tools can you use to help your team get there?

In this workshop, we'll talk about what an engaged team looks like and give you concrete strategies that you can implement with your team to help them perform well together. We will discuss team relationships; the evolution of teams and what teams need at different stages of their development from their leader. You'll have a chance to share with your peers the successful team development strategies you've used as well as gain insights from others as to how you can be even more effective. You'll learn about the elements necessary to create a high-performing team and begin work on a team development plan to put into action after the session.

Learning Objectives

  • Draw insights from several models about the elements of healthy, high performing and highly engaged teams
  • Apply tools, skills, and approaches to build and maintain thriving teams
  • Create a team development plan to implement in your work setting

Facilitate Collaboration: Discover facilitation techniques to bring diverse perspectives together around either common or complex challenges.

Collaboration is an integral part of the work we do at UVic and many of us collaborate successfully with others on an individual basis every day. However, when groups gather to work together toward a common goal, things sometimes get a bit more complex. Even a group of motivated people who are keen to work together could use the support of someone with facilitation skills to successfully guide them through a collaboration experience.

In this course, you will begin to gain facilitation skills to support group collaboration for small to large initiatives, whether they are “one-off” meetings or projects that take place over time. You will explore the context of collaboration and how to intentionally design and plan activities for collaborative meetings. A particular focus is placed on facilitating collaboration when you are part of the group who needs to collaborate (i.e. non-neutral facilitation). You will learn about asking powerful questions, techniques that you can use to balance personalities in the room and how to build an agenda of methods that will allow groups to think both divergently and convergently at appropriate times. Leave this workshop with a full "toolbox" of methods you can use to help any group work together in meaningful - and fun! - ways.

Learning Objectives

  • Describe key elements of the context and steps toward successful collaboration
  • Discuss planning and design approaches that lead to effective group collaboration and decision-making
  • Identify a number of facilitation methods which encourage input from diverse perspectives

Systems Thinking: Think more strategically by seeing the patterns and relationships in complex organizational systems. 

Systems thinking is the ability to step back and see any system as holistic, complex, and interconnected so you can anticipate and look for consequences of actions in different parts of the system over time. This course will help leaders make sense of the complex challenges you face, and adopt a systems thinking approach that will lead to better decision making when outcomes may not be clear or obvious. We will explore systems thinking models that help leaders to “see the system” in which they work and identify leverage points for positive change. In a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) systems thinkers realize it is not always possible to define clear outcomes up front and are comfortable leading stakeholders through a collaborative process that allows solutions to emerge over time.

Learning Objectives

  • Explain how our current organizational context at UVic is well suited to a systems thinking approach
  • Develop confidence in leading in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) situations
  • Apply system thinking tools and frameworks to navigate seemingly contradictory perspectives and develop solutions that involve and benefit system stakeholders

Lead Teams Electives

Choose two electives (3.5 hours of learning each) from the list below or submit an alternative for consideration.

  • Any course from the 'Manage People' Learning Series
  • Hold Difficult Conversations
  • Lumina Leader
  • A Liberating Structures Workshop
  • Cultural Intelligence in the Workplace
  • Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
  • Courses from the VPAC ALI or Joint Leadership programs like Let’s Talk About Leadership.