Public Sector Leader Certificate Program

The PSLCP is designed to strengthen your understanding of your role as a leader who can influence others and create a supportive culture that provides the direction employees need to meet organizational goals, thus strengthening communities.

Pre-Program: Leadership-in-Action Assessment – To help you frame your learning and apply it to your work during and after the PSLCP, you, as well as your direct reports and managers, will be sent and asked to complete Leadership Practices Inventory 360 before attending the program. In this assessment leaders are given a two-part online assessment: The Everything DiSC assessment and the Leadership Behavior section, which asks about how they tend to lead. Meanwhile, raters are given a two-part online assessment as well. They receive the same Leadership Behavior section that the leader takes and the Leadership Requests section that asks which leadership practices they’d like to see the leader exhibit. Following the assessment, leaders will receive a research-validated online assessment with several pages of a 360° leadership profile that will help leaders understand how others see them as well as three personalized strategies for effectiveness

This assessment is completed before you attend the PSLCP and is used throughout Foundations of Business Leadership Program to enhance personal leadership awareness and growth.

The 5-Day Essential Leadership Experience Core Curriculum

The 5 days of core leadership curriculum are held with a cohort group from diverse industries and experiences. This program provides an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning, which we believe is essential for leadership development. The core curriculum is designed to enhance your effectiveness as a leader by developing capabilities in the areas of personal leadership, implementing strategy, effective coaching and mentoring and leading sustainable change.

One-Day: Specific Issues for Those Leading in the Public Sector

The last day of the program includes four highly focused facilitated discussions on specific topics unique to leaders in the public sector. Participants will help explore the following topics:

• Trends—specific issues currently affecting the public sector leader, including socio-cultural, political, economic and technological trends.
• Ethics—ethical behavior and the impact of high ethical standards while leading in the public sector.
• External Communications with the Media—how to work effectively with the media as well as understanding marketing public sector organizations and navigating through political arena inherent in the public sector.
• Human Resources—understanding labor relations, legal issues and implications

The Public Sector Leader Certificate Program is designed for leaders in law enforcement, public safety and city management seeking to provide their leaders with the knowledge, skills and tools required to successfully lead their organizations as well as work together.

• Becoming a better, more effective leader, capable of inspiring, engaging and empowering others to achieve your goals
• Developing a deeper understanding of “who” you are and “how” you are, to determine your true leadership persona and become a more effective leader
• Adapting the elements what makes great leaders to fit your own personal leadership style
• Learning how to leverage your leadership gifts to engage and inspire others, drive organizational change and achieve your goals
• Understanding strategy and its role in your organization
• Mapping your strategy for sustainable progress
• Learning how to engage others to align their efforts with organizational strategy
• Engaging others at a deeper, emotional level to build trust and cooperation
• Applying multiple techniques to influence how others think about you and respond to your requests
• Enhancing your credibility as a leader who can enlist others to achieve your goals
• Understanding different approaches to driving change in crisis and non-crisis situations and which approach best suits your specific challenge
• Engaging emotional commitment to change so that you can drive change, with the critical people and resources committed to success
• Addressing barriers to change up front, or as they arise, to keep the organization moving toward the goal
• Building a culture for change, so that your group, team, or organization becomes more comfortable and able to respond change now and in the future
• Using coaching and mentoring to improve productivity, morale and retention
• Developing and practicing approaches for coaching that fit with your style and situation
• Gaining insights in how to provide constructive feedback

The 5-Day Essential Leadership Experience Core Curriculum

Following the one-day, public-leader-specific day, there will be 5 days of core leadership curriculum held with a cohort group from diverse industries and experiences. This program provides an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning, which we believe is essential for leadership development. The core curriculum is designed to enhance your effectiveness as a leader by developing capabilities in the areas of personal leadership, implementing strategy, influencing others, effective coaching and mentoring and leading sustainable change.

Foundations of Business Leadership

To be the kind of leader who can engage and inspire others, leaders need to have a deep understanding of how they are, who they are and where they want to be. Foundations of Business Leadership is a 2.5 day program designed to provide leaders with an understanding of their unique leadership gifts and how they can effectively apply them to achieve their vision, mission and goals. This program helps leaders better understand who they are as leaders and how they can reach their full leadership potential.  Each individual will learn about their own unique leadership gifts and talents and how they might best leverage them.  To begin this journey of personal discovery, each participant is given an in-depth leadership assessment before attending the program. This provides a personal lens for understanding and applying program concepts.  Throughout the Foundations of Business Leadership experience, participants will discover how great leaders are and identify relevant behaviors and styles that fit with who they are and how they are.  Participants attain insights from this transforming  leadership journey on their way to becoming a more effective leader.

Making Strategy Accessible and Relevant

Making Strategy Accessible and Relevant will help you communicate strategy to all levels in your group in a way that makes sense and guides group and individual priorities and work. Too many organizations relegate strategic conversations to once-a-year planning workshops. There’s a better way to get people aligned to where you are going. Explore ways to create strategic conversations, develop a process to cascade strategy to front-line workers and learn tested approaches for using measures to communicate strategy and assess performance against long-term goals.

Influencing Without Authority
The ability to be a leader does not depend upon your role, title or level in the organization.  Leadership is more about influence. Leadership is about behaving in ways that influence the feelings, thoughts and actions of others. In a world of multi-functional teams, globalization and flatter organizational structure, what it means to be a leader is shifting. You simply can’t rely on a position of power to make demands; rather you need the ability to influence others to help you achieve your goals. Influencing Without Authority will teach you how to engage others, manage interactions and best of all, shape outcomes enabling you to become a more effective manager and leader.

Leading Sustainable Change

Many people believe most professionals are “resistant to change.” According to research on leading change, people often recognize the need for change; they just do not want themselves to be changed. Implementing change is often more challenging than leaders anticipate—because people, even the seemingly most adaptable people, resist being changed by others. Leading Sustainable Change is a half-day program that can help leaders work through organizational resistance by creating a shared vision of the future that connects to each individual’s core values and desires. Leading Sustainable Change helps leaders engage and inspire others to be part of the change process and feel ownership for success. In this hands-on facilitated program, leaders will work on addressing the challenges they face with their own change initiatives. They will analyze the current climate for change in their own group, team or organization and determine the best approach for moving the group forward.

Coaching and Mentoring for Performance Excellence

In today’s resource constrained environment, it is more important than ever that people have the right skills, knowledge and opportunities to contribute to their fullest potential. And rather than putting pressure on the bottom line, coaching and mentoring can improve profitability, because people that have been coached and mentored effectively are more likely to grow, succeed and achieve results. Coaching and Mentoring for Performance Excellence helps leaders develop the essential skills needed to achieve results through others and make a difference in the organization. Videos and role plays provide an opportunity to see constructive and ineffective coaching sessions. Participants discuss real-world scenarios that are directly related to coaching and mentoring skills; obtain tools used by successful coaches and mentors; and begin to build skills they can take back and apply with their group and their specific situation, so that the entire group or organization is able to perform at a higher level.

One-Day: Specific Issues for Those Leading in the Public Sector

The first day of the program includes four highly focused discussions and training on specific topics unique to leaders in the public sector. Participants will help explore the following topics:

• Trends—specific issues currently affecting the public sector leader, including socio-cultural, political, economic and technological trends.
• Ethics—ethical behavior and the impact of high ethical standards while leading in the public sector.
• External Communications with the Media—how to work effectively with the media as well as understanding marketing public sector organizations and navigating through political arena inherent in the public sector.
• Human Resources—understanding labor relations, legal issues and implications.