Leadership Skills for New Leaders

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To run leadership programmes for technically focused professionals can be a massive challenge in itself. To run these programmes for an audience in a different country where English will be the second language presents another level of complexity. This was the challenge we faced when one of our clients wanted us to provide a programme we had run for them in Yorkshire for their team in Ukraine.

The project involved a lot of careful planning and consultation with the team in Yorkshire and with the team in Kharkiv. The group were new to their leadership roles and wanted to learn more about how to motivate, support and encourage their teams. They also recognised that they needed to be more assertive when dealing with performance issues.

Although we usually prefer to run a series of short workshops with time to reflect on the topics and activities to do outside of the group the logistics of travel made this impossible so we had to accept the need to deliver the workshops as a block of three days. We knew this would make it challenging for the learners to maintain their concentration particularly as the course was not in their first language. To prepare for this challenge the following actions were taken:

● The materials which I had written for the team in the UK all had to be adapted to ensure that the language was really clear. This meant keeping sentences short and avoiding the passive voice

● Maintaining concentration can be difficult and so it was helpful to have designed lots of opportunities for participation. The reactions to this style was really positive, the participants were used to being lectured at and enjoyed the different approach so much that they gave guided tours of the training room to their colleagues!

● Although we used English in the main sessions, when individuals were working in small groups they spoke in their first language which meant that I had to rely on observing body language and listening to the tone of the conversation to tell me if there was a problem.

● When explaining concepts to groups I realised how many idioms I used. These do not translate so I had to think really carefully about other ways of explaining ideas.

● We focused throughout on developing a leadership toolkit and ensured a high level of practicality; this was particularly helpful for a group of young leaders in an emerging democracy where they are keen to develop more flexible leadership styles.