Purposeful, practical, peer-led learning
A social and experimental space in which to rapidly build your confidence to lead and manage others. Expertly guided through our Core Four modules; you'll learn among a cohort of supportive peers, arm yourself with proven practical tools and commit to action together.
Join coming cohorts
All 3.30pm—5.30pm, UK time: 26th June, 10th July, 17th July, 24th July.
All 9.30am—11.30am, UK time: 3rd September, 17th September, 1st October, 15th October
All 15.30pm - 17.30pm, UK time: 9th October, 23rd October, 6th November, 20th November
For people-managers who:
• Are just getting going and want to get it right
• Have been managing for a while, but feel they never covered the core skills
• Have recently been promoted, and are feeling the shift in expectation
• Value continual, action-oriented learning
• Enjoy learning, and sharing among peers
From tactile physical elements direct to your doormat, to collaborative and interactive workshop environments — we've designed a hands-on, lean in learning experience that participants love, and that arms everyone with timely tools to experiment with right away.
The Core Four
The modules you'll collaboratively explore
Raising self-awareness of our strengths and stylistic tendencies is an excellent starting point on the journey towards authentic, effective management. A key concept to grasp is that there's a range of styles available to us, and they'll need to be flexed deliberately across different relational situations. And when we intentionally notice the strengths and preferences of others along the way, we supersize engagement and performance.
From all of the styles available in our toolkit as managers, a coaching approach is arguably the one reached for most frequently in modern, distributed teams. This approach becomes pivotal for combining with other styles, and enabling 'connection before direction'. In this module our focus is on elevating listening skills, and encouraging a bias towards open, curious questioning. Quick wins abound in boosting the autonomy, decision making and confidence in our teams.
Development-minded managers must master (and model) the practice of providing feedback frequently for others, and requesting it effectively for themselves. Encouraging a little-and-often approach that weights towards descriptively noticing what's working well is key, reinforcing a strengths-based emphasis and creating ample opportunities to practice both affiliative and directive leadership styles.
Our work with thousands of managers has revealed the importance of establishing a realistic cadence for the different kinds of performance conversations had with team-members — and with a regular, predictable 1-1 protected in calendars. This kind of conversation 'connects' informal check-ins with fuller performance reviews, and also offers the manager a chance to 'connect' into goals, values, strengths, development and other levers for motivation.
The Programme on a page
Eight transformative weeks
The programme journey
Enable yourself to enable others
Programme principles
Peer-led learning
Participants work and learn among supportive cohorts of peers; contracting around social learning principles, working together in the service of each others' development — and with group accountability baked in.
The action's in-between
Buddies, mini-missions, reflection prompts, transfer tasks and other social touches ensure that everything covered is put into glorious practice, with each new session beginning with a check in on what's changed since last time.
Nudge, nudge. Think, think
Tailored bursts of micro-learning support the live group experiences; served up in brain friendly, bite-size doses between them. The invitation is to continually try and apply new tactics, mindsets and experiments within real team and relational contexts.
Community based, lifelong learning
Participants join our super-active alumni community of practice — continually invited to benefit from a thriving ongoing calendar of coaching circles, live events and digital learning opportunities.
“Unlike any development programme I’ve taken part in before. This felt more like a series of powerful conversations that fundamentally changed how I think about my work and my style as a manager.“
We've enabled thousands of managers at hundreds of partner organisations including: GiffGaff, The Modern House, Universal Records, Koto, Frieze, Cubitts, Shelter, The V&A Museum, Farfetch, Action for Children, Scope, Pip & Nut, The Trainline, Getty Images and many, many more. To learn more about pricing options, or if you've any questions — email hello@ycn.org or call + 44 (0)20 7033 2140.