Help build workshop on „Leadership, Happiness and Project Success“
Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on a new interactive workshop called „Leadership, Happiness and Project Success“. The good news is that a first draft is done. 🙂
Please help build an interactive workshop for you and your projects
The realistic news is that a draft is just a draft is just a draft. This is why I want to reach out to you and ask you for your help refining this workshop for you and your projects. For this purpose please take a few minutes and read the syllabus of the workshop below and post your comments at the end of the page or contact me directly.
I can ensure that I will listen to every one of you and, of course, keep you in the loop.
Leadership, Happiness and Project Success:
Igniting the spirit of success within you, your team and your community
Workshop Summary:
Project success is such an exciting, exhilarating and rewarding experience. Alas, most projects these days still fail. This workshop presents two crucial ingredients for project success: empowering leadership and happiness. It explains and explores why and how leadership can help you grow successful projects by actively accounting for happiness on the individual, group, project and organizational levels. You will learn how to find a clear focus of what you really want to achieve, create a strategy through principle centered leadership, resolve project issues and align your priorities for project success.
This is a highly interactive workshop. This means that throughout the workshop you will have the chance to apply all covered principles in individual and group exercises, thus strengthening your new understandings.
Target Audience:
Individuals who are sincerely interested in finding new and transforming ways to project success. These can be individuals, project managers, project team members, line managers, line organizations, companies or social groups.
Group Size: 5 – 20 people (more can be arranged)
Duration: 2-3 days (shorter or longer duration can be arranged)
Location: There should be sufficient space for the group, i.e., one large room and ideally several smaller rooms for breakouts. Offsite: The best workshop experience can be achieved in an offsite location that allows the integration of outdoor activities into the program.
Preliminary Workshop Agenda
The workshop agenda can be customized to meet the special needs and interests of participants. A sample agenda for a full workshop over 2-3 days may look as follows:
I. Find a clear focus of what you really want to achieve
- Introduction: The project and you
- Project management approaches for project success
- The MVP for project success: Motivation, Vision, Project(s)
- Develop a first MVP for the issue(s) at hand [breakout exercise]
- The happiness advantage
- Build a three-dimensional MVP [breakout exercises]
- 1st dimension: What’s your personal MVP?
- 2nd dimension: What is the MVP of your team?
- 3rd dimension: Develop a compelling project MVP
- Review
II. Create a strategy through principle centered leadership
- Critical factors for project success
- The 5 project leadership principles
- Set up your project for success [breakout exercise]
- Build a prototype [breakout exercise]
- Continuous learning and performance
- Team and community building
- Review
III. Resolve conflicts and align your priorities
- Resolve any and all inner issues, fears and obstacles
- Align your priorities
- Practice holistic leadership
- Review: Align and prioritize your project(s) [optional breakout exercise]
- The meaning of empowering leadership, happiness and project success
- Next steps
- Closing
Hallo – Virtusa ist in D noch ein kleines Beratungshaus von 35 MA mit einem Wachstumsziel auf 80 MA in 2014 – eine Erfolgsstory. Weltweit hat Virtusa an die 7000 MA.
Seit der Gründung im Jahr 2011 (Virtusa Germany) sind die Kollegen aus Family and Friends (meist Ex-SAP) gewonnen worden, nun steht der nächste Schritt mit Differenzierung und externem Recruiting an.
Wäre es möglich, einen Workshop für unser Unternehmen im Rahmen eines Firmentages wahrzunehmen? Mir fällt die Diskrepanz in der Ansprache zwischen Dauer bis zu 5 Tagen und dann ein Workshop von einem halben Tag. DIes ist nicht ganz stimming.
Die Agenda wäre auf die Firma abzustimmen. Ziel sollte es sein, die Kollegen für die Expansion des Unternehmens zu begeistern…
Grüße
\ Gunther Kaiser
Gunther Kaiser
Associate Director
Virtusa Germany GmbH
Nördliche Münchner Str. 16
82031 Grünwald
Mobile: +49 151 55136633
Phone: +49 89-6939912-13
Fax: +49 89-6939912-29
Mail: gkaiser@virtusa.com
Hallo Herr Kaiser,
danke für Ihre Nachricht. Ja, es wäre möglich, den Workshop für Ihre Unternehmenszwecke anzupassen. Alles weitere schlage ich vor per Email zu besprechen.
VG,
Thomas Juli
Thomas, this looks fine to me. I’m not sure about what ‚Resolve any and all inner conflicts, fears and obstacles‘ means, though. Is that a session on conflict resolution techniques?
Elizabeth, regarding ‚Resolve any and all inner conflicts, fears and obstacles‘: The first part of the workshop helps participants find out what they really want to achieve (vision, goals, objectives). The second part addresses the right strategy to achieve their goals. This means that the first two parts help set up a projects for success. However, even given a good foundation and strategy, risks, concerns, challenges, obstacles, doubts can still remain. These could be on the individual, group or organizational levels. The project team has to address them, align their priorities and follow through. Hence, ‚resolving conflicts‘ goes deeper than mere ‚conflict resolution‘. It explains how to whither a potential storm in a project setting and stay true to the vision, project goals and align the strategy accordingly.
Please let me know if this answers your question.
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
thanks for initiating this online workshop.
I’m fine with the agenda and will participate in most topics.
According my online availability I will do my best (in starting vacation…)
Actual I’m focussing on the second block – here I’m very experienced since last 2 years.
When do we start?
Hi Armin,
once I have consolidated all feedback I will post an updated agenda. I also plan to describe in greater detail how this workshop could be conducted by anyone interested. Having said this, the workshop is primarily intended to be offline, e.g. at a client’s site. This could be a business, organization or community.
On the other side, the idea of conducting an online workshop on a given topic is very appealing. Let me think of this. Any suggestions along these lines are very much appreciated.
Viel Spaß im Urlaub,
Thomas
Yes, that answers the question, thank you.
Elizabeth,
I have replaced the term ‚conflicts‘ with ‚issues‘. III.1 now reads ‚Resolve any and all inner issues, fears and obstacles‘. I hope this clarifies the point a bit better.
Thomas
Thank you for your feedback thus far. In addition to updating the workshop summary I have been playing around with a possible subtitle of the workshop. At present there are (at least) 3 options:
1) An interactive workshop for you and your projects
2) Igniting the spirit of success within you, your team and your community
3) Igniting the spirit of success within you, your team and your organization
Which one is most appealing to you and why?
Changes to workshop summary and agenda:
Based on the feedback received thus far I have made the following changes to the summary and agenda:
(1) subtitle: I added a subtitle to the workshop. It reads „Igniting the spirt of success within you, your team and your community“
– Not sure yet, whether or not this subtitle is too long, confusing or choosing the right terms. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
(2) 2nd part of workshop „Create a strategy …“: I will not be proposing a tool set for creating a strategy. Instead the workshop will present critical success factors and leadership principles. On this token I have changed the heading of the second part to „Create a strategy through principle centered leadership“
Have a great weekend,
Thomas
Hallo Thomas,
Hier sind ein paar erste Kommentare von mir:
Hast du für die Breakout-Übungen ein durchgängiges Praxisbeispiel? (Es hört sich in der Beschreibung so an.) Oder wie ist das bspw. mit dem Prototype gemeint?
Für den Subtitle, wie wäre es mit: „Igniting the spirit of happiness within you, your team and your organization“? Denn das Besondere an dem Training für mich ist doch das Ziel, Projekte mit Glück zu verbinden.
Wenn es detaillierter wird mache ich auch gerne weiter mit an Feedback und Vorschlägen zu den Inhalten.
Mit deiner Frage in unserer Konversation nach dem Unterschied zwischen Projektführung (Leadership?) und Projektmanagement hast du mich unvorbereitet getroffen – wenn ich es aber richtig mit Leadership übersetze würden mir da schon deutlich Unterschiede einfallen – bspw. wenn ich mich an Sprenger halte wäre es u. a. der Unterschied zwischen „Verwalten“ (managen) und „gestalten“ (Leadership – also eher das Visionäre, inspirierende, „weck in Ihnen die Sehnsucht nach dem großen weiten Meer“-mäßige…).
Projektmanagement im Alltag ist oft sehr viel Management… aber als Trainer versuche ich z. B., die Begeisterung für gutes PM und Tools etc. rüber zu bringen, den Funken an echtem Interesse überspringen zu lassen, der in mir selbst für diese Themen ist.
Viele Grüße, Thorsten
Hi Thorsten,
(1) Tools
Actually, “tools” may not be the correct terms. I am not proposing tools but present critical success factors and leadership principles. Hence, the wording may have to be changed to: „Create a strategy through principle-centered leadership“ – or – „Create a strategy through principle-centered and holistic leadership“
(2) „Igniting the spirit of happiness within you, your team and your organization“
Interessanter Vorschlag. Wo ich ein Issue sehe ist, dass Happiness eher ein Ergebnis von dem Spirit ist, den ich in diesem Workshop wecken will. Organization – ich hatte diese Diskussion mit Ruth Kürschner, mit der ich einen leicht abgeänderten Workshop entwickel. Ihr gefiel Organization besser als Community. Mir persönlich gefällt Community besser, da es über adminstrative Strukturen hinweg geht.
Hi Thomas… thank you for including me in this discussion. The workshop looks and sounds excellent. There are just a few thoughts I will offer: some of the topics seem a bit vague; for example in the Aligning Priorities Phase: 3.Practice holistic leadership – I think I know where you are going with this, but it might not be as clear to those who are participating as it is to those of us who coach and facilitate. I would say the same with #5. The meaning of empowering leadership, happiness and project success. One other thought I would share is perhaps to clearly show the when, what and how of the ACTION and follow-through that needs to take place after the workshop to manifest the new skills and knowledge from the workshop and create project success through effective leadership which leads to happiness! I hope I have not overstepped in my comments – it really looks great! By the way, I am in the process of creating a ‚Day of Leadership‘ workshop for corporate groups of 25 people or less. Once the draft is complete. may I ask for your thoughts on it as well?
Thank you!
Roxanne
HI Roxanne,
I llke it when you write „create project success through effective leadership which leads to happiness!“ This is exactly what I like to portray. 🙂
Regarding ACTION: This is an interactive workshop and participants are invited to work on the projects of their choice. This includes the exercise of building a prototype of their project or parts of their project. All principles covered should not remain theoretical. They are meant to be practiced.
Part III is reserved to address daily concerns of participants they actually have encountered in the past or think possible to happen in the future. Aligning your priorities is not an ongoing exercises without taking action. The opposite is the case. The workshop will make it clear that you have practice leadership if you want to become a better leader or generally speaking develop leadership.
Please let me know if this answered your questions.
Thomas
Thomas, I would recommend that you include a discussion on the scope, resources (technical and financial) and time. These elements are critical to the successful implementation a project.