Steve Denning, world expert on leadership, innovation, business narrative and organizational ttorytelling

 

 

One-day masterclass
23 May, 2008  London
                            

The Secret Language of Leadership
How leaders inspire action through narrative
and also unveiling:
Creating and Sustaining Hot Spots of Innovation

A masterclass based on the award-winning book
The Secret Language of Leadership
by the masterclass leader and author, Stephen Denning

Did you know? 

  • The Secret Language of Leadership was selected by the Financial Times as #2 in its selection of the "best business books of 2007".
  • It was also selected by the major book distributor, 800_CEO_READ, as "the best book on leadership in 2007."
  • "If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their organisations are doomed." (The Financial Times, August 2007)
  • "Steve Denning is the Warren Buffett of business communication. He sees things others don't and is able to explain them so the rest of us can understand."  (Chip Heath, author of the best-selling book, Made to Stick)
  • "I highly recommend you get it today and read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different kind of day if you do." (Jim Kouzes Co-author of the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge and A Leader's Legacy)

In the morning of this masterclass, you’ll learn the answers to questions that other leadership books and masterclasss leave out:

  • How to communicate effectively at all levels -- to your staff, your colleagues, or your boss, so as to inspire enduring enthusiasm to embrace change
  • Why traditional leadership communication often makes the situation worse
  • How a leadership presentation should be adjusted to deal with particular audiences and situations
  • What you actually say at 9AM on Monday morning when you are facing a cynical group of staff and you are about to announce a disruptive change in their work lives
  • How you inspire excitement in your clients when you introduce new products and services that imply profound changes in the way they go about their work
  • How you accomplish these tasks in seconds, rather than in long, grinding arguments that exhaust your staff and waste time
  • What’s involved in the leadership presence and the body language of leadership
  • How to use the power of narrative to communicate engagingly
  • How to weave together a series of narratives into a compelling presentation.

In the afternoon, you will also learn about Steve Denning's exciting new work on Generating and Sustaining Hot Spots of Innovation.

  • why are some teams, communities, workshops, organizations buzzing with energy and excitement and creativity, while others (even most others) are dull, uncreative and routine?
  • what are the elements of high performance teams or hot spots of innovation?
  • what is the general theory of human groups, whether workgroups, teams, communities, networks and organizations (as well as families and marriages?
  • why don't traditional approaches to building teams can’t generate hot spots of innovation or high performance teams?
  • a simple mnemonic that can be used to diagnose what is wrong with a group
  • a step-by-step guide to creating and sustaining a hot spot of innovation or a high performance team.

During the workshop, participants will work on how to go about energizing a group and sparking its creativity.
By the end of a full workshop, participants will:

  • be inspired, as they realize that they now know how to energize—or re-energize—any human group;
  • have an action plan as how to re-energize and vitalize a group in their experience;
  • have had hands-on practice during the workshop in implementing their plan.

To learn more about the content of Generating and Sustaining Hot Spots of Innovation, click here.

Masterclass Leader
Stephen Denning, best-selling author of The Secret Language of Leadership

Who Should Attend?

  • Senior Leaders, with more than 8 years of management experience
  • Emerging Leaders, with more than 3 years of management experience
  • Team Leaders
  • Any leader who needs to influence diverse audiences with complex or difficult messages

4 Easy Ways to Register
Tel: 0208 785 2700
Fax: 0208 785 9373
Email: events@ark-group.com
Online: www.ark-group.com/events

About Your Facilitator
STEPHEN DENNING has held various management positions in the World Bank, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank. He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on knowledge management and organizational storytelling.  Steve is also a Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Leadership Academy at the University of Maryland. In November 2000, Steve was named as one of the world’s ten “Most Admired.”  In April 2003, Steve was also ranked as one of the world's “Top Two Hundred Business Gurus.”  Steve is an “organisational storyteller extraordinaire” and is the author of several books on organizational storytelling, including The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (Jossey-Bass, April 2005), which was selected in 2005 by the Innovation Book Club as one of the twelve most important books on innovation in the last few years.  Steve's article, "Telling Tales" was published by Harvard Business Review in May 2004.  Steve's newest book, The Secret Language of Leadership, was published in September 2007.  Knowledge Leaders (Teleos).

Masterclass context
Other leadership books and masterclasss suggest that leadership is an issue of inner conviction. Find the leader deep within yourself. Become the person others will want to follow. Discover your strengths. Become emotionally intelligent. Merely through increased self-awareness, self-regulation, and positive modeling, authentic leaders develop authenticity in followers. When you visualise, then you materialise. Be true to yourself and change happens.
The reality is that sustained, enthusiastic change doesn’t occur by osmosis or extrasensory perception. If leaders’ inner commitment to change is to have any effect, they have to communicate it to the people they aspire to lead. True, the leaders’ actions will eventually speak louder than words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has the impact. The right words can have a galvanizing effect, generating enthusiasm, energy, momentum, and more, while the wrong words can undermine the best intentions and kill initiative on the spot -- stone dead.

Why attend this event?
Just think about all of the people in your life who are not currently doing what you might have liked.

Or not acting with the energy and enthusiasm you might have desired.

Imagine if you had the capacity to inspire changes in their behavior so that they were energetically pursuing your worthwhile goals and also inspiring others to do likewise…

What if you knew how to transform difficult, skeptical, cynical hostile listeners into enthusiasts who were ready to champion your worthwhile cause?

What would your world be like if you could instill sustained excitement in the people who work for you?

Imagine if you could induce your boss to see your point of view and get passionately behind the worthwhile things that you want to do?

What would life be like if you could elicit enduring enthusiasm in your kids for the right things in life?

What if you had the capacity to powerfully influence your community, your company, your profession?

What if you knew, not only how to find the leader deep within yourself, but also to activate the leader hidden deep within other people?

In this masterclass, you’ll learn how to develop these capabilities.
 
Why this masterclass is unique
This masterclass shows how to communicate, so as to inspire sustained excitement for change.
You’ve seen leadership books before and you’ve attended leadership masterclasss. You’ve probably invested countless hours seeking to learn how to be a more effective leader. Only to wind up, frustrated by the ordeal, and thinking, where’s the meat?
The masterclass will take you through several main bodies of knowledge and skill development:

Plumbing the meaning of transformational leadership

Discovering the secret language of leadership

Applying where and how to apply what you learn

It’s all about authenticity

Deep listening

A fundamental shift in the way we communicate

The Secret Language of Leadership

“Get it today, read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different kind of day if you do.” (about Steve Deninngs book, upon which this masterclass is based -- Jim Kouzes, author of the best-selling Leadership Challenge)

Do you want tomorrow to be a different kind of day?  If so, enrol for this masterclass today.


AGENDA

8.30 Registration

9.00 am - 12.00 noon: The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative

12 noon - 1 pm: lunch

1.00 pm - 4.30 pm: Creating & Sustaining Hot Spots of Innovation (through narrative)

 
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Steve Denning consults and gives workshops and keynote presentations on topics that include: leadership, innovation, organizational storytelling, business storytelling, springboard storytelling, knowledge management, branding, marketing, values, communication, communities of practice, business performance, collective intelligence, tacit knowledge, business collaboration, knowledge, learning, community, performance improvement, visionary leadership, social potential, institutional community building, and internal communications. You can contact Steve at steve@stevedenning.com

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