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Management & professional skills
Lead, decide, cooperate
Courses for managers, project leaders and any professional whose performance depends as much on their stance and their ability to cooperate as on their technical expertise.
Context
Technical excellence does not make a manager
In most organisations, people reach management through technical excellence. Yet leading a team calls on competences of a different nature: stating an expectation, arbitrating, delivering difficult feedback, carrying a decision one did not make, sustaining engagement over time.
These competences can be learned, but not through lectures. They are acquired through practice, feedback and repetition in conditions close to the real thing. That principle governs the design of every programme in this field.
Our courses serve newly appointed managers as much as experienced leaders facing a change of scope, context or team.
Learning objectives
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- State clear expectations and measurable objectives to their team
- Conduct the everyday management conversations: briefing, review, correction, appraisal
- Adapt their stance and communication style to the situation and the person in front of them
- Identify the sources of tension and address a conflict before it escalates
- Structure, plan and steer a project, from scoping note to closing review
- Run a useful meeting and secure decisions that are actually applied
- Delegate in a way that secures the outcome and builds the individual's autonomy
- Support their team through a change of organisation or method
Who it is for
- Newly appointed managers and staff taking up a leadership role
- Experienced managers facing a new scope or a reorganisation
- Project leaders and cross-functional team leads without line authority
- Middle managers in companies, institutions and public authorities
- Professionals seeking to strengthen their communication and personal effectiveness
Prerequisites
Experience of managing or leading a project, however recent, is recommended for the advanced modules. The foundation modules require no prior experience.
Programme
The modules that make up this field
The modules below combine into short courses of one to three days, or into longer pathways. The final programme is agreed with you at the scoping stage.
Taking up a management role
Establishing legitimacy, setting out a working framework, conducting the first conversations and avoiding the classic mistakes of the first hundred days.
Team management fundamentals
Setting objectives, organising work, monitoring activity, recognising performance and correcting course. The basic management acts and how to carry them out.
Professional communication and stance
Active listening, reformulation, assertiveness, communicating a difficult decision, and adapting register to the person and the context.
Conducting management conversations
Briefing, review, correction, annual appraisal and return-to-work conversations: structure, preparation, delivery and written follow-up.
Handling tension and conflict
Spotting early signals, distinguishing disagreement from conflict, conducting a simple mediation and re-establishing shared rules of working.
Cross-functional management and cooperation
Securing commitment without line authority, negotiating resources, reconciling priorities across departments and managing interfaces.
Project management
Scoping note, work breakdown, effort estimation, scheduling, risk management, steering through a dashboard and project closure.
Running meetings and speaking in public
Preparing, framing and closing a productive meeting; structuring a spoken intervention and holding an argument in front of an audience.
Personal effectiveness
Prioritisation, time and workload management, handling information flow, personal organisation and protecting the capacity to concentrate.
Supporting change
Understanding the mechanics of resistance, building an internal communication plan and guiding teams through an organisational transition.
Key strengths
Your situations, not textbook cases
Role plays are built from the real situations participants bring at the scoping stage. Transfer is immediate.
Training, not lecturing
Most of the time is spent practising: role play, simulated conversations, analysis of practice and structured feedback.
An action plan that can be held to
Each participant commits to two or three dated actions, shared with their own line manager if the sponsor wishes.
Delivery
How the course runs
Each day alternates short sequences of structured input with periods of practice. The cases worked on are drawn from the real environment of the participants. Materials are issued in digital form and remain available after the course.
- Structured methodological input, illustrated with examples from the field
- Case studies and practical exercises built around your context
- Role play, drills and individual feedback
- Sub-group work and comparison of practice
- A written personal action plan at the end of the pathway
| Indicative duration | From 1 day (7 hours) for an awareness session to 6 days (42 hours) for a full management pathway |
|---|---|
| Delivery modes | Face to face · virtual classroom · blended |
| Formats | Open enrolment · in-company · bespoke |
| Languages | French · English |
| Group size | Small group; maximum headcount stated on the quotation |
| Access lead time | Initial response within 72 working hours; around 4 weeks between approval of the quotation and the start of an in-company course |
| Fee | On quotation — per participant for open enrolment, flat fee per group for in-company |
Assessment and recognition
- Placement
- A placement test is sent before the start of the course.
- Assessment of learning
- Formative assessment during the session (quizzes, practical cases, role play) and summative assessment at the end of the pathway.
- Satisfaction
- Immediate review at the end of the session, then a follow-up review some months later.
- Recognition
- A certificate of completion and an end-of-training attestation stating the objectives and the results of the assessment of learning.
- Accessibility
- The course can be adapted for participants with disabilities. Contact our disability adviser in advance; the access lead time is then reviewed with you.
Frequently asked questions
Our managers are very experienced. Is the course still relevant?
Yes, provided the level is adjusted. For an experienced audience we favour analysis of practice and work on genuinely complex situations they have lived through, rather than foundation content. The placement test and the scoping interview exist precisely to calibrate that level.
Can several modules be combined into one pathway?
That is the format we recommend. A cycle of four to six days spread over three or four months, with work between sessions, produces markedly better retention than a course compressed into two consecutive days.
Do you support managers after the course?
We offer group follow-up sessions online at one and three months, focused on the difficulties encountered in implementing the action plan. This is optional and appears separately on the quotation.
Interested in this field?
Tell us the number of participants, their level and your scheduling constraints. We will send you a detailed proposal.