enterprise & systems leadership

Full-day module within the Leadership Pathway, for leaders who need to lead across organisational boundaries - partner organisations, other services, delivery partners - where they don't hold direct authority.

Focused on building shared purpose and trust with people outside your own chain of command, and turning that into real collaboration rather than competing priorities.

Marie Thake, Associate Trainer at Teamshaper
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Lead - a Teamshaper training module

    • To understand what changes when leading across a boundary, versus leading your own team.

    • To build a shared vision and purpose with partners, grounded in what the people you serve actually need.

    • To build the kind of relationships - frequent, informal, trust-based - that make collaboration possible.

    • To surface and resolve conflict directly, rather than letting it go unaddressed.

    • To shift from competing priorities to joint decisions that benefit the whole system.

  • 09:30 – 09:45
    Welcome and introductions
    Setting the tone for the module, reviewing pre-course themes and expectations.

    09:45 – 10:30
    What is systems leadership?
    Introducing the shift from leading a team to leading across organisational boundaries, where influence - not authority - is the tool.

    10:30 – 11:15
    Shared vision and purpose
    Working from a real cross-boundary challenge, drafting a vision grounded in what the people or service involved actually need.

    11:15 – 11:30
    Break

    11:30 – 12:15
    Building relationships across boundaries
    The case for frequent, informal contact over purely transactional meetings, and where this could happen in your own network.

    12:15 – 13:00
    Surfacing and resolving conflict
    Treating disagreement as a sign of engagement, and practising how to raise a difficult cross-boundary issue directly.

    13:00 – 13:45
    Lunch

    13:45 – 14:30
    From competing to succeeding together
    Shifting from win-lose thinking to joint decisions - shared resourcing, shared budgets - that nudge partners towards collaboration.

    14:30 – 15:15
    Sustaining it over time
    What long-term commitment looks like in a system relationship, and investing before you need it.

    15:15 – 15:30
    Break

    15:30 – 16:00
    Applying it to your own system
    Mapping one real cross-boundary relationship you need to strengthen.

    16:00 – 16:30
    Commitments and close
    Agreeing what you will do differently from tomorrow, and how it connects to the shared standards set at pathway kickoff.