Happy Leadership Programme

Would you like to be the type of manager that people want to work for, who enables a highly productive team in a positive and supportive work environment?

In this leadership programme, you will gain personal insight and develop practical leadership and management skills to create a high performing team. You will develop your coaching skills and how to put your people at the heart of what you do. 

You will learn through 12 x 2 hour online sessions, held fortnightly or alternatively, over 4 x 1 day sessions, either online or in the classroom. You will also have self-guided assignments to complete through our Happy Leadership Portal on Fuse, with online resources available to access throughout the programme and beyond.

Course Overview

Prices

  • Standard Price

    £3,240*

  • SME
    Fewer than 250 staff

    £2,700*

  • Public Sector Price

    £1,980*

  • Large Charity
    Over 31+ staff

    £1,740*

  • Small Charity
    Fewer than 30 staff

    £1,500*

  • *Per person, excluding VAT

  • Duration

    12 days

  • Class size

    12 approx.

  • Location

    Interactive online sessions delivered via Zoom. The link is sent to you after booking.

    Classroom

    Public classroom sessions are held at 3rd Floor, 9 Alie Street, London E1 8DE

    Find out more

    Online|Classroom

  • Requirements

    This programme is for anyone with line management responsibility.

    Book now
Course overviewSee course dates

Course Overview

What you will learn

A happy workplace leads to greater productivity and tangible business results. We believe joy at work comes from finding meaning and purpose on your work and knowing that you are utilising your unique talents. Whether you are new to leadership, or an experienced leader, this programme offers you the opportunity to develop your personal insight, ethos, skill set and toolkit. It will also raise your self-awareness so you can truly see the impact you are having on those around you. 

Ultimately this is about you discovering your own unique leadership purpose, and understanding the environment you need to create so others can thrive. 

With ever-increasing competition for talent, you want your team to be a place that people love to be part of.  Creating the right environment, where you can trust your people to do great work, and liberate their natural motivation and creativity, not only leads to great outcomes but is also personally fulfilling for a leader.   

Based upon our own practical experience at Happy and learning from some of the world’s great workplaces (like Google and WL Gore) this programme will enable you to become a leader that people would choose to follow. 

This programme is for anyone with line management responsibility. It is a unique opportunity to self-reflect, change behaviour, and adopt new ways of working. 

I am loving this course. It is so positive, interesting and engaging. Everyone on the course is bonding well thanks to Nicky's techniques and we are all learning to listen, understand and value each others opinion.Julia Smilie, BSE Southern Counties, Oct 2023

Key outcomes

  • Become a credible leader that inspires trust
  • Understand what enables people to work at their best
  • Psychological safe workplaces where people are able to take risks and truly collaborate
  • An inclusive environment that values everyone for their diverse perspectives and talents
  • High performing teams working to their strengths & to a common goal
  • An agile and responsive team working within clear values and principles
  • Greater trust and autonomy for your people
  • High levels of accountability within the team, enabling them to deliver high quality on time
  • A more engaged and motivated team
  • Greater innovation and greater productivity
  • Practical skills that you will be able to transfer to your workplace
  • Raise the level of happiness in your team
These ideas have energised me and my business to make changes that have increased our bottom line and made people more successful and fulfilled at work.Simon Perriton, Chief Executive, Just-IT

In-person classroom version

The course is spread over four months to maximise learning and transformation. This will enable you to apply what you have learned, get support and share in your successes. Regular check-ins will help to motivate you. There are also concise, user-friendly self-study materials, including e-learning modules, videos, blogs and articles. All course materials, and a wealth of further inspiration, will be available throughout the programme and beyond on our social learning platform, Fuse.

This programme can be run at our training centre in central London or at any venue of your choice. Many customers choose to come to us to benefit from the uplifting surroundings, excellent facilities and break from the norm. Being in a new environment can help inspire you to think differently and fully commit the focusing on your development.

Learning via Face to Face Live Online

The learning will be through a combination of interactive workshops delivered live through Zoom, self-guided assignments and complete access to the Happy Leadership Portal of online resources throughout and beyond.  All Zoom sessions will be between 1 and 2 hours long and, include a short break.

Workshop Timetable

You can learn either through 4 x 1 day sessions, held monthly either online or in the classroom, or through 12 x 2 hour online sessions, held fortnightly. You will also have self-guided assignments to complete through our Happy Leadership Portal on Fuse, with online resources available to access throughout the programme and beyond.

We currently have public dates available for the 12 x 2 hour online sessions, held fortnightly, or 4 x 1 day sessions held in the classroom at Happy.

 

The learning will be through a combination of twelve interactive 2-hour workshops delivered live through Zoom, self-guided assignments and complete access to the Happy social learning platform with online resources throughout and beyond. 

The Zoom sessions will be held fortnightly, and you will be working with the same facilitator throughout.  Alongside this you will have complete access to all course materials and further learning through our social learning platform Fuse.  This enables us to really focus on experience, discussion and application in the Zoom sessions while using the online resources will enable you to explore the theory, examples, and videos in your own time and at your own pace. 

We encourage you (and your team - if you book the programme for your organisation) to set aside the same time every week to work on your development during the programme. One week will be a workshop with your facilitator and the alternate weeks self-study. We encourage you to buddy up with another person and in your self-study weeks you can work in pairs (or larger groups) to continue your learning and collaborate with one another online. 

We believe this bite-sized learning over a longer time period creates deep learning, lasting impact through sustained behaviour change, and the chance for long term mutually supportive relationships to be created within the group. 

Our live-on-line programmes have the same interactive style we use face-to-face. You will be actively involved throughout and will have the opportunity to work individually, for personal reflection, in pairs, for deeper discovery and in larger groups for lively debate and challenge. The group will collaborate in real time on shared resources.

Key themes covered over the programme

Pre-programme preparation

  • Complete an online self-reflection questionnaire around your confidence to lead, and your leadership style

Workshop 1: Introducing Leadership

  • The core of an effective culture: why put people at the heart of what you do?
  • Identify who you are as a leader and your leadership attitudes and skills
  • Find a buddy to work with, to support and to hold to account for actions through the programme

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Setting your intent
  • Online questionnaire to identify your communication style

Workshop Two: Communication Styles

  • Understand your communication style, how you may be perceived by others and how to adapt it to work successfully with others
  • The core of an effective culture: why put people at the heart of what you do?

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Be Productive, Not Busy: Discover how to be more productive and less 'busy' by identifying and changing your reflection, prioritising, email and meeting habits.

Workshop 3: Psychological Safety

  • Create Psychological Safety at work to enable high performance
  • Build trust and credibility within your organisation

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Understanding your brain: Introducing your inner chimp

Workshop 4: Emotional Intelligence

  • Develop your Emotional Intelligence through understanding how your brain works

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Working adult to adult — understanding transactional analysis and the effect it has on your relationships and within the workplace
  • How good is your listening?

Workshop 5: Introduction to Coaching

  • Listening to understand rather than be understood: how to do this mindfully with the aim of valuing the other person
  • The core of great leadership: coaching your team to success by empowering them to discover their own solutions
  • Your role as coach and understanding what works and what doesn’t
  • Why, and how, to use TED invitations to develop your coaching skills
  • Practice coaching and being coached

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Case study: one-to-one's in practice
  • The secret to giving great feedback

Workshop 6: One-to-Ones and Feedback

  • Effective 1 to 1's – what are they, why do them, who sets the agenda, what should you discuss
  • Holding team meetings that get everyone to contribute and be heard
  • The benefits and steps to providing positive feedback
  • How to prepare, behave and present yourself assertively when giving feedback

Self-Study

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Introducing conversations that matter

Workshop 7: Conversations That Matter

  • Practise a proven technique to prepare for important situations
  • Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
  • Make it safe to talk about almost anything
  • Be persuasive, not abrasive
  • Improve your professional working relationships through your conversations

Self-Study:

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Complete management behaviour questionnaire
  • Identify the truth about what motivates us
  • Discover the power of Purpose

Workshop 8: Becoming a Multiplier

  • Learn the skills to become a multiplier of your people’s talents and potential

Self-Study:

  • Reflection and application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Discover your top five strengths through a robust on-line questionnaire developed by Gallup & Clifton Strengths
  • Understand your strengths and how well you are currently using them in your role
  • Discover the four domains of leadership strength
  • Review how well you know your team's strengths and how much they are using them in their roles

Workshop 9: Autonomy

  • Who makes the decisions currently and what might you change about this?
  • Enable trust and autonomy, within clear guidelines to create true job ownership
  • Be open and transparent in the information you share — what is off limits to staff?
  • Discover the difference between accountability and responsibility
  • Review your delegation habits and understand the key steps to delegating successfully
  • Identify what stops you delegating and challenge these behaviours
  • Pre-approval — what is it, what are the benefits of it and how to implement it?

Self-Study:

  • Reflection & application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Generate ideas to make your recruitment processes more inclusive

Workshop 10: Recruitment & Induction

  • Discover the key to recruiting the right team members and ensuring their induction is a motivating experience

Self-Study

  • Reflection & application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Leading from afar: discover the benefits and risks of a remote team, tools to help you make connection at a distance and real life examples to inspire you.

Workshop 11: Creating Resilient Teams

  • Build and nurture the resilience of your team
  • Recap on all the elements from the programme that can set your team up for strengths and success
  • Understand the five ways to wellbeing and the practical steps we can take in each area

Self-Study:

  • Reflection & application (individually, with buddies, or with wider cohort if applicable)
  • Prepare a 2 minute presentation on what you have learnt and your personal leadership purpose
  • Complete a second online self-reflection questionnaire around your confidence to lead, and your leadership style now

Workshop 12: Leadership Purpose

  • Identify your leadership purpose and vision for yourself and your team
  • Draw up a personal, practical action plan beyond the programme

We have scheduled the key learning around four days, each one month apart. On these days you should reserve out 10am to 4:30pm this will allow you to join between 2 and 3 interactive workshops and have time to reflect and do the assignments in between.

The learning will be through a combination of interactive workshops delivered live through Zoom, self-guided assignments and complete access to the Happy Leadership Portal of online resources throughout and beyond.  All Zoom sessions will be between 1 and 2 hours long and, include a short break.

We believe this combination of immersing yourself in the content for a whole day and having one month in between will create deep learning and lasting impact. You will create your own action plan each day to help you to implement the key behaviours and activities over the following month.

Key themes

Pre-Programme Preparation

  • Complete an online self-reflection questionnaire around your confidence to lead, and your leadership style 
  • Complete an online questionnaire to identify your communication style

Day 1: You as a Leader

Day one is all about you and your leadership style, it is about how to bring out the best in you and others, whilst being authentic. You will be excited about your role as a leader, have the space and opportunity to self-reflect in order to work successfully with your team. 

  • The core of an effective culture — why put people at the heart of what you do?
  • Identify who you are as a leader and your leadership attitudes and skills
  • Find a buddy to work with, to support, and to hold to account for actions through the programme
  • Create Psychological Safety at Work to enable high performance
  • Build trust and credibility within your organisation
  • Develop your emotional intelligence, through understanding how your brain works
  • Using your pre-programme preparation, understand your communication style, how to adapt it to work successfully with others
  • Introduce the Happy Workplace online portal – to help you build positive habits

eLearning Between Days One and Two

Discover how to be more productive and less 'busy' by identifying and changing your reflection, prioritising, email and meeting habits. 

Day 2: Building Great Working Relationships

Day two is all about learning and applying the tools you need as a leader to help your team feel motivated, empowered and valued. You will achieve this by understanding the benefits of successful 1 to 1's, as well as through a series of practical exercises based around active listening, coaching your people to success and having crucial conversations. 

  • Effective 1 to 1's – what are they, why do them, who sets the agenda, what should you discuss
  • Listening to understand rather than be understood — how to do this mindfully with the aim of valuing the other person
  • The core of great leadership — coaching your team to success by empowering them to discover their own solutions
  • Your role as coach and understanding what works and what doesn't
  • Why, and how, to use TED invitations to develop your coaching skills
  • Practice coaching and being coached
  • The benefits and steps to providing positive feedback
  • How to prepare, behave and present yourself assertively when giving feedback
  • Practise a proven technique to prepare for important situations
  • Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
  • Make it safe to talk about almost anything
  • Be persuasive, not abrasive
  • Improve your professional working relationships through your conversations

Online Questionnaire Between Days Two and Three

Discover your top five strengths through a robust on-line questionnaire developed by Gallup – the StrengthsFinder.

Day 3: Motivation in a High-Trust Culture

Day three of the programme is all about understanding and applying a culture of autonomy and job ownership enabling and empowering your team to be the best they can be. A key part of this is learning about your strengths and how they enable you as a leader, as well as giving you a tool to discover the strengths of your people. 

  • Working adult to adult — understanding transactional analysis, the effect it has on your relationships and within the workplace
  • Learn the skills to become a multiplier of your people's talents
  • Who makes the decisions currently and what might you change about this?
  • Enable trust and autonomy, within clear guidelines to create true job ownership
  • Be open and transparent in the information you share – what is off limits to staff?
  • Discover the difference between accountability and responsibility
  • Review your delegation habits and understand the key steps to delegating successfully
  • Identify what stops you delegating and challenge these behaviours
  • Pre-approval — what is it, what are the benefits of it and how to implement it?
  • Using your online questionnaire results, understand your strengths and how well you are currently using them in your role
  • Discover the four domains of leadership strength
  • Review how well you know your team's strengths and how much they are using them in their roles

Online Questionnaires Between Days Three and Four

Complete a second online self-reflection questionnaire around your confidence to lead, and your leadership style now 

Day 4: Setting Your Team up to Succeed

Day four of the programme is all about recruiting the talent you need then setting them up to be a strong and resilient team. It will provide the space and opportunity to reflect on your leadership journey through this programme and recap what you have learnt and actioned. You will present you key learning and leadership purpose to the group. You will build in this vision to embed the changes and build the habits you want to adopt to transform you and your team.

  • Discover the key to recruiting the right team members and ensuring their induction is a motivating experience
  • Understand the five ways to wellbeing and the practical steps we can take in each area
  • Build and nurture the resilience of your team
  • A reflective journey — recap and summary of what has been covered, what you have applied and transformed and what your challenges are
  • Identify what you might adapt so it works for you, your team and your organisation
  • Understand the process of building sustainable habits and changing behaviours long term, to embed the learning and create real action
  • Identify your leadership purpose and vision for yourself and your team
  • Draw up a personal, practical action plan beyond the programme
Thank you for a truly inspirational course. I have been to a few management courses and none has had the impact on me that your course has, from simply how I was treated on arriving at the first day to all four days of excellently crafted training. It was the best course I have ever been on. I actually looked forward to coming to the course. On a course you learn so much from your peers and your course captures this effortlessly. Each subject is taught with care thought and precision, but also with fun! What we have learnt will stay with us for a life time. I will always be happy to recommend you to anyone.Ian Hawthorn, Head of Service, Highway Maintenance and Projects, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham

Measurement

Each participant will complete a self-reflection survey before and after the programme so that we can measure the impact of the programme.  In addition to this we have an optional employee survey that all staff can complete before and after their leaders complete the programme to measure the organisational impact. This is most suited for organisations investing in all of their managers.

Optional individual coaching

Some of our clients also chose to invest individually in their leaders by offering them a series of one-to-one coaching sessions to help them implement what they are learning and ensure that the key elements of Happy and productive workplaces remain a priority beyond the programme. We have seen this have a very positive impact on the long-term success of the leaders. 

Our approach to programme delivery

Every programme is designed to ensure complete individual involvement and participation, it will stimulate your thinking and challenge you. The key focus is on practical skills and real outcomes throughout. The content will involve an innovative and engaging blend of activities so that you can directly apply it to your current performance and your future success.

Have absolutely loved the course - Nicky is an excellent facilitator and has given me so much food for thought. I truly think I will be a better manager as a result of this programme.Harriet Gibson, Middlesex University Students' Union, Nov 2023

Learn more in our free taster

If you aren’t ready to book one of our longer programmes, why not try out our free one-hour online taster on 2nd December? You will have the opportunity to road-test Happy and learn key lessons from the world’s great workplaces.

Why choose the Happy Leadership Programme?

  • Discover and fulfil your potential
  • Enable work cultures based on trust and freedom
  • Learn best practice from the truly great workplaces
  • Be involved, engaged and challenged
  • Learn practical skills to apply straight away

Group Learning Events

Looking for a private group event for your team, or even your whole organisation?

We can organise a date that works for you, and we can tailor the content to your team. Our private workshops can be held online, inhouse at your workplace or here at Happy's HQ in London.

Find out more and enquire now

Need help? Call us on

020 7375 7300

What are Happy's online events like?

In this short video, take a look at some of the ways that we create interactive, engaging experiences online using Zoom.

Learn more in our free taster

Learn more about the Happy Workplace  Programme and our philosophy, ask questions and experience the interactive approach to our workshops with our free 1-hour taster session. The next taster is on 2nd December, held over Zoom. All are welcome, with no hard sales pitch.

RSVP here

Book now

See our available course dates, or contact us for bespoke options.

We currently have public dates available for the 12 x 2 hour online sessions, held fortnightly, and the 4 x 1 day sessions, held monthly in the classroom at Happy. See the full list of dates below.

Classroom

All sessions are at Happy, Robert Dolan House, 9 Alie Street, London E1 8DE, from 10am - 4.30pm. (Timings are in UK time — GMT / BST.)

1. 10th December
2. 15th January
3. 12th February
4. 12th March 

Online

All sessions are online on Monday from 10am - 12pm (Timings are in UK time — GMT / BST.)

10am-12pm GMT/BST

  1. 24th February
  2. 10th March
  3. 24th March
  4. 31st March
  5. 28th April
  6. 12th May
  7. 19th May
  8. 2nd June
  9. 16th June
  10. 30th June
  11. 14th July
  12. 28th July

In addition to these dates, you will have self-guided assignments to complete through our Happy Leadership Portal on Fuse, with online resources available to access throughout the programme and beyond.

The Small Print

For Face-to-Face Live Online Learning

All learners will need to install Zoom on their machines. Full technical requirements are on the Zoom website. Your link will be included in your joining instructions once you have booked your place — if you haven't received this email then please contact our team.

Please reserve the session in your diary for the learning. This will allow you to join the interactive workshops and have time to reflect and do the assignments in between. We believe immersing yourself in the content for a whole day will create deep learning and lasting impact. 

Learners should log into the session 10 minutes before the start time to ensure that they have downloaded and set up Zoom correctly. The course will start precisely on time and it may not be possible to go back over material missed by late arrivals.

Your active participation is expected: everyone will be heard and seen throughout, just as they would be if we were in a room together. To be heard, hear and seen you will need a microphone, speakers and camera — if you have a modern laptop that’s all you will need. Remember, you’ll need a quiet place to call from and a decent internet connection is a must.

Please ensure you read our Terms and Conditions before booking for our payment terms and cancellation policy.

For classroom sessions

All public classroom sessions take place at Happy's HQ in London at Robert Dolan House, 9 Alie Street, London E1 8DE. Please see our Contact Us page for full directions and a PDF map.

The course will run from 10am to 4:30pm (lunch is served 1pm to 1:45pm — we offer a choice of 3 cold bowl dishes). Please be careful to arrive by 9.45am for registration and refreshments. The course will start precisely on time and it may not be possible to go back over material missed by late arrivals. If you arrive over 30 minutes late you may be asked to leave and attend another day.

Please ensure you read our Terms and Conditions before booking for our payment terms and cancellation policy.

The happy Guarantee

We want everyone to go away from our courses feeling as though they have learnt useful, practical skills that they can use straight away when they go back to work.

If you don’t feel that your training has been useful or if you are unhappy in any way, please get in touch with our Customer Services team within 30 days of the course. We will be happy to offer you additional support and training free of charge to help you to gain the skills you need, or if you’d prefer, a full refund.

If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with our friendly team.

Did you know...

...a simple challenge to normal practice is to spend one meeting only asking questions?

The ability to ask good questions is a central tenet of strong leadership. Putting away your usual directives and reaching out to staff is a great way to summon useful feedback and foster workplace unity.

Happy offers a number of other leadership and management programmes including:

Managing Change Positively to enable you to support your team through change and provide a clear understanding of how to involve people. Find out more

How to Have Conversations that Matter for Leaders & Managers to enable you to have successful conversations with team members and colleagues. Find out more