Civil Service Leadership Academy Open Curriculum
CSLA offers all senior Civil Service (SCS) leaders a number of workshops and events which are designed to support their leadership journeys.
Alternatives to Legislation (workshop)
This workshop, jointly delivered with BEIS, provides an opportunity for SCS leaders to explore new ways of thinking around achieving policy outcomes without legislation. This can help save time, money and resources when implementing policies.
Duration: 3 hours
This event is aimed at SCS who work within policy development.
Learning outcomes
This session creates a space for participants to learn how to embrace new ways of developing policy using alternatives to legislation and meet with peers and build their networks. After this session participants will be able to:
- Describe alternatives to legislation and their benefits;
- Understand how to apply alternatives to legislation when developing policy; and
- Explain how behavioural insights can be the key to success during policy development.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
High Impact Communication (workshop)
Success as a senior Civil Service (SCS) leader is based on the ability to build strong relationships and gain commitment to new ideas. At the heart of this is the ability to communicate with others in an inspiring and engaging way. This workshop is designed to help SCS leaders gain more control over how they are perceived by others enabling them to become more impactful leaders.
Duration: 3 hours
This event is aimed at all SCS who would like to further improve their communication skills for various situations, such as one-to-ones, meetings, public speeches or in a virtual context using platforms such as Zoom and Teams.
Learning outcomes
This workshop aims to help participants be at their best when communicating with others. It will introduce them to new techniques for controlling their nerves more effectively and for expressing ideas with clarity and confidence. After this session participants will be able to:
- understand the elements that make up personal impact, including how to build personal presence with diverse groups of people and connect and communicate with others in an authentic way;
- understand how their ability to listen and tune into others affects their personal impact; and
- control their nerves in front of groups of all sizes, and to speak with passion and enthusiasm, using their voice in a more powerful way.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Inclusive Leadership (workshop)
Being inclusive and nurturing diversity is an expectation of all civil servants, including SCS leaders and is a priority for the Civil Service. Three key components help to create inclusive cultures, which are: having a sense of belonging, feeling able to be authentic and having a voice.
Duration: 2.5 hours
This event is essential learning for all SCS.
Learning outcomes
This workshop will explore how senior leaders can cultivate the conditions for people to feel included. After this session participants will be able to:
- understand how to create an inclusive work environment; and
- understand how to get the best out of themselves and their teams.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Leading Through Challenging Times series (workshops)
This is a three part series of virtual workshops focused on supporting senior leaders across the Civil Service to keep their teams safe, cohesive and productive, during challenging times. We recommend that SCS attend all three workshops in order, but they are designed to stand alone if that’s not possible.
Duration: each workshop is 2 hours
This series is aimed at all SCS who are, or want to prepare for, leading through challenging times.
Part 1: Leading at your best through challenging times
This workshop will give participants significant insights into how they can continue to lead at their best when facing challenges arising from large-scale unexpected events.
Learning outcomes
Participants have the opportunity to think about how to show up as the very best version of themselves – calm, confident, decisive, optimistic, and energetic. Participants will also identify the factors that they can create to support their employees and bring them from a place of threat to reward, enhancing their productivity and performance. After this session participants will be able to:
- appreciate the importance of leading self in the context of the current crisis;
- display a deeper self-awareness and practice self-management; and
- draw upon a framework to help create the environment their teams need in order to thrive in spite of uncertainty.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 2: Brain-hacks for Leaders
This workshop provides an opportunity for participants to take time out to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, behaviours and strengths in challenging times.
Learning outcomes
This workshop will help participants to cultivate their inner strength as leaders, helping them feel more confident, adaptable and open to new opportunities in volatile times. Leaders will explore natural human responses to stress and pressure and will learn brain-hacks to increase resilience and maintain well-being. After this session participants will be able to:
- develop some understanding of why and how the brain works the way it does;
- practice practical strategies to hack their brains;
- apply evidence on maintaining well-being to their own situations;
- consider how to use their strengths to keep their batteries charged; and
- respond and react effectively during times of stress.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 3: Leading with Disruption
During periods of unprecedented disruption, where and how leaders focus their time and energy will shape their leadership impact as well as themselves as leaders.
Learning outcomes
This workshop provides a social leadership learning experience that will enable participants to explore the behavioural patterns they notice in themselves and the wider system during challenging times. Participants will learn the necessary approaches to successfully lead through disruption and stay ahead in a rapidly changing world. Working with peers, participants will develop action plans for recognising and meeting the psychological needs of those they work with. After this session participants will be able to:
- stay connected with colleagues to share their experiences;
- plan their leadership focus;
- reassess and evaluate their approach to work and their leadership impact; and
- draw upon a framework to help them lead more effectively with disruption.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Leading in Complexity series (workshops)
This three part series aims to help leaders think about how they make decisions under pressure, in complexity. The format of the sessions is intended to be informal and interactive, allowing participants to understand more advanced leadership practices and consider these against their own experiences. The cynefin model is used as a framework to help participants to understand how they can best respond in their environments. We recommend that all three workshops are attended in order.
Duration: each workshop is 2.5 hours
This series is aimed at all SCS who are, or want to prepare for, making decisions in complexity.
Part 1 - Psychology of leadership within challenging times
Participants will explore how pressurised environments affect processes within decision making and preferences for leadership personality types. The latter part of the session explores how participants can strengthen their cognitive leadership skills of: sense-making, self-awareness, perspective-shifting, opposable thinking and relational awareness (relationship building).
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 2 - Disrupting Group Think
This workshop looks at tools and developing approaches that enable participants to reflect on their leadership approach. Participants will reflect on:
- how their leadership approach affects how their teams capture interactions and interdependencies;
- how they check-in; and
- how they are designing their strategic focus areas and outcomes.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 3 - Applying Complexity Thinking to Covid-19
Introduces practices from complexity science and explores how they can help leaders make better decisions in the pressured contexts they face. This module actively explores the real-life experiences of leaders and guest speakers who have needed to sense-make and respond in real complexity. The latter part of the session supports a practical peer conversation to work through the benefits of applying new ways of operating in complexity, in their real life context.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 4 - Sensemaking and Personal Planning
This workshop gives participants time to reflect on their own leadership and the contexts they are leading in, through the lens of the tools, techniques, models and discussions from the previous sessions. Participants will be able to share their own leadership challenges in a leadership action inquiry and will come away from the experience with actionable insights about themselves and others.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Leading with Systems series (workshops)
Systems sit at the heart of every aspect of public service, with citizens, service providers and policymakers interacting in complex and dynamic ways that do not always fit with traditional hierarchical leadership approaches. Understanding how systems work and how to work with systems is essential for senior leaders across all of the Civil Service. This two part series aims to provide insight into systems leadership in the context of the Civil Service, while helping leaders consider their own lived experiences of leading within systems. It is essential that these workshops are completed in order.
Duration: each workshop is 2 hours
This series is aimed at all SCS who want to further understand systems leadership and to collectively reflect on their experiences within systems.
Part 1:
Participants will explore what systems are and how they behave, helping them make sense of the dynamics and patterns that characterise systems.
Learning Outcomes:
The workshop provides an overview of the tools and methods senior leaders can use to explore the systems around them. After this session participants will be able to:
- describe the main features of a system, explaining the relevance to their work and identify those features in their own systems;
- identify system behaviours and understand how those patterns are created; and
- understand how to assess systems and identify next steps for intervention.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Part 2:
The workshop looks at approaches to effecting change in a system and explores what systems leadership means in practice.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of this workshop, participants will be prepared for working in new and different ways to tackle the challenges that come from working with systems. After this session participants will be able to:
- identify ways of intervening to change a system’s behaviours and identify and select tools that will help make that intervention a success;
- explain what makes systems leadership different from leadership within a system and how systems leadership can enable them to tackle complex and ‘wicked’ problems; and
- set out their own plans and intentions for building systems leadership into their context.
Visit the CSLA programmes, workshops and events calendar to book a place.
Updates to this page
Last updated 9 April 2021 + show all updates
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New Masterclass CSLA: Alternatives to legislation SCS Masterclass
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Leadership modules for SCS changed
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Updated events
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Updated events
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First published.