Generate ideas – Make creative plans – Test these in action
Staying Truly Connected will build your confidence as a manager leading online, unlock creativity to engage your colleagues and help you to motivate teams while working from home.
Structured around how you identify and respond to people’s needs, develop a feedback-rich culture and lead productive, collaborative, meetings, this is the starting point for your journey to stay truly connected with the people you work with, influence and lead. All the techniques can be adapted to use in person or online, and are designed to help prepare you and your team for the challenges and opportunities of 2020-21 as we adjust to increasingly blended ways of working in the future.
The shift to working from home has revealed more than ever how, people’s needs and ways of adapting can often be very different from one another, and the support and guidance needed varies enormously too. Being able to build strong, resilient connections based on trust and feedback is a priority, as is knowing how best to enable collective decision-making online, not just in a meeting room.
If we can build these cultures and skills now, we can use the best of what we’re learning and apply it to how we work and lead in the future.
❝Staying Truly Connected helped me focus each week on my relationships at work, and I was able to reflect on what was and wasn’t working through the various online activities. It was powerful to share my experiences and to learn from others. Our collective focus on responding to COVID-19, provided a shared objective that meant the richness of our connection was amazing.❞
Dr Louise Naylor
Director of Education
University of Kent
New dates for May 2021
The programme
Staying Truly Connected starts with you and your context. It’s all about how your imagination can unlock creativity in others. How you can be your best self in a digital space. You’ll experience activities that help you connect with the future you need to shape by working collaboratively, and sometimes playfully. You’ll learn to give feedback and facilitate online discussions with compassion, humility and humanity.
What you’ll focus on during the programme:
- Planning for motivational and performance outcomes, both short and longer term
- Keeping your leadership approach authentic, personalised and true to you in a digital space
- Collaborative working and feedback in supporting people working remotely
- How the shift in how you work now will help you shape and transform the future in your context
How it works
Staying Truly Connected is designed around your context and needs. We use experiential learning to bring creativity and playfulness to your time on the programme, which we encourage you to use in practice right away. Our role is to give you guidance, support and inspiration for new ways of working, helping you to connect with peoples hearts and minds online.
Through 13 hours of online learning over a one-month period, including 4 hours of synchronous group work, you’ll work with your colleagues to find new inspiration and comradery from sharing experiences and helping support others through their own journeys.
To begin with, you’ll have a short orientation (one hour of synchronous activity and one hour asynchronously) to think about and focus on how things are for you, right now. Then, over the next two weeks you’ll take part in eleven hours of learning. This includes three hours of synchronous activity where you’ll come together as a group to take part in a facilitated discussion, and eight hours asynchronous learning as you work through a series of creative and reflective activities to put your learning into practice.
We’re here to support you to generate ideas, make creative plans and test these in action.
Dates and cost
Staying Truly Connected typically has a group size of up to 12 people. The cost per person is £495 per person, excluding VAT.
Orientation and start: Friday 21 May, 8.45-10am GMT
Facilitated session: Friday 4 June, 8.45-10am GMT
Facilitated session and close: Friday 18 June, 8.45-10am GMT
Asynchronous learning throughout
If you would like to run this for your team in-house, we can make it your own.
Make it your own
If you would like to bring Staying Truly Connected in-house, we can tailor the sessions and length of the programme around the needs of you and your team. To find out more, please contact Academic Director Paul Gentle.
What they say
❝I had a good experience on Staying Truly Connected. It made me think about things in different ways, particularly around models for feedback and planning for successful outcomes. It worked really well being online, connecting with real people talking about real situations, and taking part in practical activities you could relate to your everyday work.❞
❝I’ve got so much out of it. It gave me momentum and focus, and it’s made me think of my role much more as a leader, my leadership style and what I’m doing and trying to do.❞
❝I left Staying Truly Connected feeling inspired and surprised. I was challenged to do things that were at the edge of my comfort zone, but I’m pleased to have done them. I’ve taken away learning that will change how I approach my practice.❞
Professor Keith Horton
Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean, Faculty of Business, Law & Social Sciences
Birmingham City University
Kathryn Conway
Hallam Help Manager, Student Support Services
Sheffield Hallam University
Claire Sparrow
Head of Undergraduate Business Courses and Principal Lecturer
University of Portsmouth
Enquire and book
Please use the form below and Louise Clifton, Director of Marketing, Communications and Operations, will be in touch with you soon.
Or if you’d like to get in touch with Louise directly, please feel free to email.
Terms and Conditions
We will work with you to ensure that you and your colleagues enjoy every aspect of what makes Invisible Grail special – before, during and after the programmes themselves. Click here for our full terms and conditions.