1. Taking Charge:
   Women’s Executive Leadership Program

Taking Charge is a 5-day intensive leadership experience for mid – to – senior-level female managers looking to gain the executive presence and capabilities necessary to lead at the executive level. The program includes a 360° leadership assessment, executive coaching, and interactive classes focused on critical skills including effective negotiation, communication, and change management.

Critical
Topics, Active Learning, At a Pace That Works

• This dynamic program focuses on critical
  knowledge and skills that empower effective, impactful leaders. This includes:
• Gaining insight into individual leadership
  strengths and developmental 
  opportunities via a 360° leadership assessment
• Understanding the unique challenges of women in
  leadership and strategies for advancement
• Strengthening communications skills for improved
  effectiveness with internal and external constituents
• Building knowledge on strategic leadership and
  change management
• Executive coaching focused on engaging and
  leading teams
• Learning to build a business network for the
  long term
• Interactive classes are led by faculty members
  who are ongoing practitioners in their areas of expertise.
• Taking Charge is offered over the course of
  three months enabling participants to incorporate new   
• skills into their current roles.

A Program
for Mid-to-Senior Level Women

• In a significant management role, demonstrating career
progression

• Designated to assume increased responsibilities or
transitioning between

   functional groups

• Desire enhanced presence and confidence for the next
career stage

Program Topics and Structure

360° Leadership
Assessment

Women
in Leadership

• What’s in the water
• Leadership and you
• Leadership styles
• Management versus leadership
• What role does gender play?

Leading
Through Change

• Simulation exercise
• Managing and promoting change
• Engaging followers and stakeholders
• Measuring and communicating results

The
Power of Communication

• Negotiating well – types and styles
• Advocacy
• Interests versus positions
• Power negotiation
• Ethical standards
• Difficult conversations

Executive
Coaching – Leading Teams

• Small group sessions with professional coaches
• Team dynamics exercise with feedback
• How do you coach your people
• Leader as coach: how to coach your people

Strategic
Leadership

• Why strategic thinking is important
• Characteristics of strong strategic leaders
• Levels of strategic thinking / leadership
• Challenges to strategic leading and mitigations

Women
on Boards

• Corporate versus nonprofit boards
• Expectations and responsibilities of board
  members
• Board compensation
• Essential strategies to seeking board position

Finance for Non-finance Managers Training

Strong financial management is crucial to the
success of any organisation or programme. When the principles are explained in
a simple practical way they are easy to learn and apply.
This training course starts with the basics of finance and gradually gives you
a thorough working knowledge of financial management, including ways of
presenting funding proposals to maximise income. We use a mixture of approaches
including tutor input, discussions, group work, games and individual
activities. These provide you with the practical skills not only to know how
the numbers are calculated, but also use finance information and systems in
decision-making to strengthen capacity in organisations and programmes.

You will learn to use the techniques in your own organisation and with
partners, and to better see decision-making and programme impact. The training includes
a range of materials to use when you return to your organisation’s activities,
including the book Building Financial Management Capacity for NGOs and
Community Organisations, written by the trainer.

Why choose this course

If you sometimes deal with finance information and systems in your
work, but you have had very little if any finance training, this course is
designed especially for you. Whether you work for the UN, government, NGO or
private sector this training course really does build up from the basics,
helping you to use your new financial skills confidently and competently. The
course is primarily designed for non-finance managers and staff. You will gain
a strong working knowledge of finance skills and financial management to take
back to your own organisation as well as your partner’s organisations.

What you will learn

In the practical participatory sessions you learn how to:

• apply financial management within
  different settings using interactive case studies and examples
• plan and monitor budgets, using
  financial information to make good decisions
• assess and set up robust
  financial systems
• manage the expectations of donors
  for project funding and financial reporting
• build the financial capacity of
  partner organisations

Daily Course Objectives

Day 1: Finance management and
budget planning

• overview of
  finance management
• all you need to
  know about budgeting in any organisation
• budget planning
  and case study

Day 2: Budget monitoring and the
rules of accounting

• budget monitoring
  and managing cash flow
  • using financial
    skills in funding
  • achieving value
    for money
  • ground rules of
    accounting and finance

Day 3: Making sense of finance
information

• the basics of
  finance records and systems
• making sense of
  the finance statements
• working with funders,
  auditors, accountants and donors

Day 4: Towards financial
sustainability

• managing
  overheads and organisational savings
• assess and reduce
  financial and organisational risk and uncertainty
• implement robust
  financial controls and systems

Day 5: 
Building financial management when working with partner organisations

• case study on
  financial capacity building
• techniques for
  working with partners – setting up robust controls and systems
• checks and
  balances when working with partners