Professional Diploma in
Strategic Project Leadership

The Center for Strategic Leadership offers its program over a trimester. This will divide the academic year into three sessions: fall, winter, and spring. Each trimester is approximately 12 intensive weeks.

Professional Diploma in Strategic Project Leadership will provide you with the opportunity to develop your own leadership and management styles. We provide you with live virtual workshops, one-on-one coaching and an opportunity for an internship placement midway through the program.

You will have the opportunity to identify your core values by completing The Leadership Principle’s self-assessment and where relevant completing The Leadership Principle’s 360 online Feedback survey.

This will have you graduate with your competitive advantage.  At the end of this 12-week intensive online course, you will have the confidence, knowledge and practical skill required to effectively lead and manage your project team, inspire and influence your project team to deliver projects on time and on budget. Knowing how to appropriately engage stakeholders to manage the changes when working on a project, as well as resolve workplace conflict through effective negotiations and communications. Virtual online classroom sessions are conducted 3 hours per week, reading is 5 hours per week and 3 hours assignments per week.  Session 2 will introduce an internship of 1-2 days per week. Internships can be established at the commencement of the course.

What You’ll Learn

• The distinction between Leadership vs. Management
• Understanding your own leadership style, motivations and beliefs
• Overview of The Leadership Principle’s:  5R’s of Strategic Project Leadership
• Recruit stakeholders – undertaking a stakeholder analysis
• Setting up agreements to prevent conflicts and disagreements
• Relationships: The importance of stakeholder engagement and building relationships
• Retain – keeping the project team together
• Reskilling – identifying any skills gaps with stakeholders
• Return on Investment – how to you measure your project’s success

Who Should Enroll?

Professional Diploma in Strategic Project Leadership is designed for high potentials and newly emerging leaders and managers or those seeking to formalise their leadership skills.

Session 1:  Lead with the Project’s Vision

• Establish the framework and strategic priorities for the project
• Drive the development of the project’s vision and culture
• Provide project leadership, direction, legislation and governance
• Determine Projects’ success measurements including Return on Investment
• Review and establish and communicate business objectives
• Identify the project drivers
• Understanding the distinction between managing vs leading a project

Session 2: Master Personal Effectiveness

• Self-management and self-leadership
• Persuade, influence and negotiate positively by effective communication
• Lead and manage stakeholder decision-making and critical thinking
• Develop own leadership style and capabilities
• Cognitive Problem-Solving Archetypes
• Mental Models
• Eliciting your decision-making strategies
• Understanding the Imposter Syndrome and its impact

Session 3: Establish and cultivate the project stakeholder’s relationships

• Develop stakeholder networks and engagement
• Assessing your EQ to assist in building relationships
• Create a diverse and cooperative project culture
• Establish agreements to resolve misunderstandings or conflicts
• Encourage participation of stakeholders to create a team culture and initiatives
• The importance of the Presentation’s message
• Engaging your audience and enhancing relationships – Practicing the Pitch
• Determine your influence and negotiation styles to create win/win outcomes

Session 4: Develop Project Leaders

• Identify and plan the succession plan
• Create a learning culture for projects
• Engage all stakeholders and provide support for them to identify their personal skills development needs
• Ethical and professional Decision making that work vs Groupthink
• Creating a win/win when managing conflict: the Dreaded Drama Triangle, The Empowerment Dynamic

Session 5: Facilitate and Lead the Change

• Build a safety conscious culture conducive to managing WHS risks 
• Identify, analyze and facilitate opportunities for improvements and innovation
• Apply systems thinking and facilitate the change and innovation

Session 6: Lead Achievement of Results

• Review the established and communicated strategies for agreed project deliverables.
• Monitor project performance
• Implement continuous improvement strategies
• Measuring your personal and professional success – revisiting The Leadership Principle’s Profile tool.
• Measuring the Return on investment
• Evaluate and report on outcomes