Leading Innovative Teams
Leading Innovative Teams (LIT) is a subject for IPP mentors.
About Leading Innovative Teams
Leading Innovative Teams (LIT) provides an opportunity for experienced professionals to develop the coaching and leadership skills required to guide innovation projects and take the next step in their careers. Alongside their leadership journey, mentors will learn - and empower their teams to apply - valuable innovation skills to their innovation challenge. Mentors leave the program with a clear sense of themselves as a leader, together with a portfolio of skills they can deploy to exercise that leadership.
Who is it for?
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Early career
- Technical or non-technical professionals who are early in their career
- Identified as having potential for leadership roles in the future
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Mid-career
- New team leaders/supervisors who have recently transitioned into their role
Key outcomes
Identity
I see myself as a leader
Understanding
I know what it means to be a leader
Skills
I know how to be a leader
Topics covered
- The nature of leadership today with considerations of authenticity, boundaries, cultural differences and complex stakeholders
- The cultivation of insight through reflection, presence and awareness
- How to facilitate, coach, mentor and influence
- Nurturing creativity and generative dialogue
- How to mediate conflict, provide effective feedback and manage resistance to change
- Presentation skills, storytelling and perfecting the pitch
- The self-directed career and habit formation.
The course inspires and challenges you to
try new things, and develop the tools to
think about innovation, leadership and
teamwork in a completely new way. Cameron Wilson, Yarra Valley Water
Mentor, 2020
What is involved?
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A two-day leadership intensive at the start of the semester
During the leadership intensive you will learn about:
- Key frameworks for leading innovation
- Core skills for leading teams
- How these theories and practices will be integrated into the IPP mentoring experience.
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Weekly 90-minute leadership classes
Leadership classes run immediately prior to each innovation class and focus on specific skills each week. You will then be able to:
- Practice these skills with your project team in the innovation class
- Reflect on your experience after class
- Discuss them as part of a weekly development discussion with a colleague at work.
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Weekly 3-hour innovation classes
During the innovation class, you will learn, and empower your team to apply, innovation practices to their innovation challenge.
The innovation class is also where you, the mentor, get the chance to directly apply the skills learned during the weekly leadership class - while they're still fresh in your mind!
It doesn’t matter how much innovation experience you have or don’t have – there’s always something to learn. And don't worry: you will be supported every step of the way by our team of experienced instructors so you can best support your team.
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Reflections
All mentors will be invited to complete written reflections each week to help you engage with your goals and aspirations as a leader, and how you might reach them.
You will also be expected to provide written feedback about another mentor’s reflection, with the aim of helping them learn more about themselves and building an exchange. Through this process, you will also practice giving effective and useful feedback.
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Readings
Each week, you will have access to a collection of pre-class readings and videos to support your learning.
For more information about what is involved in the project mentor role, visit Role of the project mentor.