Why Do Agenies Need Leaders? (John Gage)

Participants will understand what leadership is, why it is important and explore challenges that agencies are facing and how leadership can help to address them.

Content

• Leadership vs management
• What do leaders do?
• Why aren’t we making enough money? Executional, commodity model. Use of the P&L.
• How can we become differentiated advisory and executional businesses?
• The importance of product development
• Your role in transforming your businesses.
• Leading with different behavioural styles

About the Trainer

John Gage is a consultant and trainer who has worked with agencies for 25 years. He is interested in how to increase agency profitability through client retention and talent strategies.

Build Your Own Career Pathway and Leadership Vision (Sharon Baker)

This session will help you build your vision and apply the course practically to ensure a tangible impact on your leadership and progression.

• As pre-work before the session, you’ll receive leadership assessments to give you a benchmark of where you are starting from. This will allow you to track your progress.
• You’ll receive a framework to help you make best use of the course.
• You’ll discover your leadership skill strengths and the areas you want to develop.
• Taking your learning from Session 1, you will create your ambitious leadership vision.
• You’ll learn how to own your talents and strengths and how to be your own unique leader rather than the leader you (or others) think you should be.
• We’ll help you build your desired career pathway and personal brand – outlining how you want to be perceived by others, and how you can have maximum influence and visibility while maintaining your authenticity.
• You’ll set objectives for the course, define what you want to achieve, what changes you want to make and how to track your progress. This will include a look at the wider impact you could have and what your unique contribution to your agency could be.
• You’ll set out your ‘conditions for success’ and the commitments you want to make.
• We’ll come together again online towards the end of course to review your learning, refine your vision, set a direction for your progression after the course and develop an action plan to get you there, with your new buddies by your side to support you.

About the Trainer

Sharon Baker is a highly experienced leadership coach and trainer. For 10 years she has coached leadership teams, CEO’s and senior leaders in creative agencies and corporations like the BBC, Barclays, Esso to enable leaders and managers to have the confidence, authenticity, and emotional intelligence to perform at their best and lead high performing teams. She is in the top 1% of accredited coaches in the UK, and trains professional coaches. She worked in creative agencies for 20 years as an award-winning producer, client services director and as MD. She has a psychology degree, is a fine artist and has a Post Grad in coaching.

Building A Profitable Client Portfolio (Julian Saunders)

Participants will understand what a profitable client relationship is and the factors that both build and undermine a profitable client portfolio.

• Defining the nature of a profitable client: key text on developing a professional services firm
• Factors that increase profitability and loyalty
• How all professional relationships are also really personal relationships as well.
• The difficulty and importance of learning and executing “active listening”
• Moments of truth in client journeys that build trust, longevity and profitability.
• What is changing in the current competitive, cultural and technological environment that affects clients and how should agencies use this change to build better relationships
• The inside track: debrief of a seminar that reveals what clients really think and the pressures they are under

About the Trainer

Julian Saunders was CEO of red cell advertising – a WPP agency- for four years. Key clients were Bank of Scotland, Alfa Romeo and Visit Wales.  He was also Head of Strategy at McCann-Erickson at a time when it was the largest agency in the UK with clients such as Microsoft, Coca Cola, Nestle and Unilever.  More recently he worked at Google where his job was to interact with client teams so that they could better understand and use Google owned platforms.

Strong Commercial Understanding To Drive Growth (Andrew Reeves)

Often, senior agency executives are too busy building solutions that achieve their client’s objectives at the expense of achieving their own agency objectives, sometimes without even realising it. The irony of this is that once an agency suffers commercially, it becomes harder to deliver on its clients’ objectives, creating a vicious circle.

This session is designed to empower the agency with the know-how and tools to realise its commercial & financial ambitions.

Content

– Understanding the key Financial Statements, P&L, Balance Sheet and Cashflow.

– Implementing key Financial KPI’s as an early warning indicator for commercial issues

– Developing commercial tools that will help maximise your financial performance

– Managing the Financial roles and responsibilities in your agency, appropriate to your needs.

– How to create sustainable wealth

About the Trainer

Andrew is an experienced CFO with 30 years of experience in Marketing Services. Having previously worked within global networks and with global clients, he now specialises in supporting independent agencies in achieving their long-term commercial and financial goals.

Recruiting High Performing Teams (Vonnie Alexander)

This session focuses on talent – how to recruit, motivate and retain the best teams to build a truly high performing team and how that can impact your own career progression.

Content 

A whistle stop tour through the characteristics of high performing teams and what that means from a recruitment, retention, and motivation point of view. We will also look at how the team around influences your career progression and how to make that work to your advantage.

This session will be interactive, discursive, and hopefully instructive too! We will cover lots of ground in a fast-paced session that will take in:

• Why talent is so important in an agency.
• How to spot good people
• What it takes to motivate and retain your teams
• The characteristics of high performing teams
• Assessing your team against these criteria
• Your career to date – the highs and the lows
• What is the scale or your ambition?
• Developing a plan for how to get there.
• The impact of the team around you on your career progression

Benefits 

• Come out with an understanding of how to give yourself a competitive edge because you have the best people and teams.
• Learn how to actively manage your own career to go where you want it to.

About the Trainer 

Vonnie Alexander has been an Executive Coach for the past 8 years working with agencies and client organisations in all sectors. She coaches leaders and their teams to success, is an NED of an independent agency, and sits on the Advisory Board of a VC Two Magnolias which invests predominantly in regions and demographics that are typically overlooked.

Prior to this, she worked in agencies for 25 years, most notably in her own agency, Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw which was sold to Publicis in 2011.

Leading Through Transformation (Abigail Dixon)

Many businesses go through periods of change and transformation. The need for transformation may happen as a result of an internal desire to step change the commercial growth or may be required as a result of needing to protect your agencies or brands position, in our ever changing competitive landscapes. However, the need for the required transformation has arisen, transformation is fuelled by need for significant changes. As a leader facing into change, we need to lead with clarity and inspiration of the benefits and goals of the change ahead but also reassure through defining key milestones and plans required to make this happen. In this seminar, we will also look at key steps to inspirationally and effectively lead through periods of transformation and to gain alignment and maintain motivation from those around you, to join you on the journey. We will also look to anticipate the possible personal impact that change and transformation will have on key stakeholders, individuals and you as a leader.

Content

• Importance of defining the vision of the transformational change ahead
• Importance of set goals that will determine success post transformation
• Facing into the changes that are needed to enable the transformation
• Change plan to provide reassurance of road map of the journey and defining key milestones
• Gaining alignment and motivation from stakeholders and employee through communicating inspirationally and openly, providing opportunity for dialogue
• Awareness of the impact that transformation and change can have on individuals and teams

Benefits

Empower leaders to lead their business, stakeholders, teams and individuals through periods of transformation and change

About the Trainer

Abigail (Abby) Dixon is an award-winning marketer and consultant, course director and capability consultant, Chartered Marketer, and fellow of the CIM. Founder, Director, author and Podcast host of The Whole Marketer, which aims to support and empower marketers to not only have a successful but fulfilled career in marketing and their lives as a whole. Abigail is passionate about supporting and empowering the marketers behind the brands, business and agencies with holistic skills to grow the brand and business of tomorrow; her purpose is to help others to grow. Abigail draws on her 25 years’ experience as an award-winning marketer and consultant, working on and consulting for many household brands and with agency partners to step change brands’ growth. She utilises her unique position to draw on her wealth of experience from having coached, mentored and trained 1000s of marketers across multiple sectors, industries and brands to define what skills marketers need to possess to not only be successful at what they do but also understand how and why. In addition to Abigail’s marketing credentials, she is also an accredited ICF coach – a business and life coach empowering people and their businesses to define the clarity and motivation to pursue their goals.

How to Excel at Public Speaking (Tessa Morton)

Welcome to the “Mastering Presentation Skills for Effective Leadership” module of our leadership program. In the dynamic landscape of leadership, the ability to communicate persuasively and captivate an audience is an indispensable skill. Whether you’re leading a team, pitching a new idea, or addressing a room full of stakeholders, your ability to present effectively can make a significant impact on your success as a leader.

Content

In this module, we will delve into the art and science of compelling presentations, focusing not just on the words you speak but on the way you connect with your audience. Effective leadership requires more than just expertise in your field; it demands the capability to inspire, influence, and leave a lasting impression.

Benefits

In this workshop we will explore the key components of impactful presentations, from crafting a compelling narrative to mastering non-verbal communication. We will also address techniques to manage nerves, engage diverse audiences, and adapt your style to different contexts. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or emerging leader, the skills you gain here will empower you to communicate with confidence, clarity, and charisma.  Great leaders are not just defined by their ideas but also by their ability to convey those ideas with passion and precision. Let’s sharpen those presentation skills and elevate your leadership impact.

This workshop is designed to help you make every presentation an opportunity to inspire, inform, and ignite positive change.

About the Trainer

Tessa has over 30 years’ experience in running workshops and coaching programmes for agencies.  Her background is as a trained actress and drama teacher.  Tessa has developed a business that aims to support confident and not so confident speakers to take control and create an impact when presenting, whatever the circumstances.  Her style is challenging yet supportive.  She aims to get her participants to connect with their purpose rather than presenting from a prescribed formula.

How to Adopt Growth Mindset Thinking (Marc Nohr & Sara Tate)

The session provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the challenges you face as a leader and to equip you with the means to drive your own growth and the growth of those around you.

Content

The half day workshop will give you an understanding of growth mindset theory, its origins and foundational research and its application in the world of business.

You will learn and work through  a range of tools in order to apply the theory to yourself and the people you lead.  With insights from the world of neuro-psychology, linguistics, leadership coaching and sports psychology you will be better equipped to lead yourself and others.

This is for anyone who wants to understand how to grow and evolve as a leader and how to create a culture of growth within the teams they manage.

 Benefits

• Understand what Growth Mindset thinking is and how it can help leaders succeed in an uncertain business climate
• Better understand your own beliefs and behaviours in order to evolve as a leader
• Learn ways to develop a learning mindset and embed a learning culture in your team or agency
• Get practical tools to use as a leader to overcome adversity and create adaptable and resilient teams

About the Trainers

Marc Nohr and Sara Tate have between them founded and/or led some of the most recognised and awarded agencies in the market: Mother, TBWA, KitcattNohr, Digitas and several others. Marc now works as an agency Chairman and Executive Coach and serves on the board of Oxford Leadership a global leadership consultancy; and Sara operates as an organisational consultant and Executive Coach, as well as the author of the book Rebuilders: Going from setback to comeback in business and beyond.