Programme Aims
This 2 day High Impact Teams programme give the people who lead project orientated teams a practical set of tools for getting good work out of others: setting a clear purpose, building a team that works, influencing people who do not report to them, having the conversations they have been avoiding, making decisions under pressure, and keeping a team productive without burning out.
The programme is built for leaders and managers who deliver through other people.
Approach
The programme is based on the approach in James Louttit’s book Leading Impactful Teams: Achieving Low-Stress Success in Project Management (De Gruyter, 2024). Its central thesis is most projects do not fail through lack of effort. They fail because the purpose of the project was unclear, the wrong things were prioritised, the difficult conversations were postponed, the decision was never actually made, and the team burned out carrying the gap.
Every session is built around something the participant can do differently the following week. This programme avoids jargon, unnecessary methodologies, and theory for its own sake.
Who Should Attend
Project managers, team leaders and managers who are responsible for leading project teams and delivering outcomes through other people. In practice this includes:
- Line managers and team leaders running projects and change alongside their day job.
- Project and programme managers who want to strengthen the people side of delivery.
- HR, L&D and people professionals leading cross-functional initiatives.
- Operations, finance, IT and technical leads asked to deliver through colleagues they do not manage.
- Business owners and senior managers in SMEs who lead small teams through change.
No previous project management training is required.
Programme Content
Two days of six hours each, delivered in person, consecutively or split to suit the group. The programme follows the eight-part structure of Impactful Project Management, with the emphasis shifted throughout to the leadership of people rather than the mechanics of delivery. Roughly a third of the two days is spent on the team and stakeholder material in section 6.
Day 1
1. Introductions, and what leading a project team actually involves
Participants introduce themselves, the team they lead and one situation they want help with. What the group says it wants is captured at the start and returned to throughout, so the two days are shaped by the people in the room rather than delivered at them.
The difference between managing work and leading people, and what changes when results have to come through others. Traditional management compared with a servant leadership style, who speaks, who decides, and how success is measured. The three types of work, reactive, proactive and planned and why leaders who do not separate them end up doing all three badly. The behaviours managers fall into under pressure, and when each of them helps or hurts.
Choosing an approach that suits the work and the team: planned, iterative and hybrid delivery, and the ideas worth borrowing from each. The eight lenses used throughout the two days: scope, time, cost, quality, risk, team, stakeholders and prioritisation. The trade-off every leader is really making between good, quick and cheap, and how to have that conversation honestly.
2. Purpose, scope and estimating with the team
Getting a team clear on why the work exists and what success actually looks like, with success criteria they can test themselves against. Naming who owns the benefit, not just who runs the work and the practical difference between being responsible for something and being accountable for it.
Defining what is in and what is out of scope, and reducing the blurred edges that cause conflict later. Breaking work down with the team rather than for them: the first act of delegation most leaders skip. Estimating as a group activity, including team-based estimation techniques that surface disagreement instead of burying it. The difference between effort and elapsed time (duration), and the damage done when a leader confuses the two in front of a stakeholder. Managing the highest-paid person’s opinion (HiPPO) so that the quietest voices in the room are still heard.
3. Business value and prioritisation, leading through competing priorities
Starting with why: leading a team that knows what its work is worth. Putting a value on a piece of work in money terms, and using that language with senior stakeholders. Weighing value against effort, and building a prioritised list that the team and the leadership can both see and agree on.
What to do when everything has been declared a “must”. Making trade-offs visible so they are decided rather than defaulted. Handling change that arrives mid-flight without either blocking it or silently absorbing it. Speaking in the language of the finance director and in the language of the individual, and knowing when each is needed.
4. Assumptions, risk and uncertainty, leading under pressure
Writing down assumptions to get a team and its stakeholders onto the same page early. The difference between a risk and an issue, and wording a risk so that someone actually acts on it. Contingency held openly against named risks rather than hidden in individual estimates, and the credibility a leader gains by being transparent about it.
Keeping people informed when something has gone wrong. Escalating early, because bad news does not improve with age. Handling a genuine crisis without the theatre that often surrounds one.
Day 2
Day two opens by completing contingency and dealing with issues, then moves through planning into the team and stakeholder material that forms the core of this programme.
5. Planning and commitment
Planning as a team activity that the leader writes up, rather than a document the leader produces alone. The plan for a plan. Dependencies, decision points and the contingency that protects them. What to do about the person who is the bottleneck, and about the holiday nobody mentioned.
Presenting a plan at the right moment and not before. Reviewing a plan through the eight lenses to find what is missing. Holding people to commitments they made themselves, which is a different and easier conversation than holding them to commitments made for them.
6. Team and stakeholders
Leading and motivating the team.
What actually motivates people at work, autonomy, mastery and purpose, mapped for each member of a team rather than assumed to be the same for everyone. Designing the working environment for concentration, collaboration and thinking time. Protecting people from interruption. Recognising overload early, and the difference between a team that is stretched and a team heading for burnout. Recognising and thanking people in a way that means something.
Delegation, performance and accountability.
Where a leader’s time should go, and what to do about the urgent work that crowds it out. Delegating with context and coaching rather than handing work over and hoping. Protecting time for the big things before the small things fill the week. Holding people to account without damaging the relationship.
Conflict and challenging conversations.
The conversation most people are avoiding, and what it is costing. Choosing the time, the place, the audience and the words. Separating the person from the problem, so it becomes the two of you against the problem rather than against each other. Creating enough safety that people say what they think, and recognising when someone has gone silent or gone on the attack. Closing with an agreement rather than a truce. Participants prepare and practise a real conversation they are facing.
Influencing without authority.
Leading people who do not report to you, across functions and organisations. Working out who matters to the work and what each of them actually needs. Listening as the most powerful tool available, and why it is so rarely used. Engaging different people in different ways rather than sending everyone the same update. Getting the people around you to do the influencing on your behalf. Building and repairing trust in hybrid and remote teams, where there is no corridor to fix things in. Dealing with the genuinely difficult stakeholder.
Communication, governance and managing expectations.
Aligning expectations at the start, when it is cheap. Making progress visible where people already look. The status conversation that produces a decision instead of a summary, and why projects report green for months and then go red in a week. The three levels of governance — daily, weekly and monthly — and what belongs at each. Putting a decision to a group so they can actually make it: three credible options, what happens if no decision is taken, and a clear recommendation. The difference between a steering group that decides, one that offers encouragement without removing obstacles, and one that criticises from the sidelines — and how a project leader moves a group towards the first. Using other people’s time well: a practical list of the habits that quietly destroy goodwill.
7. Cost and quality – leading the trade-offs
Talking about money without jargon, and knowing what a project actually costs. Getting the level of quality right for the work in hand rather than over-engineering it, and choosing between a full launch and a pilot. Negotiating with suppliers, colleagues and stakeholders: separating people from the issue, working from interests rather than positions, generating options, and using objective criteria.
Being an impactful project leader
Bringing it together. Running a proper workshop with your own team, using the four-step facilitation sequence taught throughout the two days, so participants can take the method home and not just the content. Keeping it simple. Taking full ownership of what your team delivers. The relationship between responsibility and power, and managing upwards without losing yourself.
Each participant leaves with a personal action plan tied to their own team. The programme closes with a Lean Coffee session, a structured format in which the group raises, prioritises and works through their own most pressing challenges, so the final part of the two days is spent on exactly what the room needs, and participants leave with a technique they can run themselves.
Trainer:
Trainer: James Louttit
- Founder and lead trainer, Impactful Project Management; 20+ years delivering projects across consultancy, financial services, retail and healthcare.
- PMI Ireland Chapter — Project Professional of the Year, 2023.
- Lead trainer for Project Management programmes at the Irish Management Institute (IMI), Ireland’s leading executive-education institution.
- Guest lecturer at Alliance Manchester Business School (University of Manchester) and Dublin Business School.
- Author of Leading Impactful Teams (De Gruyter, 2024) — 4.9★, endorsed by an Irish Government Minister, CIOs and consulting partners.
- Former Chief Information Officer, Cpl; former Project Management Competency Lead, Bank of Ireland (via Accenture).
- PMP-qualified; degree in Economics. Has trained over 2,000 professionals to date.
PRICING – €890pp Via Invoice – email sara(dot)mullally@cipd.ie
Direct Payment via online Booking – €905.00
Includes catering on both days –