Future Leaders

Future Leaders Programme

Unlock your leadership potential with this practical programme for talented individuals in the early stages of their career.

Future Leaders is all about how you ‘show-up’ as a leader – developing your personal style. Each Future Leaders module covers a different aspect of leadership theory and practice around three themes: Communication, Influencing, and Relationships.

The cohort also collaborate on a project with a not-for-profit organisation to test their leadership skills in a real-world scenario. And each participant benefits from a one-to-one coaching session tailored to their individual leadership needs.

Explore Future Leaders

Who is it for?

We believe leadership development is for life and that leadership exists at all levels within organisations. The programme is designed for those leaders in the initial stages of their career with a strong passion to constantly learn, improve and transform in the context of a rapidly changing external environment.

We carry out our mission to champion the power of collaboration by convening early career leaders in this cross-sector development programme. Previous participants have held roles including Policy Advisor, Commercial Officer, Stakeholder Engagement Manager, Technologist, Solicitor and Government Relations Manager representing organisations across public, private and not-for-profit sector.

How you'll benefit

  • Understand how to create and nurture high performing teams
  • Develop your presentation and influencing skills
  • Grow your confidence as a speaker and connector
  • Enhance your leadership capabilities
  • Understand how to motivate individuals and teams
  • Understand and develop your personal leadership style
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A portrait of Katy Samuels

"Future Leaders has given me the confidence to see that I am already a leader, whilst also providing skills and tools to take my natural style and ability to the next level. WIG are first class facilitators and work hard to help you get the most out of the programme."

Katy Samuels

HM Treasury

Why we're different:

WIG's approach to leadership development

At the heart of all our programmes, WIG’s leadership development framework sets out our values and approach to leadership and learning. Our aim is to encourage and enable the mindsets, actions and behaviours that leaders need in order to successfully navigate the complexities of 21st century leadership.

For nearly 40 years, we’ve been working collaboratively with public, private and not-for-profit organisations, helping leaders to gain cross-sector insight that enriches their personal and organisational performance.  That’s what makes WIG’s leadership development programmes different – a unique focus on cross-sector peer learning brings true diversity of ideas, encourages curiosity, openness and innovation and helps individuals and organisations to find inspiration and fresh ideas from others.

Our programmes complement an organisation’s in-house delivery, bringing fresh perspective from different sectors and expanding high-value professional networks.

Programme Information

Structure

Future Leaders is a five-month modular programme. It combines leadership theory with practical work to embed learning and refine new skills.

  • Introduction to the programme
  • Introduction to group and team dynamics
  • Introduction to voice and body language and their impact on colleagues/teams
  • Meet your project groups and your charity organisation

  • Ways to engage, motivate and communicate with colleagues
  • Building your confidence and presenting to the ‘room’
  • Delivery of messages and difficult messages
  • Mind mapping – designing and planning a talk/presentation
  • Note: This session will be virtual to allow us to experiment with virtual and hybrid formats for presenting and delivering messages.

  • Powerful persuasive presenting in small groups 
  • Exploring purpose and the power of 'why'
  • Leaders as coach workshop 

This is two mornings including lunch (afternoon of Day 1 or Day 2 to see your not-for-profit insight).

  • Putting it all together
  • Final presentation (putting learning into practice)
  • Leadership speaker, next steps and goal setting

As part of one of the programme, participants will collaborate on a real-world challenge for a not-for-profit organisation. 

Each participant will benefit from a one-to-one coaching session with an expert leadership coach to develop their individual skills and behaviours.  The session will be tailored to your needs and arranged for a time and date that suit you.

Programme team

David Willis is a professional voice coach and body language expert, he has worked with major public and private sector organisations and coached actors at both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Globe Theatre. He helps individuals and organisations to develop effective communication, influencing and relationship skills.

He has taught in many of London’s leading drama schools as well as in Europe the United States and South East Asia. David is an accredited NLP Master Practitioner, an NLP Coach, he is a qualified Master in Group Dynamics and is a Cardiac Coherence Trainer. David won a top speaker award by Vistage, an International Chief Executives' organisation, for being inspiring and motivational. He is also one of the few people in the UK licenced to evaluate Benziger profiles.

David Willis is a partner with Cmt and has regularly worked with WIG on a variety of programmes (including the Future Leaders Programme and Enhancing Your Leadership Presence) as well as a range of Masterclasses over many years.

Cathy is a leadership specialist as well as an experienced accredited executive coach, programme, and client director. With over 25 years’ global programme and project experience, Cathy works with executives, their teams and organisations to navigate ambiguity, thrive on innovation and collaboration to achieve fulfilment and impact for their organisations and society as a whole.  

Cathy was Head of Leadership at WIG for 3 years, designing, directing and facilitating collaborative cross sector leadership programmes, both Open Enrolment as well as Bespoke.  She was also a member of the WIG Senior Management Team.

Cathy spent over 16 years working in different global leadership development and partnership roles at the University of Cambridge, at the Business School and the Møller Institute, Churchill College. Her extensive global clients ranged from across private and Government sectors.  Cathy has developed a reputation for her ability to envision, conceptualise, design and deliver acclaimed new and innovative leadership programmes whilst attracting diverse cohorts of leaders to benefit from these programmes.  

Prior to this, she worked as a successful leader/manager in a variety of business development roles in organisations spanning the private, not-for-profit and public sectors.

Cathy holds an MA, an MBA and has recently completed an Advanced Diploma in Transformational Coaching for EMCC accreditation at Senior Practitioner level. She is a linguist with several language proficiencies, and a trained teacher.  She is a lifelong and constant learner in her leadership subject specialisms and is certified to deliver several leadership psychometric tools.

Gina serves as Programmes Manager and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) Champion at WIG, drawing from nearly a decade of experience in the international NGO sector. With a strong focus on promoting gender equality, Gina has worked extensively with organizations such as Amnesty International and Minority Rights Group.

At WIG, she leads initiatives like the Women's Leadership offer and bespoke programmes tailored for under-represented groups, nurturing their development for senior leadership roles and fostering inclusive organizational cultures.

Gina holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and History from Birkbeck, complemented by an MA in Human Rights. Outside of work, she finds joy in travel and spending quality time with loved ones.

Fees

  • WIG member fee: £2,199+VAT.*
  • Non-member fee: £2,849+VAT.

Fees include all modules, one individual coaching session, membership of the WIG Alumni Network and all programme materials. It also includes a group dinner with fellow participants and course leaders at the end of one of the module 1. If you are from a not-for-profit and would like to discuss fees, please get in contact at [email protected]

WIG’s leadership development programmes are delivered through a blend of virtual and face-to-face learning within a stimulating and collaborative learning environment.

* For Government Campus users, our published prices and Government Campus prices differ. Please see the Government Campus booking spreadsheet for more details.

Learn more about membership here.

How to apply

For more information, register your interest or apply for a place on the Future Leaders programme, please get in touch with our leadership team using the 'Register your interest' link below. Or you can send in an application form straight away.

Application deadline: We advise applying before the deadline to have the best chance of securing a place. Our application review process ensures that we have a diverse mix of cross sector participants.

Deadline:

Final Deadline: 4 December 2023

(Early applications: 9 October 2023)

Early applications have their places confirmed shortly after the early application date, though we do not accept on a first-come-first-served basis, as we balance applications based on cross-sectoral mix.

For Civil Service participants: WIG’s leadership programmes are part of the Government Campus and Civil Service Learning and can be booked using the OTS (Off The Shelf) process via the helpdesk. Get in touch (via 'Register my interest' button below) if you need help or advice. Or use our Civil Service Learning link for further information.

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