Audience
- Managers taking responsibility across functions or locations.
- Team leaders preparing for wider strategic influence.
- Experienced professionals who want to examine and improve their leadership practice.
Programme module · Kent Business College
Strategic Leadership
Level 7 module 2: examine leadership, influence, culture and ethical judgement through 14 weekly online sessions and reflective practice.
Learning with a practical purpose.
Lead when a decision crosses teams, interests and established habits. Strategic Leadership examines how people exercise influence, how teams respond and how leadership contributes to organisational results. You compare explanations of leadership, test them against a demanding case and develop a response that recognises context rather than relying on a preferred personal style.
Kent Business College, UK, delivers 14 weekly two-hour sessions: 28 live hours. This original indicative teaching plan combines case discussion, practical rehearsal and critical reflection around the Strategic Leadership subject. It supports preparation for coursework; the issued OTHM assignment brief determines what must be assessed. Reading, directed activities and written work are additional parts of the learning plan.
Live onlineTeaching through Kent Business College, UK
2 hoursOne live session each teaching week
14 sessionsA semester for each module
28 live hoursPer module, plus independent study
The outline below is a 14-session online module, with one two-hour live session each teaching week. Reading weeks, breaks and additional activities follow the agreed cohort calendar. The cohort syllabus, full route, dates, fees, independent study and assessment requirements are confirmed before enrolment.
Who this module is designed for.
Starting knowledge and preparation
- Bring experience of working with teams, or engage critically with the supplied case.
- Be willing to discuss uncertainty, feedback and alternative explanations of behaviour.
- KBC confirms admission requirements for your chosen qualification route.
What you will work towards.
- Compare leadership approaches using the demands of a specific situation.
- Analyse formal authority, informal influence and the needs of different team members.
- Evaluate leadership’s contribution to performance without ignoring other causes.
- Defend a leadership response to a difficult organisational choice.
- Design a focused development action with observable feedback and review.
Explore the 14-session learning plan.
Explore the focus and practical output of each teaching session. Open individual sessions below, or expand the complete plan.
Session 01 The strategic responsibility of leadership
Examine a decision that cannot be solved by one manager issuing instructions. Clarify the relationship between leadership, management and accountability, and identify the people whose contribution makes the strategy possible.
Practical output: A leadership challenge statement and stakeholder context.
Session 02 Traits, behaviours and the evidence
Compare explanations based on personal qualities and observable behaviour. Test them against contrasting leaders in the case, asking what each explanation helps you understand and what it leaves unresolved.
Practical output: A comparative analysis with strengths and limitations.
Session 03 Context and situational judgement
Change the team’s experience, urgency or task uncertainty and reconsider the leadership response. Examine why an approach that is useful in one setting may frustrate progress in another.
Practical output: A context-based leadership response matrix.
Session 04 Commitment, direction and transformation
Explore the balance between clear expectations, reliable follow-through and a compelling future direction. Assess how leaders can mobilise effort without making promises the organisation cannot support.
Practical output: A justified approach to leading a strategic initiative.
Session 05 Relationships, trust and authenticity
Investigate how leaders form different relationships across a team. Consider access, consistency and credibility, and test whether a claim of authenticity explains how people actually experience a leader’s behaviour.
Practical output: A relationship review and an improvement commitment.
Session 06 Groups, teams and shared responsibility
Distinguish a collection of individual contributors from a team with interdependent work. Examine purpose, roles, norms and coordination, and decide what the leader should do to support collective performance.
Practical output: A team effectiveness diagnosis and working agreement.
Session 07 Informal influence and organisational politics
Map influence beyond the organisation chart. Explore expertise, relationships and informal groups, then consider how to involve influential colleagues while keeping the decision process clear and accountable.
Practical output: An influence map and engagement approach.
Session 08 Conflict, voice and difficult conversations
Rehearse a conversation in which two functions disagree about a strategic priority. Surface the underlying concern, invite challenge and distinguish a useful disagreement from behaviour that prevents progress.
Practical output: A conversation plan and observer feedback record.
Session 09 Leadership and organisational performance
Examine a performance change and compare possible explanations. Decide what evidence would support a leadership contribution, while considering resources, market conditions, team capability and measurement quality.
Practical output: A leadership-to-performance argument with limitations.
Session 10 Culture and the signals leaders send
Compare stated values with decisions about time, rewards and tolerated behaviour. Identify a contradiction in the case and design a leadership action that makes the intended culture more credible.
Practical output: A culture diagnosis and specific leadership action.
Session 11 Ethical judgement and competing responsibilities
Work through a choice that creates different consequences for employees, customers and the organisation. Explain the principles, information and accountability needed to make and communicate a defensible decision.
Practical output: A reasoned decision note and stakeholder explanation.
Session 12 Leading change across boundaries
Coordinate an initiative involving several teams with different priorities. Sequence conversations, decisions and support, and adapt the response when feedback reveals a barrier the original plan overlooked.
Practical output: A cross-team leadership and change plan.
Session 13 Personal practice and development
Review feedback alongside a specific example of your own practice or the case leader’s behaviour. Select one achievable development priority and define an action and review method that can reveal progress.
Practical output: A development experiment with evidence and review points.
Session 14 Leadership review and professional defence
Present your evaluation and recommendation to peers with competing viewpoints. Respond to a changed condition, explain the limits of the preferred approach and improve the final argument after discussion.
Practical output: A revised leadership evaluation and next-step commitment.
Apply the learning
Meridian Technical Services: leading a shared transition
In this original fictional case, regional teams must adopt a shared service model while protecting customer relationships and specialist expertise. Senior leaders disagree about pace and responsibility. Evaluate the leadership problem from more than one perspective, rehearse a difficult conversation and recommend an approach with a clear method of review. A permitted workplace context can be used where the learning brief allows.
Your project evidence can include
- A comparative evaluation of leadership approaches in context.
- An analysis of team dynamics, influence and organisational consequences.
- A defended response to a difficult decision and a practical engagement plan.
- A focused development action and evidence-based review approach.
Use anonymised, public or suitable synthetic material where workplace information is confidential. The issued assessment brief confirms the required evidence.
Assessment, feedback and certification.
- Formative feedback on comparative reasoning, case interpretation and practical choices.
- Observed discussion and rehearsal to test how a proposed response works.
- A preparation paper integrating theory, organisational evidence and recommendations.
- The issued OTHM coursework is assessed against its criteria; workshop participation supports learning but does not establish unit achievement.
Kent Business College, UK, delivers the teaching. OTHM unit achievement requires the issued coursework to meet every applicable assessment criterion, with centre assessment and OTHM external verification.
Use theory to examine an action
A theory becomes useful when it changes the question you ask. One perspective may draw attention to the leader’s behaviour; another to the task, relationships or distribution of influence. You practise comparing these explanations around the same incident before selecting a response.
The evaluation should also acknowledge uncertainty. A team’s result can change for several reasons, and a positive reaction to a speech does not show that the strategy has been understood. The workshops ask what people did next, whose experience differs and what additional evidence would strengthen the conclusion.
- Compare explanations using the same incident.
- Connect proposed behaviour with a specific organisational need.
- Consider a credible counterargument before concluding.
Make reflection lead to a practical change
Choose a development action small enough to test. For example, redesign one decision meeting so that alternatives are discussed before the leader states a preference. Record how the meeting was run and seek specific feedback on participation and decision quality.
The aim is a learning cycle you can repeat: identify a behaviour, change it deliberately, observe what follows and review alternative explanations. This work connects with the people and strategy modules, and can inform the additional KBC Applied Strategy and Leadership Studio without creating extra OTHM credits.
Questions worth asking.
Will the module identify my ideal leadership style?
It develops judgement about context, people and responsibilities. You compare approaches and test choices rather than treating one style as the answer to every situation.
Is this useful if I do not have a senior title?
Leadership can involve influence across a project or team. KBC will discuss your experience and qualification eligibility, and the case activities allow you to examine decisions beyond your current role.
How do live hours relate to the qualification?
The module has 28 scheduled live hours within a wider plan. The OTHM unit specifies 100 GLH and 200 TQT; the full six-unit diploma totals 120 credits, 600 GLH and 1,200 TQT.
Is the development experiment an issued OTHM assignment?
It is a proposed learning activity. Your actual assignment brief sets the submission and marking requirements, and the tutor confirms which evidence is appropriate.
Programme references.
Further reading and programme references · reviewed 18 October 2026