Leading a Practice Program - 2026

Whether you’re stepping up into a leadership position or continuing to grow your practice, this 4-part program focuses on the practical skills needed to manage and support a team.

Designed for accountants and practice leaders, the Leading a Practice program helps develop leadership skills and build a more stable and effective team.

In this program, we cover:

• How to Lead a Small Team Without Losing Yourself

  • The colleague-to-leader switch — making the hard calls when your team is also close to you

  • Leading as yourself — from your values, without pretending to have all the answers. People follow who you are, not your title

  • Looking at life and career holistically — leading your team wholeheartedly without carrying the weight home

  • Managing the pressure when it all sits on you — a practical way to cut through the noise, find the real issue, and lead with a clear head

• How to Make Difficult Conversations Easier

  • Focus on the issue, not the person — how the words you choose keep a hard conversation constructive instead of personal

  • Preparing well — getting clear on the real issue, managing your own emotions, and going in with questions, not assumptions

  • Working through it together — listening to the emotion behind the words, staying empathetic, and the power of leading with "together"

  • Why avoiding it makes it worse — having the conversation early, before a small issue becomes a big one

• How to Retain Your Best People

  • People leave managers, not companies — how the relationship with you is the biggest factor in whether your best people stay

  • Your most reliable people are often the most at risk — how the best performers quietly burn out because they always deliver and never say no

  • The warning signs are subtle — especially in tax, where good people keep delivering right up until they leave. Learn to read the quiet withdrawal, not the work

  • What actually keeps them — ongoing recognition in the moment, protecting them from overload, and bringing them along with where the team is heading so they know they belong

• How to Build a Culture People Actually Want to Work In

  • Culture is the environment you create — and your people reflect it back. Their happiness, respect, and openness is the real measure of your culture

  • Give people room to own their work — let them shape how they do it and bring their own ideas, within clear boundaries. Creativity is in all of us; the leader's job is to make space for it

  • Culture is set by what you model and what you tolerate — it filters from the top down, so the standard you walk past is the standard you set. Calling out bad behaviour, not just rewarding good, is how people learn what's really acceptable

  • Make space for every voice — when everyone shares their ideas, people feel safe and start to understand how each other thinks. That's where real trust and team connection grow