The Psychology of Leadership
A one-day workshop exploring how people respond to leaders, interpret feedback, and experience accountability
a UCL Behavioural Insights Hub course - other training / workshops.
- Structure: one day (or adaptable to clients’ preferred schedule).
- Price: variable depending on team size etc.
- Location: In Person - @UCL, London or at clients’ location.
Contact us to enquire. Prefer a chat? Schedule a call.
The workshop
Leaders use feedback, performance reviews, and disciplinary systems to set standards and guide behaviour. But people do not respond to these systems in simple or predictable ways. They interpret them. They ask: Was this fair? What does this say about me? What does this say about my manager? Can I trust this process?
This workshop draws on cutting-edge psychological research to show how employees make sense of praise, criticism, targets, and sanctions. Participants will learn how everyday management decisions send powerful signals about values, intentions, and authority. We examine how well-designed signals can support motivation, learning, and trust and how poorly designed systems can create confusion, resentment, or disengagement.
The focus is on helping leaders and organisations use feedback and accountability in ways that are clear, fair, and constructive, rather than confusing, demoralising, or divisive.
Topics Covered
- How people interpret praise, criticism, and sanctions
- Why the same policy can trigger very different reactions
- How perceived motives shape responses to leadership decisions
- When sanctions support learning and when they backfire
- Action-focused vs person-focused accountability systems
- How transparency and explanation affect fairness and trust
- Why “costly” punishments do not always change behaviour
- How power and status influence how authority is perceived
- The risks of inconsistent or unclear performance systems
- Designing feedback and disciplinary processes that people accept and respect
This programme is delivered as a full-day workshop and can be adapted into modular half-day sessions.
This workshop is designed for:
- Senior leaders and executives
- Line managers and team leaders
- HR, compliance, and governance professionals
Learning and development teams
It is for participants who want to:
- Improve how feedback is understood and acted upon
- Hold people accountable without damaging morale
- Increase trust in leadership decisions
- educe conflict around performance management
- Build fair, transparent, and credible organisational systems
Meet the tutor:
Dr. Arunima Sarin
Investigates how people use rewards and punishments to teach, learn, and enforce social norms. Her research examines how individuals interpret feedback as a signal of values, intentions, and authority, and how these interpretations shape trust and behaviour in schools, organisations, and legal systems. Using behavioural experiments and computational models, she studies how punishment works as an effective teaching tool and when it risks creating resentment, misunderstanding, or social division
