Turn the authority of your role into real influence — and grow it, level by level, from position to lasting legacy. Build the professional judgement to apply this capability confidently in consequential management and leadership decisions.
Meet the course lead and explore the practical focus, learning experience, and professional value of this course.
Enroll in this course →Plenty of managers can name the qualities of a good leader. Far fewer can say, person by person, why their own team follows them — or what to do about it
A promotion hands you authority, and authority buys compliance. What it does not buy is the willing, productive followership that makes a team move — the initiative offered unasked, the hard truth surfaced early, the result delivered because people want it to happen. Leading harder from the role tends to produce resistance, not results, and the gap between the authority you hold and the influence you have is where most leadership frustration lives.
The gap is in the diagnosis. Leadership is among the most written-about subjects in management and among the hardest to act on, because generic advice cannot tell you where you actually stand. In practice it becomes a resolution to be more inspiring rather than a specific move with a specific person: a plan that fits no real relationship, a target pitched at the summit while the next honest step goes untaken, admiration for other people’s leadership with no growth of one’s own.
This course closes that gap by making you produce the artifact. Each lesson explains one level or move and shows it worked through on a running case — Nadia, a newly promoted department head — then hands the work to you on your own relationship, with a published rubric to check yourself against. By the close you hold a person-by-person map of your influence and a level-by-level plan tested for realism, relationship, results and reproduction.
Most leadership courses tell you what good leaders do. This one gives you a diagnostic for the influence you actually have — and a plan to grow it
You choose one leadership relationship in the opening lessons — a team you lead, a single report, or a group you chair — and every lesson applies to it. The output is not a certificate of attendance but a defended plan to grow your influence with people you actually lead.
The Five Levels is taught here as an instrument. Each lesson works one level or move on a running case and then on your own relationship, and the quality rubric your plan is measured against is published in the first module, so the standard is visible from the start. You finish with a diagnosis and a plan, not a set of inspiring quotations.
The course is candid that the Five Levels is a practitioner model valued for clarity, not a peer-reviewed theory, and it grounds the model’s core claims in the scholarly research on power and credibility. Knowing the status of the evidence behind a framework is part of using it well, and that honesty is built into every module.
Every MMI course includes a course-specific interactive Practice Toolkit—original Monarch intellectual property developed by Monarch faculty to support its learning objectives. Use the toolkit to apply key concepts, practise professional judgement and produce work you can carry into practice.
Discover Monarch Practice Toolkits →You can name the five levels, the reason people follow at each, and the level you occupy with a given person You can explain the upside and the ceiling of positional leadership and recognize the trap of over-using authority You can build relational permission deliberately and name the difference between positional and personal power
You will learn to name the five levels, the reason people follow at each, and the level you occupy with a given person. You will learn to explain the upside and the ceiling of positional leadership and recognize the trap of over-using authority. You will learn to build relational permission deliberately and name the difference between positional and personal power. You will learn to turn relational trust into team results without spending the permission that made them possible. You will learn to audit your influence map for over-assumed, lapsed and reset levels and take the right next step. You will learn to produce a decision-ready, person-by-person diagnosis of where your influence stands.
You can explain the addition-to-multiplication shift and identify who you could develop as a leader You can plan the recruit–position–equip–empower sequence for a specific person on your team You can articulate what the Pinnacle requires, why it is rare, and one posture you can practice now
You will learn to explain the addition-to-multiplication shift and identify who you could develop as a leader. You will learn to plan the recruit–position–equip–empower sequence for a specific person on your team. You will learn to articulate what the Pinnacle requires, why it is rare, and one posture you will learn to practice now. You will learn to apply the legacy test to your leadership and name what you would develop to secure it. You will learn to draft a level-by-level growth plan with a matched next behavior for each key relationship. You will learn to produce and defend a justified, level-by-level plan to grow your influence — the course terminal outcome.
Dean of Student Development
Dr. Donald York is Monarch’s leadership specialist, bringing applied experience from high-stakes healthcare environments to the study of leadership, organisational culture and group dynamics. His professional background includes critical-care work in Montreal operating rooms and emergency wards, where he held direct responsibility for patient life support, as well as extensive healthcare instruction and multiple professional certifications. A Fellow of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada and Certified Management & Business Educator, he serves as Professor of Leadership Studies and Dean of Student Development, helping MMI participants translate leadership principles into credible action under real organisational pressure.
