Service Desk Team Leader
Virtual - Login from anywhere
01st - 02nd December 2026 (2 Days)
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM GMT
Overview
Transforming Senior Analysts into Effective Team Leaders
Becoming a Team Leader is one of the biggest steps in a Service Desk career. Overnight, your success stops being about the tickets you resolve and starts being about how well your team performs, how consistently it delivers and how people feel about coming to work. The Service Desk Team Leader (SDTL) course gives you the skills, tools and confidence to make that step a success.
This two-day, highly interactive course focuses on the day-to-day realities of the role. It covers leading former peers, holding one-to-ones, coaching, managing performance, having difficult conversations, planning resources and reporting on your team’s performance. Around half of the course is practical: role plays, coaching practice, case studies and real-time simulations, all set in a realistic Service Desk.
The course is aligned to the SDTL Professional Standard and the SDI Global Best Practice Standard for Service Desk V9. It uses the same definitions as SDI’s Service Desk Analyst (SDA) and Service Desk Manager (SDM) qualifications, so you have a clear, consistent career path.
“The Service Desk Institute is a globally recognised organisation, advocating the highest levels of performance and service within our industry.” – Patrycja Sobera, Unisys.
This training course supports the senior analyst’s career progression by developing their knowledge of industry best practice, preparation for the roles and responsibilities of a Team Leader role and skill development and enhancement to better support Service Desk teams and functions.
The Senior Analyst to Team Leader course provides a bridge between the Service Desk Analyst and the Service Desk Manager qualifications.
Prefer to run this course in-house? This training course can also be tailored for in-house delivery for focused groups or project teams at your premises or virtually. Find out more by visiting our bespoke and in-house training page.
Course Content
This practical two-day course consists of nine core modules:
This practical two-day course is made up of nine interactive lessons:
- Leading Yourself and Your Team – The Team Leader role, the move from analyst to leader, leadership styles, emotional intelligence, decision making, Challenger safety and leading change.
- Strategy, Stakeholders and Ethics – Turning the Service Desk strategy into team goals, mapping and engaging stakeholders, managing competing requests, ethics and ESG.
- One-to-Ones, Feedback and Coaching – Recruitment and onboarding, structured one-to-ones, S.M.A.R.T objectives, feedback models, coaching with GROW, skills matrices and succession planning.
- Performance, Difficult Conversations and Teams – The performance management cycle, capability and conduct, improvement plans, difficult conversations, mediating conflict, absence management and building high-performing teams.
- Engagement, Inclusion and Well-being – Motivation, inclusive leadership and neurodiversity, well-being and resilience, leading hybrid teams and improving retention.
- Resources, Workforce and AI – Using demand data, shrinkage and resource scheduling, intraday management, fair allocation of work and leading an AI-enabled team.
- Quality, Processes and the Customer Experience – Process adherence, quality monitoring and calibration, the Team Leader’s role in major incidents, continual improvement and building a customer-focused team.
- Performance Analysis and Reporting – KPIs and XLAs, Goodhart’s Law, trend and root cause analysis, watermelon reporting, exception reporting and RAG status.
- Bringing It Together – A realistic Team Leader “in-tray” simulation and your personal 90-day plan.
Who Should Attend
This course is for new and aspiring Team Leaders, supervisors and senior analysts who lead people in a Service Desk or IT support environment. It’s ideal for anyone preparing to step into a leadership role, or already leading a team with or without the formal title.
Outcomes
By the end of the course, delegates will be able to:
- Explain the Team Leader role and manage the move from analyst to leader, including leading former peers
- Hold effective one-to-ones, give feedback and coach team members using proven models such as SBI and GROW
- Manage performance fairly and hold difficult conversations with confidence
- Plan resources, build rotas and manage the queue in real time
- Engage stakeholders, manage competing priorities and say no constructively
- Analyse team performance, spot “watermelon” reporting and produce clear management reports
- Motivate the team, lead inclusively, support well-being and lead change, including AI adoption
- Create a personal 90-day plan to put the learning into practice
Requirements
This is not a pre-recorded webinar and you will need:
- A computer with a webcam (We ask that webcams are turned on throughout the duration of the course.)
- Microphone/headset
- High-speed internet connection
- Ensure you connect 15 minutes before the session starts and log-in as a guest.
To help with the set-up, please download the Adobe Quick Start Guide.
Preparation
Prior to attending the online course, delegates will receive a workbook of Student Notes which includes a course outline and learning outcomes.
In addition, delegates are given details of the virtual room to test their setup before the training begins.
Virtual - Login from anywhere
01st - 02nd December 2026 (2 Days)
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM GMT
£975 each (exc. VAT)
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Kylie Lindsay, Head of Training & Development, SDI
- Virtual - Login from anywhere
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01st - 02nd December 2026
(2Days)
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM GMT
-
£975 (exc. VAT)
What Would You Like To Do Next?
Service Desk Team Leader
- Virtual - Login from anywhere
-
01st - 02nd December 2026 (2 Days)
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM GMT
-
£975 (exc. VAT)