Manager Effectiveness Workshops
For managers at every stage — from first-time people leaders to those wanting to lead with greater confidence and impact.
The transition from individual contributor to people manager is one of the biggest career shifts there is — and one of the most under-supported. Most new managers are promoted because they were excellent at their previous role, not because anyone has prepared them to lead people. And yet the expectations change overnight.
These workshops address that gap directly. Whether someone has just stepped into their first management role or has been managing for years but wants to lead with greater intention, visibility, and impact, there is something here for every stage of the manager's journey.
Each session is a half day, practical rather than theoretical, and tailored to the specific context of your organisation. They can be delivered as standalone workshops or sequenced into a manager development programme — with many organisations finding that two or three sessions delivered over several months creates a particularly powerful development arc.
From Colleague to Leader New to managing.
Being promoted into management is exciting. It can also be disorienting — suddenly you are responsible for the performance, development, and wellbeing of people you may have been peers with days before. The rules have changed, the expectations have changed, and nobody has told you exactly how.
This workshop addresses the fundamental mindset shift from individual contributor to people leader. It covers what new managers most need to know, do, and stop doing in their first months in the role — including how to build credibility quickly, how to have early conversations that set the right tone, and how to avoid the most common mistakes that derail new managers before they've found their feet.
Participants leave with a clearer picture of what good people leadership actually looks like, practical tools for the first weeks and months, and the beginnings of their own leadership identity.
Half or full day — suitable for new and first-time managers, ideally delivered within the first six months of stepping into people leadership. Works well as part of a structured onboarding programme for new managers, or as a standalone session for someone who's been in role a while but never had the foundation.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael Watkins — the definitive guide to navigating transitions into new roles. Widely used by organisations onboarding new leaders at every level.
Go deeper: Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership by Linda Hill — Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill's landmark research on the experience of becoming a manager for the first time. One of the most rigorous academic treatments of this transition available.
Watch: Everyday Leadership — Drew Dudley, TED 2010. A short, powerful talk that reframes leadership as something anyone can practice from day one — not a destination you eventually reach.
Own the Room Establishing yourself as a manager and leader
The first transition is stepping into management. The second — often harder — is stepping into leadership. Moving from managing tasks and people to shaping culture, setting direction, and building a team identity that outlasts any individual.
This workshop is for managers who are past the initial transition but still finding their feet as leaders. It explores how to build genuine credibility with your team, how to develop your own leadership style rather than copying someone else's, and how to start showing up with intention rather than instinct.
Participants leave with a clearer sense of their own leadership identity, practical strategies for building credibility and influence, and a plan for how they want to show up differently.
Half or full day — suitable for managers in their first one to three years who have found their footing in the day-to-day but haven't yet fully stepped into their leadership identity. Also valuable for experienced managers who want to lead with greater intention and less instinct.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra — challenges the assumption that you need to know who you are before you can lead differently. Ibarra's research shows that identity follows action, which reframes what it means to step into your leadership.
Go deeper: Leadership Identity Development — Herminia Ibarra & Mark Hunter, Harvard Business Review, 2007. Research on how managers develop a genuine leadership identity over time, and what accelerates or delays that process.
Watch: The Power of Believing You Can Improve — Carol Dweck, TED 2014. The growth mindset talk from the Stanford psychologist whose research underpins much of how we think about development, identity, and the belief that we can change.
Own Your Story Personal brand and leadership presence.
How you show up — the impression you create, the reputation you build, the way you're known inside your organisation — shapes your career more than most managers realise. And yet most people leave it to chance, assuming that good work will speak for itself.
It rarely does.
This workshop helps leaders develop an intentional personal brand — understanding how they're currently perceived, how they want to be known, and what specific actions will close the gap. It covers visibility, communication, and presence in a way that feels authentic rather than performative, helping leaders build a reputation that genuinely reflects who they are and what they bring.
Half or full day — suitable for managers and leaders at all levels. Particularly valuable for those who are capable and credible but not yet visible in the way their career requires, and for managers preparing for the next step who need to shape how they're perceived before the opportunity arrives.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future by Dorie Clark — a practical, research-informed guide to building a professional reputation with intention. Clark's website has supporting tools and assessments.
Go deeper: How Leaders Create and Use Networks — Herminia Ibarra & Mark Hunter, Harvard Business Review, 2007. Research on the relationship between networks, visibility, and leadership effectiveness — directly relevant to how personal brand translates into career progression.
Watch: How to Speak So That People Want to Listen — Julian Treasure, TED 2013. A practical and accessible guide to the vocal and communication habits that shape how others perceive and respond to you.
High Standards, Human Approach Holding your team accountable.
Accountability is one of the most consistently cited challenges for managers at every level — and one of the least well addressed in traditional management training. Most managers either avoid the conversation entirely, or have it in a way that damages the relationship without solving the problem.
This workshop gives managers the language, frameworks, and confidence to hold their team to high standards with consistency and care. It covers how to set expectations clearly from the outset, how to have the conversation when they're not met, and how to build a team culture where accountability is understood as a shared value rather than a managerial imposition.
Participants leave with practical scripts and frameworks for the specific accountability conversations they've been avoiding, and a clearer sense of how to hold standards without tipping into micromanagement or blame.
Half or full day — suitable for people managers at all levels. Particularly valuable for managers who are avoiding a specific accountability conversation, for new managers who haven't yet had to hold someone to account, and for organisations where a culture of low accountability has quietly taken hold.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier — a practical, evidence-informed guide to the kind of coaching conversations that build accountability and self-direction in teams. One of the most accessible and immediately applicable leadership books available.
Go deeper: Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behaviour by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny et al. — the companion to Crucial Conversations, focused specifically on accountability conversations and how to have them effectively.
Watch: Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe — Simon Sinek, TED 2014. Makes the case that genuine accountability and genuine psychological safety are not opposites — and that the best managers create both simultaneously.
The Relationship That Shapes Your Career Managing upwards.
Your relationship with your own manager is one of the most important — and most neglected — relationships in your professional life. How you manage that relationship upwards shapes your visibility, your opportunities, and your ability to get things done for your team.
This workshop gives managers practical tools for navigating the relationship with their own manager more effectively — how to communicate upwards in a way that builds credibility, how to influence decisions without overstepping, and how to manage the political dynamics of the organisation without compromising integrity.
It also addresses the broader skill of stakeholder management — how to map, prioritise, and nurture the relationships that matter most to your success and your team's success.
Half or full day — suitable for managers and mid-level leaders navigating complex organisational dynamics, a difficult relationship with their own manager, or a stakeholder landscape they're not yet managing with enough intention.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: Managing Your Boss — John Gabarro & John Kotter, Harvard Business Review, 2005. The classic HBR article on the relationship between manager and direct report — one of the most widely read articles in the publication's history and still entirely relevant.
Go deeper: Influence Without Authority by Allan R. Cohen & David L. Bradford — the Exchange Model of influence applies directly to managing upwards. A rigorous framework for getting what you need from people who have more power than you.
Watch: How to Manage for Collective Creativity — Linda Hill, TED 2014. Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill on what it takes to lead in complex organisations — including how to build the relationships that make collective success possible.
Having Performance Conversations Say what needs to be said.
Performance conversations are the ones most managers put off longest, handle most carefully, and feel most relieved to have survived — usually without having said the thing that actually needed to be said. The underperforming team member does not know they are underperforming. The manager is increasingly frustrated. The rest of the team is watching and drawing their own conclusions about what gets tolerated here.
This workshop gives managers the skills and the practice to have performance conversations that are direct, fair, and genuinely useful to the person on the receiving end. Participants work through real scenarios with skilled facilitation and leave ready to act — not just more aware that they should. A well-handled performance conversation is one of the most developmental things a manager can do for someone. Most managers have never been taught how to do it.
Half or full day — suitable for managers and leaders at all levels who manage people. Particularly valuable for managers avoiding a specific conversation, for new managers who have not yet had to have one, and for organisations where performance management culture has become either too avoidant or too bureaucratic.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time(Berkley, 2002). Still the most direct and practical guide to having the conversations that matter.
Go deeper: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny et al., Crucial Accountability(McGraw Hill, 2nd edition 2013). The practical companion to the performance conversation, focused on what to do when commitments are broken.
Read: Harvard Business Review, "The Feedback Fallacy"Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall, March 2019.
Making Meetings Work Stop meeting. Start deciding.
The average knowledge worker spends between a third and a half of their working week in meetings. A significant proportion of those meetings should not exist. Many of those that should exist are badly designed, poorly chaired, and end without clear decisions or accountability. Most people in the room know this. Almost nobody says so out loud. Meeting culture is team culture in miniature — who speaks, whose ideas land, whether people leave with energy or without it.
This workshop gives teams the honest diagnosis and the practical tools to fix it. Participants audit their current meeting diet, build a clear framework for deciding when a meeting is actually the right tool, and leave with concrete changes and team agreements to implement immediately. Most effective when delivered to the whole team — the habits that make meetings work require everyone's participation, not just the person running them.
Half day — suitable for whole teams and managers at any level who want to spend less time in meetings and get more from the ones they keep.
Fuel your thinking
Start here: Patrick Lencioni, Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (Jossey-Bass, 2004). Provocative and practical. Makes the case for why most meetings are broken — and exactly what to do about it.
Go deeper: Steven Rogelberg, The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance(Oxford University Press, 2019). The most rigorous and evidence-based book on meeting design and leadership.
Read: Harvard Business Review, "Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?" Paul Axtell, March 2015.
Not sure where to start?
How to choose the right workshop for your managers.
If you're not sure which workshop is right for your managers, here are a few starting points:
If you have managers who are new to the role and finding the transition hard, start with From Colleague to Leader — it addresses the most common challenges of the first months in management directly.
If your managers are past the early transition but still haven't fully stepped into their leadership identity, Own the Room is the right next step.
If your managers are invisible or underestimated despite being capable, Own Your Story gives them the tools to change that.
If accountability conversations are being avoided or handled badly, High Standards, Human Approach is the most direct intervention.
If performance conversations specifically are the issue — underperformance, PIPs, difficult feedback — Having Performance Conversations goes deeper on exactly that, including practice in the room.
If your managers are struggling to influence upwards or navigate organisational dynamics, The Relationship That Shapes Your Career addresses that specifically.
If your organisation is drowning in meetings that produce more process than progress, Making Meetings Work is most effective when delivered to a whole management community so the culture shifts together rather than one manager at a time.
And if you're not sure — that's what the ignition conversation is for. Tell us where your managers are and we'll help you work out where to start.
These workshops work powerfully as standalone sessions and even more powerfully in sequence. Many organisations find that delivering three or four of these sessions over six to nine months — with peer learning and reflection built in between — creates an impactful manager development programme rather than a one-off training day.
If you're interested in building something more sustained for your management community, get in touch and we can design something specifically for your organisation.
Looking for something different?
If your focus is on developing your senior leaders rather than your managers, our Leadership Development Workshops cover confidence, influence, resilience, and courageous conversations for mid-level and senior leaders.
If you're looking to work on how your whole team operates together — trust, conflict, communication, and performance — our Team Development Workshops are designed for exactly that.
Or browse the full workshop catalogue to see everything we offer.
Ready to invest in your managers?
Every workshop starts with a brief conversation to understand your leaders, your context, and what you want to be different. That conversation is free, takes thirty minutes, and means that what we design is right for your people rather than just right in general.
“Kate’s expertise in facilitating an engaging agenda, guiding discussions - and keeping them on track - fostered collaboration amongst a diverse group of senior leaders. The experience was exceptional.”
