Leadership development for the layer underneath your senior team
Designed programmes for a dozen to a hundred managers, built around your own capability framework and run in cohorts over six to twelve months.
Most organisations I work with have a senior team that has had development and a layer of managers underneath who haven’t, or had it once, three years ago, before the budget went. The engagement survey says leadership. The senior team says the managers aren’t stepping up. The managers say nobody told them what stepping up looks like here.
A programme fixes that when it does three things: builds the same habits across a whole group at once, ties every module to what the organisation actually needs from its leaders, and gives people something to do differently on Monday rather than a model to admire.
Who this is for
Leaders who were good at the job they were promoted from and now have to lead the people doing it. A new tier of heads of department. A group being readied for partnership or the senior team. The operational leadership group that sits between the executive and the front line. Most programmes I run are for a single cohort of them; the same design scales to a whole manager population when that’s what’s needed.
What a programme looks like
No two programmes I’ve run have the same shape, because the organisations didn’t. What stays the same is the sequence.
It starts with conversations, not content
I meet each participant one to one before anything is designed, and write up the themes for the sponsor. That synthesis decides what the programme works on, which is usually a shorter list than the one in the brief.
Group and individual work, in a rhythm
Peers build the shared language and hold each other to account; individual sessions make it personal to each leader’s live situation. The balance between the two, and the spacing, depend on how many people there are, how senior they are, and how much time the organisation can give. There’s always time between sessions to try something. Each stage feeds the next, so it’s a programme with an arc rather than a series of events.
Measured, and reported to the sponsor
Feedback after every session, reflective surveys through the programme, and a 360 at the start and end where the group is senior enough to warrant it. We meet regularly to look at what’s shifting and adjust.
Three programmes, three shapes
Seven leaders in a founder-led consultancy
A diagnostic conversation with each, a synthesis to the people team, then two half-day workshops with a coaching session for every leader after each one. A few months, start to finish.
Fourteen directors at a time in a national accountancy group
The firm’s next advisory partners, selected with a sponsor and a business case. A psychometric profile and 360 before day one, six face-to-face modules over nine months, and a pitch of their business ideas to the board at the end. Five cohorts over four years.
Sixty senior leaders in a national children’s charity
Nine modules over nine months, content through a learning portal with a facilitated session each month, six cohorts in staggered waves over eighteen months. The charity came back four years later for a second wave covering its senior tier and seventy first-line managers.
How you’ll know it’s working
I measure every programme and report to the sponsor, not just to the participants. Reflective surveys at the start, three, six and nine months track whether people are doing anything differently. Feedback after every session tells us which modules land and which need rewriting. The start and end 360s show whether the people around them noticed. And we meet quarterly to look at all of it alongside your own engagement and retention data and decide what to change.
I won’t promise you a percentage. I will show you what changed and what didn’t, and tell you why.
What it asks of you
A sponsor who stays close to it, someone who owns scheduling and recruitment of the cohort, content review turned round promptly, and a senior team that takes part in its own development rather than commissioning it for everyone else.
I’ll be honest about the trade-off at the start: the more of the administration you carry, the less you pay me for.
When this is the right answer
When the senior team is broadly aligned and the next step is building the same leadership habits in the tier underneath it. When you want change that holds over months, not a day everyone enjoys and nobody remembers. And when there’s a sponsor with the time and standing to keep it on the agenda, because a programme that’s optional changes nothing.
If it’s the senior team itself that needs to work differently, start with team coaching instead, and I’ll say so.
How it’s priced
Each programme is priced as a fixed fee for the shape we agree, so you know the total before it starts. Larger programmes are priced per cohort and can run across financial years.