First-Time Leaders

What it is for

The best performer on a team is promoted to run it, and the skill that earned the promotion is not the skill the new job needs. Most organisations notice this a year later, when a good employee has quietly become an anxious manager.

How it runs

• Split the two half-days by a week, so what is practised in the first is tried on a real team before the second. A single unbroken day gives nothing to report back on.
• Practise the two conversations new managers avoid: giving corrective feedback, and handing over work they could do faster themselves.
• Rebuild their team meeting on the spot, so it ends in a decision and a named owner rather than in a round of updates.

What people leave with

• Each manager leaves with a written approach to the one team member they had been avoiding.
• The week's gap turns the second half-day into a review of what actually happened, not a continuation of a lecture.