🔎 Session Summary
This session tackled a hard truth:
Leadership programmes are not dead.
But on their own, they rarely work.
The problem is not the quality of training.
It is everything around it.
We explored why manager development keeps failing, what needs to exist before you even think about running a programme, and what must happen after if you want it to stick.
The big theme throughout:
This is systemic work, not a one-off event.
🧱 Before You Even Think About Running a Programme: The Foundations
A huge theme was this: organisations jump to solutions too quickly.
Jess described how companies often ask for a leadership programme before properly understanding their problem. The real work starts in discovery.
Common root issues that surface
- No clear role definition for managers
- Managers promoted from IC roles with no reset of expectations
- No clarity on how much time should be spent managing vs doing
- Conflicting priorities from leadership
- No line of sight between company goals and team work
- Managers not measured on being managers
💡 John highlighted a major gap:
Managers often do not receive meaningful performance feedback about how they manage from their manager.
And in many companies, beautifully written role definitions exist but bear no resemblance to reality.
What you could do next 💡
- Audit your manager role design. Is it actually doable? Does it even exist yet?
- If you need an example template you might like this one here
- Define percentage time expectations for management vs IC work
- Add explicit manager behaviours into performance reviews
- Run a simple “week in the life” review with managers to see where time really goes
- Check whether your leadership team is aligned on what good management looks like
Bottom Line: You need to establish whether you’ve designed the role of manager properly first, and make sure you’re hiring the right people for that role before any form of investment in training.
🚀 Why Programmes Fail After Delivery
🎯 John summed it up bluntly:
You deliver the programme.
Nothing changes.
Old habits creep back in.
The session made it clear that most programmes fail because they end at delivery.
💡 Becky talked about the 70-20-10 model and flipped it:
10 percent is formal learning
20 percent is social learning
70 percent is experiential (on the job)
If your programme only delivers the 10 percent, behaviour change will not stick.
Learning must continue inside the system, this takes designing from the result; backwards. ♻️
🔄 So What Actually Makes Learning Stick
Three big levers emerged.
1️⃣ Social reinforcement
Things like:
Action learning sets.
Communities of practice.
Manager meetups.
Buddy systems.
Managers coaching each other.
Sharing real challenges.
Reflecting together.
Managers’ managers understanding and supporting the transfer back to work
Ultimately: Without that social layer, learning drops quickly.
2️⃣ Leadership buy-in
If the senior team is not visibly prioritising manager development, it will quietly die.
✨ Jess was clear:
You need leadership singing from the same hymn sheet.
That means:
- Asking managers about their development in 1 to 1s
- Removing friction in the system
- Prioritising time for learning
- Reinforcing behaviours publicly
- Role modelling the behaviours trained
If leadership sees it as “extra”, so will managers.
3️⃣ Accountability
🎯 Adam made a strong point in the session:
If managers are not measured on management, it will not happen.
If one to ones matter, tie them to performance.
If coaching matters, measure it.
If enabling teams matters, assess it.
Otherwise it remains optional.
What you could do next 💡
- Explore the idea of Action Learning Sets or the Community of Practice model to help with social reinforcement & momentum.
- Add manager-specific metrics into performance frameworks
- Create a before, during, after guide for manager’s managers
- Tie core manager habits like one to ones directly to performance review outcomes
📊 If You’re Starting Without Budget: A Data-Led Approach
💡 John shared a very practical ramp-up model for companies that cannot afford a big programme.
Start with data.
Run a team health check.
Surface where teams feel blocked.
Identify systemic friction.
Quantify the commercial impact.
Then bring managers together around shared data.
That becomes your entry point into a community of practice.
No big spend required.
💡 The key idea:
Anchor development in commercial impact, not ‘fluffy’ HR terms that don’t speak directly to people.
Jess reinforced this with a powerful framing:
“If you are paying a salary, what is the return on that investment?”
Managers are the multiplier on salary ROI.
That language resonates with leadership teams far more than fluffy HR metrics.
What you could do next 💡
- Quantify cost of attrition linked to poor management
- Run a lightweight team health pulse (see below for Team Health Checks)
- Use that data to create your business case
- Pilot a manager community before scaling
🎯 The Big Idea
Leadership development is not a one-off event, but never-ending loop.
If you fix the role design, the expectations, the accountability and the social reinforcement, programmes can be powerful.
If you don’t, even the best content will fade, alongside your budgets!
📋 A Useful Checklist
- We have defined what a manager looks like, here (and documented it for all to see)
- People are clear on the split between IC:Manager responsibilities
- People are clear on the top ~3 accountabilities & success measures of a manager
- We’ve fed these into our performance measurement practices
- We have a formal process for identifying & hiring managers that meets the same bar as the rest of our hiring
- We have a manager handbook to help support new & developing managers with the resources they need to do their job
- We have the right structures in place to support continuous development post training (e.g. Community of practice / action learning sets)
- We have a clear process in place to manage underperformance in managers
- We have a system in place to stay close to team health and manager performance day to day (e.g. team health checks)