[wpforms id="852" title="false"]

MANAGER TRAINING THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Trusted by…

Jaguar Landrover BBC Leeds Building Society WeTransfer Money Supermarket Logo 7 Logo 8 Microsoft Porsche Octopus Energy Frieze M&C Saatchi Logo 15

People don’t leave businesses,
they leave bad managers.


  • As many as 82% of new managers are what the CMI calls “accidental managers”, and have had no formal management or leadership training. The impact shows up in your exit interviews, your engagement scores and the quiet friction that slows teams down.

  • Our training creates sustained behaviour change with a measurable impact. We do this by combining mindset shifts with culture shifts, training that has been designed around the day-to-day realities of your managers and the specifics of your culture. We’re not generic training partners parachuted into your business who are one-and-done.

  • We work closely with CPOs, HRDs, L&D Teams and C-Suite Execs who want to level-up their management capability, creating a shared language across the organisation so that great leadership becomes the norm, not the exception.

Have you ever experienced the impact of a bad manager?

A Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and YouGov study revealed that almost a third of workers have left a job because of a negative relationship with a manager.¹ And there’s no shortage of evidence in exit interviews and employee surveys backing this up.

There’s a big gap when it comes to manager skill – but we also have a lot of empathy for managers.

They are under pressure of being a practitioner and delivering on their tasks, whilst also having to balance pastoral care. And most of the time they have been promoted without training or support.

In fact, as many as 82% of new managers are what the CMI calls “accidental managers”, and have had no formal management or leadership training.²

Our manager training programme is designed to support managers at all stages with fundamental skills that are proven to make a real difference in their work.

The programme

We’ve trained 1000s of managers in 44 countries for over 30 years and have distilled six themes that we believe are the most essential for a modern manager.

🤝

Mastering team dynamics

📢

Communication fundamentals

🎭

Situational leadership

💬

Giving feedback
that sticks

⚠️

Conflict and difficult conversations

🌡️

Performing under pressure

A team is more than the sum of its talent. There are hidden dynamics operating beneath the surface of every team that shape performance and most managers have never been taught to see them.

This session changes that. Managers will learn to identify and shape the invisible dynamics at play in their team, building a foundation of trust and psychological safety.

Who is on a team matters less than how the team interacts. Managers that understand this build teams with higher retention, collaboration and performance.

The ability to communicate effectively underpins every successful interaction at work. Connection has never been more important in our digital and hybrid world.

This practical session teaches something fundamental: that a small amount of time spent consciously developing ‘the basics’ can transform our personal impact. Pitches are more powerful, meetings are more efficient, teams are more effective.

Participants will master the fundamentals of communication, equipping them with the skills and behaviours to communicate with clarity and impact, and to influence decisions in the right way.

There is no single right way to manage. The most effective managers adapt their style to the person and the moment, knowing when to coach, when to direct, and when to step back.

Using Goleman’s six leadership styles as a framework, this session builds the self-awareness and flexibility that makes that possible.

The best managers aren’t the most authoritative. They’re the most adaptable.

Feedback is the foundation of growth and learning. Yet all too often we shy away from giving tough feedback or forget about positive reinforcement and only focus on ‘constructive criticism’.

In this session managers learn how to create a culture of healthy feedback within their team to accelerate everyone’s growth and performance.

They’ll learn key tools and frameworks to make giving feedback easier and completely rewire their belief that feedback is scary, seeing it instead as simply a coaching conversation.

Renowned leader Sheryl Sandberg once said: “The amount of progress that we make is directly proportional to the number of hard conversations that we’re willing to have.”

We know we need to embrace tough interactions at work, and yet every single day we avoid them to some extent. The cost of avoided conversations shows up everywhere: in disengagement, in resentment, in the people who leave without ever saying why.

This session transforms manager’s approach to conflict, giving them a concrete approach to difficult conversations and the confidence to engage in them early.

The true test of any development programme is what happens six months later, when the pressure is on and old habits are pulling people back.

This session is designed specifically for that moment. Managers leave with the tools to sustain their development when conditions get hard, embedding the learning from the whole programme into how they actually work day to day.

Organisations that invest in manager resilience protect the return on every other investment they make in their people.

Find out more

We’ve run this programme with

  • “I was proven wrong by the course”

    I’m a skeptical person but I was proven wrong by the course. There are so many things I’ve tried and they’ve worked! It was really useful and will have a positive impact on the way I work and relate to people moving forward.

  • “Wonderful and helpful sessions”

    I’ve not had training for many years. It was really insightful especially now I’m at a managerial level.

  • “I really enjoyed it!”

    In the past I’ve been cynical about short courses but the way it was structured and delivered is honestly very good.

  • “The best training I’ve received”

    Overall it was fantastic. It was all useful.

Still curious about the impact this could have on your business?

Bruce Daisley sat down with Anthony Painter from the Chartered Institute of Management to understand more about why managers are so often under-invested in and the impact this has on teams and productivity.

Arrange a call to learn more 📆

Let’s Chat about your managers

NOT READY TO START?

Download our free manager resource and get access to everything we’ve learned from training 1000s of managers in 44 countries for over 30 years, distilled into a handy Notion hub that you can bookmark and share.

© 2026 theSHIFT

Read our Privacy Policy

theSHIFT Consultancy Ltd
Unit 4.01
The Tea Building
56 Shoreditch High St
London
E1 6JJ