Leadership training for new leaders
Set your new leaders up for success from the start
Businesses that trust me to lift their new leaders’ game
Have you given your new leaders the tools to succeed?
If new leaders are ineffective, it’s because they haven’t been given the right training and support. When you don’t train new leaders, your organisation experiences a negative ripple effect. New leaders suffer, their teams suffer, and you suffer as their boss because you have to fix the fallout.
Being a new leader can really suck
They feel alone
New leaders go from being one of the team to in charge. All their relationships change, and they haven’t yet established trusting relationships with their new peers.
They don’t know where to start
New leaders don’t know how to delegate, set goals, give feedback, or manage conflict, because nobody taught them those leadership skills. They lack the fundamentals to lead.
They feel overwhelmed
New leaders feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. Everything feels hard and everything feels important because they don’t know enough to prioritise.
They’re punished when they fail
Many new leaders are thrown in the deep end without swimming lessons. Then those same newbies are hauled over the coals for not leading well enough when they drown.
The sad truth is many new leaders are set up to fail
Would you take a job you’d never done before with no training or support?
Imagine going for a new role and the business says to you, “Here’s your job description. Hit all of your targets for the next three years, then, if you’re lucky, we might train you how to do the job.” Absurd, right?
But that’s what happens to new leaders everywhere, all the time.
Ineffective new leaders damage your business
82%
50%
33%
of new leaders don’t get any training
of workers who rate their manager ineffective plan to leave
of workers who rate their manager ineffective leave within the year
Stats from Chartered Management Institute 2023 report on the state of UK management and leadership, surveying 4,524 employees.
Training leaders improves your business
23%
increase
32%
increase
77%
of workers
in organisational performance
in employee engagement
with an effective manager feel motivated to do a good job
Stats from Chartered Management Institute 2023 report on the state of UK management and leadership, surveying 4,524 employees.
6 ways training your new leaders pays off
Leverage strengths
When new leaders understand how to use their abilities, values, and preferences to lead, they learn how to play to their strengths.
Grow their EQ
Recognising and managing your emotions and responding effectively to the feelings of your team and peers is a key leadership skill.
Solve problems
Instead of slapping on superficial band aids for short term fixes, teach new leaders to address a problem’s root cause for a long-term fix.
Resolve conflict
Practical conversation frameworks give leaders the confidence to tackle tough topics effectively with their team, instead of just hoping that they’ll disappear on their own.
Make more progress
Leaders learn valuable continuous improvement practises from visually tracking progress to differentiating between comfort zone, learning zone, and panic zone.
Build trust
By learning together and sharing their vulnerability new leaders build trust. Create a cohesive, high performing team working together to drive your business forward.
Build tailored training for your new leaders together
1: Discovery
First, we get really clear on your goals. What are you trying to achieve by investing in developing your new leaders? What do you want me to deliver, and how will you measure success?
Then we look at your logistics.
• How much time can you dedicate to development?
• How often can you commit to meet?
• Do you have calendar constraints, e.g. avoiding the run up to Christmas.
• What’s your budget?
2: Proposal
Your training is tailored to your goals and your new leaders’ needs. I break down my approach and the topics I propose, explain how each recommendation meets your goals, outline fees and your payment schedule.
Typically, training for new leaders covers six to eight workshops. These can be half day or full day, depending on how much you want to cover. Workshops will be scheduled to suit the rhythm of your business. If leaders are stressed, they don’t get as much value out of learning.
3: Workshops
Each workshop covers a key skill new leaders need to do a great job.
We apply those new skills to real-life examples from your business. For example, we’ll pull apart a recent project and say, would this framework have made a difference? What if you’d used this approach at the start?
This training joins the dots between leadership theory and the reality of your organisation. It shows new leaders how to use the tools and frameworks they learn day-to-day in your business – very different to an off-the-shelf leadership course.
4: Practice & peer support
The real work doesn’t take place in the workshops. Progress happens when your new leaders put what they’ve learned into practise. At the end of each session leaders commit to the actions they’ll take to use their new skills.
At the next workshop, we debrief with the group. I invite people to talk about how their new approach went. We celebrate successes, learn from things that didn’t go as planned, and build a peer support group where new leaders can figure things out together and overcome their sense of being alone.
The value of this training isn’t only in the tools and techniques I teach your new leaders. By learning together and sharing their vulnerability they grow trust. You build a culture where your managers are a tight, high-performing team working together to drive your business forward.
5: Ongoing coaching
New leaders can benefit from ongoing coaching to help them handle tricky challenges. I offer a range of coaching options, so your first-time leaders have me as a sounding board when they need that extra bit of support.
I can tailor these popular training topics to your needs, or create something entirely new
1: Develop self-awareness and self-management
Good leaders are self-aware. Teach new leaders how their abilities, values, and preferences influence how they lead and how to lean into their strength. That in turn helps them to recognise and manage their own emotions.
2: Build emotional intelligence
We’re emotional beings more than we’re rational. New leaders often ignore emotions because they’re afraid they’ll escalate, but emotions erupt whether we acknowledge them or not. Teach new leaders to use emotions as valuable data to guide the way they lead.
3: Goal setting, coaching, and delivering feedback
Teach new leaders goal-setting techniques and coaching for success. They progress to affirming feedback if things go well. They redirect, coach for improvement, and have courageous conversations if something needs to change.
4: Delivering on vision and mission
Leaders learn how to connect their team’s daily activities and KPIs to the vision of your business. The things leaders measure and manage daily should drive your organisation towards your long-term goals.
5: Root-cause problem solving
There are symptomatic and systemic fixes. Symptomatic fixes might stop pain temporarily, but they don’t fix the problem. Instead of slapping on symptomatic band aids, teach new leaders to address problems’ root cause.
6: Conflict management and resolution
People end up in conflict because they don’t know how to talk about challenging topics without emotions tripping them up. Self-awareness, emotional intelligence and learning how to deliver feedback are key. When things go wrong, courageous conversations address issues head on, with compassion and a clear path forward.
7: Motivation and engagement
Teach new leaders how to foster motivation and engagement. We create conditions for motivation by enabling autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Engagement is your team’s level of emotional investment and comes from a culture where people feel connected to one another and to their work.
Principles to set new leaders up for success
❇️ Coach for success, not just when things aren't going well
Some new leaders only get training and support once they’re failing. That makes training into a punishment and it’s a tragic waste of new leaders’ potential. Instead, set your new leaders up to nail projects and exceed KPIs from day one. Training your new leaders up front pays dividends.
❇️ If they’re laughing, they’re learning
Leaders do a lot of play in my workshops. I want people laughing because laughter shows they’re feeling open to potential. Leaders can’t see through fresh eyes or learn if everything’s a threat and they’re operating in survival mode. The risk associated with doing things differently is simply too high.
❇️ We aim for 1% better every day
There are always immediate things to deal with. But if leaders stay stuck in day-to-day operations, you stay status quo. Progress is cumulative. Step back and ask, “Where do we want to be in 10 years? What’s one thing we can do that’s a step towards that? What does 1% better look like today?” That incremental progress is the secret of businesses that stay fresh.
Your leadership development investment
Your leadership training is tailored to your new leaders’ needs. These fees indicate what a typical training programme costs.
Training for new leaders
Your bespoke development package includes:
- Discovery call
- Developing scope of work with you
- Co-design calls for each workshop
- Designing & delivering 6 days of workshops
- Debriefs with you after each session
- Support with logistics
Ongoing coaching support
Online coaching sessions provide timely, confidential support to your leaders. Example packages:
3 x coaching sessions per leader per year.
$925 + GST per leader PA
6 x coaching sessions per leader per year.
$1,800 + GST per leader PA
12 x coaching sessions per leader per year.
$3,250 + GST per leader PA
$44,000
$925-$3,250*
* Pricing guidance above excludes GST and is based on up to 10 people in the programme. Pricing may differ for larger teams. If outside Auckland, travel and accommodation costs apply.
I'm Daria, your leadership development coach
I’ve been leading since I was seven and a blackboard monitor at school. I’ve led in many businesses. And even when I actively tried to avoid leadership roles, I ended up being asked to lead projects, or to step up when a leader departed. So, I’ve accepted leadership is my purpose in life!
Leadership is one of the greatest privileges. And it is hard. In my first leadership role, I had the good fortune to have an amazing leader who coached and mentored me. And I still struggled.
I coach leaders because I can’t imagine what it’s like for leaders to be thrown in the deep end without support. They’re trying to do a good job, but they don’t know how to look after themselves, let alone the people they’re leading.
Lack of leadership development is far too common. Not only does it undermine great potential leaders, it holds organisations back from achieving true, sustainable success. I’m here to lead your leaders to be the best they can be.
Answering your FAQs on training for new leaders
What sort of ROI can we expect on training new leaders?
The Chartered Management Institute in the UK released a report on leadership in 2023 based on research surveying 4,524 employees.
They found 82% of managers are promoted without formal training, while only 23% of employees think that they have an effective leader. Those numbers indicate a relationship between training and effective leadership.
There’s more.
• 33% of employees leave an organisation due to poor leadership.
• 50% of people with ineffective leaders are planning to leave.
The cost of replacing a member of staff varies between 50% to 300% of their annual salary, depending on the seniority and complexity of the position.
Poor leadership may be costing you tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of dollars in recruitment fees each year. How much money might you save if your staff turnover dropped 20%?
If new leaders develop strong leadership skills when they first become a leader, they’re a more effective leader for their entire career and your team are less likely to leave. Investment in leadership development delivers huge ROI even before you factor in other losses associated with ineffective leaders like diminishing revenue and poor productivity.
It’s also worth asking yourself how good you want your business to be? What impact would it have if your new leaders were better equipped to deal with challenges, from having more courageous conversations with their team to developing a culture that enables your mission, vision, and values? How would that affect your ability to retain staff and earn revenue?
How much time do workshops take?
A typical training programme for new leaders is six full-day workshops. However, we can configure your workshops to fit your needs. Some teams prefer two-day workshops. Others like to do half a day at a time.
How much work do our leaders need to do between workshops?
The real work happens when your leaders put what they’ve learned into practice. When I send your new leaders away, I give them worksheets with frameworks to help them put what they’ve learned into practice. Those frameworks become woven into the way your leaders work.
At the next workshop, we debrief with the group. I invite people to talk about how their new approach went. We celebrate successes, learn from things that didn’t go as planned, and build a peer support group where new leaders can figure things out together and overcome that sense of being alone.
The value of this training isn’t only in the tools and techniques I teach your new leaders. By learning together and sharing their vulnerability, they build trust. You establish a culture where your managers are a tight, cohesive, high-performing team working together to drive your business forward.
Will I see an immediate change after each workshop?
The transformation doesn’t happen in the workshops. For example, you can send your new leaders to learn how to give helpful feedback, however that doesn’t mean you’ll never have another issue with poor feedback.
That’s because your leaders learn a new approach to feedback in the workshop but that knowledge doesn’t have any value until they apply their new skills at work. And there can be trial and error as your leaders practice their new feedback techniques.
So, you may see immediate effects after the workshop as your committed, early adopters will go all in. Other learners may take longer. Expect the positive effects from workshops to take a little while to kick in.
How do I know my new leaders will get practical tools from this? I feel like a lot of leadership development is just fluff.
This training joins the dots between leadership theory and the reality of your organisation. It shows new leaders how to use the tools and frameworks they learn day-to-day in your business – hugely different to an off-the-shelf leadership course.
Practical, hands-on exercises are crucial, and I make learning fun because it sticks better in your leaders’ memory that way. But every activity has a deeper reason. Your team are learning skills, developing self-awareness and emotional intelligence as well as having a good time.
We always apply the frameworks I teach to your context. For example, I might give your team a model for a tricky conversation. Then I get them to analyse a real-life situation they’re dealing with. Why is this situation happening? What’s the real issue? What impact will this problem have on the business? What do they want to change? We get into the nitty gritty and then they go away and have a courageous conversation to resolve the situation.
Why do we need to hire a trainer for our new leaders? Can’t we train them in house?
It’s not reasonable to expect your team to train your new leaders.
Not only are your senior leaders and HR team busy, but they may not know how to guide new leaders. Leadership development isn’t their area of expertise.
And even if your senior leaders remember what it was like to be a new leader, what worked then may not work now. For example, command and control ruled the roost 20 years ago. It doesn’t fly in today’s workplace, where people need to believe in your business before they put in the work.
Why do tailored training for our new leaders? Can’t I send them on an off-the-peg course for new leaders?
You absolutely can. Some off-the-shelf leadership courses are excellent, and your new leaders can learn valuable things.
And there are also few problems with off-the-shelf leadership courses.
They are often designed for new leaders from every industry, so there’s no material tailored to your organisation or your new leaders’ situation. New leaders get no guidance for how they put the models they’ve learned into action. They’re not taught how to experiment or reflect on results. Nor do they have a sounding board they can go to with questions.
Your new leaders have to join the dots and apply what they’ve learned to your situation all by themselves. That takes leadership skills and experience in itself. It’s too hard for most new leaders.
I tailor training to your situation and your requirements. I show your new leaders how to practice their new skills, and we debrief after they’ve had a go. I’m also there for them if they need help between workshops. Teaching new leaders how to use the tools and frameworks they learn day-to-day in your business is quite different to an off-the-shelf leadership course.
Leadership potential is often confused for capability
Many organisations seem to believe that merely giving a strong team player the title “Team Leader” will suddenly, magically, give them leadership skills.
You’re smarter than that. Set your first time leaders up for success with training tailored to your organisation and your new leaders’ needs.
Set your new leaders up to succeed from the start
Looking for support for your senior leaders?
Discover how I support senior leadership teams facing complex challenges.
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