IT Services
Helping newly promoted managers stop doing and start leading
An IT services organisation (name withheld)
- Audience
- Newly promoted team leads and first-time managers
- Program
- First-Time Manager Training
- Delivery
- In-person workshops with virtual reinforcement
The challenge
Strong engineers had been promoted into people-management roles and were still carrying delivery work themselves. Their teams waited on them, escalations arrived late, and one-on-ones were being skipped in busy weeks.
Context
The organisation was growing quickly and promoting from within, but there was no structured transition support between individual contributor and manager.
Our diagnosis
The gap was not motivation or technical depth. It was the absence of a working operating rhythm: delegation, expectation-setting, feedback and performance conversations.
The intervention
A first-time manager cohort built around their own delivery scenarios, with practice on delegation, one-on-ones, feedback and difficult conversations, plus a short briefing for managers-of-managers so the same language was used upward.
How it was delivered
Cohorts were kept small enough that every participant practised each conversation and received feedback in the room.
Outcome
- Participants reported clearer delegation and fewer tasks pulled back at the last minute
- One-on-ones became a scheduled habit rather than an ad-hoc catch-up
- Managers-of-managers reported more structured escalation conversations
Start with one cohort. Judge the behaviour change.
Most engagements begin as a single pilot cohort, so your team can evaluate the facilitation and the follow-through before a wider rollout.