We have refined this process over seven years and more than 80 workshop deliveries. Each stage exists because skipping it led to worse outcomes in earlier programmes.
We start with a 30-minute phone or video call. The aim is simple: understand your team, your organisation, and the specific management challenges you want the workshop to address. We ask questions like "What does a bad week look like for your managers?" and "What happened the last time someone had to give tough feedback?" These answers shape everything that follows.
There is no charge for this call, and no obligation. If we think another provider would be a better fit, we will tell you.
Each participant completes a short online questionnaire (about fifteen minutes) that measures their confidence across eight management skills: delegation, feedback, difficult conversations, time management, hiring decisions, running meetings, setting goals, and coaching direct reports. The results are anonymised and aggregated so we can see where the group is strong and where it struggles.
We also ask each participant to describe one real situation they found difficult in the past month. These situations become the basis for role-plays during the workshop itself, which means practice is grounded in genuine problems rather than textbook scenarios.
Using the diagnostic data, we build a custom agenda. About 60% of the content comes from our core curriculum; the remaining 40% is tailored to your group. For example, if the diagnostic reveals that most participants score well on delegation but poorly on giving corrective feedback, we will spend more time on feedback frameworks and less on delegation exercises.
You receive the draft agenda five working days before the workshop so you can flag anything you want adjusted.
Workshops run from 09:00 to 17:00 with a one-hour lunch break and two shorter breaks. The ratio of theory to practice is roughly 30:70. We use a mix of facilitated discussion, paired exercises, small-group problem-solving, and recorded role-plays. Every participant leaves with a personal action plan listing three specific changes they will make in the next thirty days.
Groups are kept between six and twelve people. Larger teams are split into parallel cohorts so everyone gets enough airtime.
Six weeks after the workshop, each participant joins a 45-minute group coaching call. We revisit the action plans, discuss what worked and what did not, and troubleshoot any sticking points. Participants also re-take the diagnostic questionnaire so we can measure change. You receive a summary report comparing pre- and post-workshop scores, along with our recommendations for ongoing development.
Several principles guide our approach, and each one comes from something we learned the hard way.
Early on, we used Harvard-style case studies. Participants found them interesting but struggled to apply the lessons back at work. When we switched to using each participant's own recent challenges as the raw material, transfer rates improved dramatically. Participants told us they were using techniques within the first week, not filing them away for "someday."
We tried running workshops for twenty people. The energy was good, but quieter participants disappeared. Capping groups at twelve means everyone speaks, everyone practises, and the facilitator can give individual feedback. For organisations with more than twelve managers, we run parallel cohorts on consecutive days.
Without data, it is impossible to know whether a workshop made a difference or just made people feel good for a day. The pre- and post-diagnostic gives us concrete numbers. On average, participants report a 28% increase in confidence across the eight measured skills. More importantly, their direct reports (when we survey them) report noticeable changes in how feedback is delivered and how one-to-ones are run.
Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests that training without follow-up loses most of its impact within 90 days. Our six-week coaching call exists to catch participants before old habits fully reassert themselves. It also creates a gentle deadline: knowing that someone will ask "Did you do what you said you would?" makes people more likely to actually do it.
Here are the logistics questions we get asked most often during the discovery call.
We can deliver at your offices, at a venue you choose, or at our own training space in O'Conner-Bode-le-Monahan. We also run fully online workshops via Zoom for distributed teams. The online format works well for one-day programmes; for the three-day strategy workshop, we strongly recommend in-person delivery because the informal conversations during breaks and evenings are a big part of the learning.
We charge a flat day rate per workshop, not per participant. This means adding a twelfth person costs you nothing extra. The day rate varies depending on the programme and the amount of customisation required. After the discovery call, we send a detailed quote within three working days. There are no hidden fees for the pre-workshop diagnostic or the follow-up coaching call; both are included.
We need a minimum of three weeks between the discovery call and the workshop date. This gives us time to run the diagnostic, design the programme, and share the agenda with you for review. For the three-day strategy residential, we recommend booking at least six weeks ahead to secure a suitable venue.
Head over to our contact form and tell us about your team. We will get back to you within two working days to schedule the discovery call.