Articles / Leadership Courses for New Managers: First-Time Leader Training
Development, Training & CoachingFind leadership courses designed for new managers. Learn what first-time leaders need and how to accelerate the transition to effective management.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Tue 30th December 2025
Leadership courses for new managers address a critical career transition that many organisations handle poorly. The shift from individual contributor to manager represents one of the most challenging career changes anyone faces—yet organisations routinely promote high performers into management roles with minimal preparation. Research from Gartner indicates that 60% of new managers underperform during their first two years, often because they lack the skills and frameworks that deliberate development provides. The cost of this failure extends beyond individual managers to their teams, whose performance, engagement, and retention suffer under underprepared leadership.
New manager programmes provide accelerated development for this critical transition. They help first-time leaders understand what changes when you become a manager, develop skills you've never needed before, and avoid common mistakes that derail new leaders.
The transition to management involves fundamental shifts:
Identity shift: As an individual contributor, your identity derived from your work product—the code you wrote, the deals you closed, the analyses you completed. As a manager, your identity must shift to enabling others. This psychological transition often proves harder than the practical one.
Success metrics: Individual contributors succeed through their own output. Managers succeed through their team's output. What made you excellent before—personal productivity—may actually hinder you now if it prevents you from investing in others' productivity.
Time allocation: Individual contributors control their time within project parameters. Managers' time is claimed by others—meetings, questions, approvals, interruptions. Learning to protect time for thinking whilst remaining accessible requires skill.
Relationships: Former peers become direct reports. This shift changes relationship dynamics in ways that surprise many new managers. Friendships may need to evolve; professional distance becomes necessary without becoming remoteness.
Information access: Managers access information not available to individual contributors—about strategy, other teams, personnel matters. This information asymmetry creates responsibility for appropriate disclosure and discretion.
Emotional demands: Individual contributors may experience work stress; managers experience that plus the emotional demands of leading others through their challenges, disappointments, and conflicts.
New managers struggle for predictable reasons:
The promotion paradox: People are promoted for skills different from those management requires. Technical excellence earns promotion; people skills determine managerial success. Excellence in one domain doesn't guarantee capability in the other.
Insufficient preparation: Many organisations provide little or no preparation before promotion or support immediately after. New managers learn by trial and error—expensive in both manager stress and team impact.
Doing versus delegating: New managers often continue doing the work they excelled at rather than enabling others to do it. This feels productive but prevents the shift to true management.
Former peer dynamics: Managing former peers creates awkward dynamics. New managers may be too lenient (preserving friendships) or too harsh (proving their authority). Neither approach works.
Imposter syndrome: Many new managers feel unqualified despite their promotion. This imposter syndrome can drive overwork, micromanagement, or withdrawal—all counterproductive.
| Individual Contributor | Manager |
|---|---|
| Success through own output | Success through team output |
| Technical skills primary | People skills primary |
| Peer relationships | Authority relationships |
| Limited information access | Expanded information access |
| Personal time management | Time claimed by others |
| Own stress to manage | Team's emotions to navigate |
Research and experience identify critical skills for new managers:
1. Delegation: Delegation is perhaps the hardest skill for new managers. It requires releasing tasks you do well to others who may do them differently. Effective delegation involves clear communication of outcomes, appropriate support without micromanagement, and acceptance that others' approaches may differ from yours.
2. Feedback delivery: New managers must deliver feedback—positive and developmental—regularly and skilfully. Many have never given substantive performance feedback and find it uncomfortable. Feedback capability distinguishes effective managers from ineffective ones.
3. One-to-one conversations: Regular one-to-ones with direct reports form the foundation of management relationship. New managers need frameworks for structuring these conversations, balancing operational and developmental focus, and building trust through consistent presence.
4. Performance management: Managing performance—setting expectations, monitoring progress, addressing underperformance—requires specific skills. New managers often avoid difficult performance conversations, allowing problems to fester until they become crises.
5. Team dynamics: Understanding and shaping team dynamics requires awareness that individual contributors rarely develop. New managers must attend to how team members interact, address conflicts, and build collaborative culture.
6. Upward management: New managers must manage their relationship with their own manager—communicating appropriately, seeking support without appearing incapable, and navigating expectations from above and below.
7. Time and priority management: The time demands on managers differ fundamentally from individual contributors. New managers need systems for managing competing demands, protecting thinking time, and maintaining boundaries.
Prioritise based on immediate needs:
First 30 days: Focus on relationship building with direct reports, understanding current team dynamics and challenges, and establishing one-to-one rhythms. Don't try to change everything immediately; understand first.
Days 30-90: Focus on delegation (releasing tasks appropriately), feedback delivery (establishing regular feedback patterns), and clarifying expectations (ensuring team understands what success looks like).
Days 90-180: Focus on performance management (addressing any issues that have surfaced), team development (building capability and culture), and strategic contribution (adding value beyond operational management).
Beyond 180 days: Focus on leadership identity (developing your leadership style), developing others (building future capability in your team), and expanding influence (contributing beyond your immediate team).
Multiple programme types address new manager development:
Organisational programmes: Many organisations offer internal programmes for new managers. These have the advantage of context-specificity—they address your organisation's culture, processes, and expectations specifically.
External workshops: External providers offer new manager workshops bringing together participants from different organisations. Cross-organisational peer learning provides perspective unavailable internally.
Online programmes: Self-paced online programmes allow new managers to learn around demanding schedules. Quality varies significantly; look for programmes with practical application components, not just content delivery.
Coaching: One-to-one coaching provides personalised support for specific challenges. Coaching particularly helps new managers with the identity shift and with processing specific difficult situations.
Peer learning groups: Groups of new managers meeting regularly to share challenges and learn from each other provide mutual support and diverse perspective. The realisation that others face similar challenges reduces isolation.
Mentoring: Experienced managers mentoring new ones provides guidance based on lived experience. Mentoring relationships offer ongoing support beyond formal programmes.
Blended approaches: Combinations—perhaps formal programme plus coaching, or workshop plus peer group—provide complementary development. No single intervention addresses all development needs.
Evaluate options through new manager lens:
Timing: Development ideally begins before or immediately upon promotion. Programmes occurring months after promotion miss the critical early period.
Practical focus: New managers need practical tools they can use immediately. Programmes heavy on theory without application provide limited value.
Practice opportunities: Learning management skills requires practice. Programmes with role plays, simulations, and real-world application beat pure instruction.
Peer component: Connecting with other new managers normalises the experience and provides mutual learning. Programmes with peer cohorts offer this benefit.
Ongoing support: Single interventions have limited impact. Programmes with follow-up, refreshers, or ongoing community continue development beyond initial learning.
Manager involvement: Development works best when your own manager is involved—supporting application, providing coaching, and reinforcing learning. Programmes that engage participants' managers enhance transfer.
Managing former peers represents a distinctive challenge:
Acknowledge the change: Don't pretend the relationship hasn't changed. Acknowledge directly that the dynamic is different now, and express commitment to navigating it well.
Establish new boundaries: Social relationships may need to evolve. You can't be the confidant you were when you're now responsible for performance evaluation. This doesn't mean coldness—it means appropriate professional distance.
Be consistent: Apply standards equally to all team members, including former close friends. Favouritism destroys credibility and team trust.
Expect adjustment time: Allow time for everyone—including yourself—to adjust to new dynamics. Relationships will find new equilibrium with patience.
Have the difficult conversations: If former peer relationships create problems, address them directly rather than letting awkwardness fester.
Delegation challenges new managers because it requires releasing control:
1. Identify what to delegate: Not everything should be delegated. Retain items that require your specific authority or expertise. Delegate items that develop others, free your time for managerial work, or lie within others' capability.
2. Choose the right person: Match delegation to capability and development needs. Stretch assignments develop people; overwhelming assignments crush them.
3. Communicate clearly: Specify the outcome required, not the method to use. Explain why this task matters and what success looks like. Clarify decision authority—what can they decide, what needs your approval.
4. Provide appropriate support: Check in without hovering. Be available for questions without micromanaging. Trust until given reason not to.
5. Accept different approaches: Others may complete tasks differently than you would. Different doesn't mean wrong. Evaluate outcomes, not methods.
6. Give credit: When delegated work succeeds, give credit to the person who did it. Taking credit for others' work destroys trust and motivation.
Difficult feedback conversations challenge new managers:
Prepare specifically: Identify specific behaviours or outcomes to address. Vague feedback ("you need to improve your communication") provides no actionable direction.
Choose appropriate timing: Deliver feedback promptly, not months after events. Find private setting where honest conversation is possible.
Be direct: Don't bury feedback in excessive praise. Be direct about what needs to change. Excessive softening confuses the message.
Focus on behaviour, not character: Address what someone does, not who they are. "Your reports have contained errors" is addressable; "you're careless" is judgmental.
Listen: Allow response. There may be context you're missing. Feedback is conversation, not monologue.
Agree on action: Conclude with clear agreement on what happens next. What will change? How will you both know if it's improved?
Research identifies common mistakes:
Trying to prove yourself: New managers often feel pressure to prove they deserve the promotion. This drives overwork, micromanagement, or attempts to do everything themselves. Sustainable management requires working through others.
Avoiding difficult conversations: Conflict avoidance allows problems to compound. Small performance issues become large ones. Team tensions fester into dysfunction. Address issues early.
Failing to delegate: Continuing to do individual contributor work prevents managerial effectiveness. You can't add management responsibilities whilst retaining all previous work.
Making changes too fast: New managers sometimes feel they must change things immediately to justify their role. Premature changes without understanding context often fail. Understand before acting.
Ignoring relationships: Task focus that ignores relationship building creates transactional dynamics. Invest in knowing your team as people, not just workers.
Forgetting self-care: Management is demanding. New managers who neglect personal wellbeing burn out. Sustainable leadership requires sustainable personal practices.
Everyone makes mistakes; recovery matters:
Acknowledge errors: When you make mistakes, acknowledge them. Pretending mistakes didn't happen destroys credibility faster than the mistakes themselves.
Apologise genuinely: If mistakes affected others, apologise sincerely. Brief, genuine apology demonstrates maturity.
Learn and adjust: Identify what led to the mistake and what you'll do differently. Demonstrable learning turns mistakes into development.
Move forward: Don't dwell excessively on past mistakes. Address them, learn from them, and continue forward.
Initial programmes begin development; ongoing practices continue it:
Reflection: Schedule regular reflection time. What's working? What isn't? What would you do differently? Reflection converts experience into learning.
Feedback seeking: Request feedback from your team, peers, and manager regularly. Feedback provides calibration self-perception cannot offer.
Peer networks: Maintain connections with other managers for mutual learning and support. Management can be isolating; peers provide understanding others can't.
Reading and learning: Continue learning through books, articles, podcasts, and courses. Management knowledge continues evolving; stay current.
Mentoring: Seek mentors who can provide guidance based on their experience. Multiple mentors offer diverse perspectives.
Manager support: Develop relationship with your own manager that supports your development. Regular conversations about your growth, not just operational matters, enhance development.
New managers should first learn delegation (releasing tasks to others), feedback delivery (giving effective positive and developmental feedback), and one-to-one conversation skills (building relationships with direct reports). These foundational skills enable everything else. Without delegation, you'll be overwhelmed. Without feedback skills, performance suffers. Without one-to-ones, relationships remain superficial.
The new manager transition typically takes 12-24 months for most people to feel genuinely comfortable and effective. The first 90 days are most critical—establishing relationships, understanding the team, and building basic rhythms. Real mastery develops over years as you encounter diverse situations and develop sophisticated judgment.
The biggest mistake new managers make is failing to shift from doing to enabling. New managers often continue doing individual contributor work because it's familiar and satisfying, whilst neglecting the management work that's now their actual job. This prevents both their development as managers and their team's development as practitioners.
Managing older or more experienced people requires humility about what you don't know, respect for their expertise, and clarity about your role. You're not managing them because you know more about their domain; you're managing because organisational coordination requires someone in that role. Leverage their experience, acknowledge their expertise, and focus on enabling their success.
First-time managers need training in people management fundamentals: delegation, feedback, one-to-ones, performance management, and team dynamics. They also need support for the identity transition—understanding how success is now measured differently. Practical, application-focused training with opportunity for practice produces better outcomes than theoretical instruction alone.
Organisations can better prepare new managers by providing training before or immediately upon promotion (not months later), offering ongoing support through coaching or mentoring, involving new managers' bosses in development, creating peer cohorts for mutual learning, and building clear expectations about what management involves. Too many organisations promote and abandon.
New managers should attend courses focused on their level—first-time manager programmes addressing the specific transition challenges they face. Advanced leadership programmes designed for senior leaders may be less relevant. Look for programmes with practical skills focus, peer learning opportunity, and application support. Timing matters; immediate development produces better results than delayed programmes.
Leadership courses for new managers represent investment in a critical career transition—one that shapes not only individual careers but the teams those managers lead. The 60% failure rate for new managers isn't inevitable; it results from insufficient investment in development during a predictably challenging period.
New managers face fundamental shifts: from individual contribution to enabling others, from technical work to people work, from peer relationships to authority relationships. These shifts don't happen automatically. They require deliberate development—understanding what's changing, building new skills, and navigating predictable challenges.
If you're a new manager, invest in your development during this critical period. Seek programmes that address your specific transition challenges. Build relationships with mentors and peers who understand what you're navigating. Develop ongoing practices that continue learning beyond formal programmes.
If you're responsible for new managers, don't promote and abandon. Provide development before or immediately upon promotion. Offer ongoing support. Create conditions where new managers can succeed, not just expectations that they should.
The investment pays returns—for new managers who develop capability, for teams who benefit from better leadership, and for organisations that build management bench strength.
Make the transition deliberately. You'll be managing for the rest of your career; invest in doing it well from the start.