Leading People Training Course: One-to-One Conversations, Delegation and Motivation

Programme Summary

Leading people is the subject of this one-week training course for managers and directors who lead teams, ending in a personal people leadership plan. Teams drift when one-to-one conversations are avoided, work is held too tightly and motivation is left to chance. The programme builds each skill in sequence, from preparing a conversation to delegating a task, and tests it on real situations from the participant's own team. Mars Training Centre UK delivers this programme on leading people to mixed-organisation cohorts.

The Business Case

Organisations that neglect leading people pay for it in quiet ways: capable staff leave, decisions queue behind one manager and small disagreements harden into lasting friction. Leaders who hold regular, well-prepared conversations and share responsibility deliberately give their teams clearer direction and a steadier pace of work.

• Staff Retention: Improves as expectations, recognition and development are discussed openly rather than assumed.
• Team Output: Rises as delegation moves decisions closer to the people who hold the information.
• Management Time: Is released as recurring conflict and rework are addressed at their source.

Principles and Evidence Base

• Research on feedback and learning: It shows that specific, timely feedback changes behaviour, and it frames Sessions 1 and 3.
• Research on goal setting: It links clear, agreed goals to sustained effort, and it shapes the delegation work in Session 3.
• Research on psychological safety in teams: It connects candid speech with team learning, and it informs Sessions 2 and 4.

Intended Participants

• Senior managers who are responsible for the results and wellbeing of several teams.
• Directors who rely on other managers to lead their people consistently.
• Heads of function who must raise performance without increasing headcount.
• Newly promoted leaders who now manage former peers.
• Programme and project leaders who direct people without line authority.

Typical functions include operations, engineering, finance and public services.

Learning Outcomes

1. Participants will be able to diagnose the motivation, capability and workload of each member of a team.
2. Participants will be able to construct a one-to-one conversation that sets expectations and records agreements.
3. Participants will be able to evaluate which tasks to delegate, to whom and at what level of autonomy.
4. Participants will be able to apply coaching questions that move a person from a problem to a chosen action.
5. Participants will be able to prioritise responses to conflict and underperformance according to cause and risk.
6. Participants will be able to justify a personal people leadership plan to a line manager or board.

Programme Structure

Day 1: Foundations of Leading People

What does a leader of people do differently from a manager of tasks?

• Leader Role Clarification Sheet
• Feedback and Learning Evidence Review
• Personal Leadership Style Profile
• Team Expectations Statement
• Trust and Credibility Self-Audit

Day 2: Diagnosing People and Team Climate

How are individual needs and the climate of a team assessed before acting?

• Individual Motivation and Capability Grid
• Workload and Role Fit Review
• Team Climate Pulse Questionnaire
• Psychological Safety Observation Checklist
• Relationship Map of Key Contacts

Day 3: Designing Conversations, Delegation and Motivation

How are regular conversations, delegated work and recognition planned so that each supports the others?

• One-to-One Conversation Agenda
• Feedback Preparation Template
• Delegation Levels Matrix
• Goal Agreement Record
• Recognition and Development Plan

Day 4: Coaching, Conflict and Underperformance

How does a leader respond when performance falls or colleagues disagree?

• Coaching Question Ladder
• Performance Gap Cause Analysis
• Difficult Conversation Script Outline
• Conflict Mediation Steps
• Improvement Agreement Form

Day 5: Applying Leading People Skills to Your Own Team

Do the diagnosis, conversation, delegation and coaching tools hold together for one real team?

• Applying the Session 2 Grid to Your Own Team
• Rehearsing a Session 3 Conversation with Peer Feedback
• Testing the Delegation Matrix on Live Tasks
• Rehearsing a Session 4 Difficult Conversation
• Completing the Personal People Leadership Plan

Methodology

The programme uses structured exercises and rehearsal. Participants prepare conversations from anonymised team situations drawn from operations, health and public services, practise them in small groups and receive facilitator and peer feedback on wording, tone and follow-up. Each tool is first applied to a case and then to a situation from the participant's own team.

• Suggested activity: Preparing and rehearsing a feedback conversation, then repeating it after peer comments.
• Suggested activity: Sorting a live task list into delegate, coach and retain, and defending each choice.
• Suggested activity: Mapping the climate of a team and choosing the single change that would matter most.

Capstone Output

Each participant completes a personal people leadership plan. It holds a team diagnosis grid, a conversation calendar, a delegation matrix, a recognition plan and an approach to one difficult conversation. The plan is used at work to open the next round of one-to-one meetings and to agree priorities with a line manager.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this training in leading people suitable for managers who have only led small teams?

Yes. It assumes some experience of directing the work of others and builds leading people skills from first principles, using situations from your own team as practice material.

Which research does leading people practice rest on in this programme?

It rests on research on feedback and learning, goal setting and psychological safety in teams, applied through conversations, delegation and coaching rather than through a single proprietary model.

How is the plan for leading people used at work?

You use it to open your next round of one-to-one meetings, to agree what to delegate and to set priorities with your line manager for the following quarter.

How does learning leading people differ from a course on supervisory skills?

It centres on conversations, motivation, delegation and conflict across several teams, while supervisory skills centre on scheduling, instruction and daily oversight of frontline work.