The DX Team
Would you board a plane if the pilot had no training and was left to (quite literally) wing it? If leadership training for new managers is missing, how will THEY know what to do? First-time manager training is essential, so they feel confident in not just doing, but leading.
Your frontline leaders hold the keys to engaging, retaining, and boosting performance of your top employees. It’s not the CEO who engages them. It’s your frontline managers.
Leadership Training for New Managers: Key Skills to Thrive
Transitioning to management requires soft leadership skills, but these are consistently shown to be lacking:
- 32% of employees lack confidence to put ideas forward to leaders (MDA Training).
- 79% want to quit their jobs because of a lack of appreciation from leaders (O.C. Tanner Learning Group).
- One in two have left their job to escape a leader (Gallup).
- 63% of millennials feel their leadership skills are not being developed (HRPA).
The Importance of Leadership Training for New Managers
Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Manager
Transitioning to management requires new managers to stop being ‘doers’ and become ‘super doers’ when they get promoted. In other words, evolving from player to coach. A life-long journey, coaching requires constant dialogue and evaluation. It’s not about doing the work for your people; it’s about leading the people who do the work and being a coach as they play.
Managing a new team involves asking questions instead of providing answers, to inspire and galvanize a team around a vision, spark insights, and create psychological safety to maximize engagement and creativity. Leadership training for new managers supports employees in ways that unleash renewed energy and commitment.
Overcoming Common Challenges Faced by New Managers
One of the biggest challenges in transitioning to management is facing biases. Biases create judgment errors that affect leaders’ decisions and effectiveness. When employees perceive bias, they’re more than three times as likely to plan on leaving the organization within a year (Gallup).
While the human brain is built for bias, DX Learning’s leadership training and CARE approach for new managers can help them understand and overcome those biases.
New managers often say ‘yes’ to avoid conflict, but it can negatively impact productivity, team interactions, and goals. Transitioning to management includes supporting team members, listening to all sides, closing gaps, and helping everyone move forward and hearing “no” more often.
They often rush to solve problems before fully understanding what they’re grappling with. Managing a new team requires leaders to learn to take the road less travelled, and embrace vulnerability, relinquish some control, and see problems as opportunities to learn.
Essential Skills for New Manager Success
Self-awareness
How do you behave as a leader when things don't go as planned? How does your character impact others?
First-time manager training encourages a deeper look at why they feel a certain way, and how sentiments could turn into reactions, avoiding unnecessary conflict and breaking down unconscious biases.
Effective Communication and Active Listening
This skill is focused on the ‘C’ in CARE. It’s all about ‘clarity!’
First-time manager training teaches leaders to create a two-way street of communication, based on vulnerability and honesty, and making complex ideas easy to understand for everyone.
Active listening helps new managers build a rapport, better understand team member’s personal needs, challenges, and concerns, and be proactive in addressing them.
Decision-Making and Problem Solving
This skill is a combination of the ‘C’ and ‘A’ in CARE. Both ‘clarity’ and ‘autonomy’ are essential for effective decision-making and problem-solving.
Spotify, GitHub, and Google all encourage higher levels of autonomy, spurring more innovative ideas and higher levels of wellbeing.
New managers’ leadership training demonstrates how to let employees in on the vision and provide clarity around purpose, helping everyone march passionately in the same direction and better manage workloads.
Delegation & Time Management
This skill is all about requiring sufficient ‘autonomy’ (the ‘A’ in CARE) to empower employees to do their job effectively.
New managers’ leadership training helps them understand employee strengths and focus on igniting growth through SMART goals, not just hitting deadlines. This way, employees feel valued, respected, and trusted.
Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
“Without emotional intelligence, a person can have the best training in the world [and] an endless supply of smart ideas, but [he or she] still won’t make a great leader.” – Daniel Goleman
This is about the ‘R’ in CARE. It’s all about ‘relationships’.
New managers who lead with emotional intelligence and empathy are focused on seeing and hearing others non-judgmentally and understanding different perspectives.
Self-regulating helps them to effectively manage teams without causing rifts or conflicts, and builds accountability and trusting, communicative relationships.
DX Learning’s Management Leadership Course Approach
Customized Training Programs for New Managers
DX Learning’s proprietary CARE approach is the nucleus of our method to inspiring progressive leadership. Leadership training for new managers encourages them to look at their own habits, build self-awareness and a growth mindset, to inspire high-performing teams and create cultures of psychological safety.
All programs are customized to your culture, to suit the unique requirements of your teams and new managers.
Hands-On Learning Experiences and Practical Tools
We balance immersive self-discovery techniques with the latest research into how the brain learns. New managers’ leadership training challenges assumptions in a safe, low-stakes environment where it’s OK to make mistakes.
Leaders let go of their biases and leave with a new outlook on modern leadership, updated soft skills, and habits grounded in people-first leadership and coaching.
Ongoing Support and Resources for Continued Development
Our concrete, experiential, new managers’ leadership training is followed by a series of pre – and post – learning tools, designed to maximize ROI and ensure change is realized, including:
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Leadership Essentials 360
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ProHabits Habit Reinforcement Technology
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1-on-1 and/or Group Coaching
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Consultation & Customization Design Services
Alex shares his insights via his LinkedIn newsletter and Let’s Talk Leadership Series, too.
The Impact of Alex Draper’s Expertise on New Managers
Alex Draper’s Background and Leadership Philosophy
After working as a trainee school teacher in the UK, Alex took the leadership training world by storm in 2002. He founded DX Learning in 2015, using a powerful combination of behavioral psychology and experiential learning to expose and eliminate bad leadership.
Success Stories from DX Learning’s Leadership Training Program
“Our journey with DX Learning has been invaluable. The training is unique… Working through a business simulation outside of our everyday activities is a refreshing approach yet very similar to the real world.”
“The CARE program is exceptional and embracing it has helped my leadership team successfully navigate the current challenges with greater confidence, communication, connection [and] empathy (and stronger results).” - SecurAmerica
Watch Dober’s testimonial here.
Why Choose DX Learning for Training New Managers
Our leadership training for new managers offers a safe environment to explore and uncover all leadership characteristics and map out the behavioral solutions needed to transform your new managers into great leaders.
