New Manager Training

New managers represent both opportunity and potential risk to organizations.

  • In many cases, managers may be promoted from within and have no formal training or education on how to lead and manage others.
  • When coming from outside the organization, they will also lack important information about your company’s culture, policies, and processes.

New manager training is critical to ensure that all managers are on the same page and that they have the understanding, knowledge, and competencies to lead others in achieving company goals.

a new manager getting congratulated on her promotion

Transitioning from Employee to New Manager

Employees who do a great job in an individual contributor role are often promoted into supervisor or manager positions. They don’t always, though, have the knowledge, skills, or abilities required to lead and manage others effectively.

Providing them with the information they need to excel in their new role is critical. A new manager training program will help ensure that first-time managers understand how to effectively supervise and lead others.

Don’t leave the success of your newly promoted supervisors to chance. Make sure they have a solid understanding of what it takes to be a success and lead their teams to extraordinary results in their new role.

Why You Should Train New Managers

It’s important for companies to train new managers. All managers have a significant impact on the rest of their team, and the ability of their team to achieve department, division, and organizational objectives.

Poor management can lead to a variety of common problems including communication issues, conflict, resistance to change, and more.

Ineffective managers, or “bad bosses,” have a negative impact on your employees and your bottom line. Organizational problems can range from poor employee engagement to poor performance, and low productivity.

Ultimately, employee satisfaction and loyalty drops, leading to costly turnover. Turnover is extremely expensive for any organization. It results in the need to find, recruit and retrain new employees, lost productivity, and the potential for errors.

Training new managers ensures that they have the knowledge, skills, and competencies to lead their employees effectively. Effective management boosts employee engagement which leads to higher productivity, better results, and a stronger bottom line.

Use Short Courses to Teach Practical “How-to” Skills

When training new managers, you should use short, bite-sized courses that teach practical “how-to” skills that new managers can use immediately in the workplace.

Look for flexibility, with a variety of convenient delivery formats with group and self-paced learning. This way your managers will receive training when and where you choose when it is convenient.

Our new manager training program, The Leadership Journey™, goes beyond traditional manager training to offer a flexible, practical, and ready-to-implement approach that will get new managers up to speed and productive quickly. Get a free preview course from this program, “Build Accountability and Trust with Positive Confrontations.”

Your new managers will learn to successfully lead, manage, and achieve results through others.


“People are loving The Leadership Journey and are always excited to take the next module. They are really energized by it.”

Lori Bruder, HR Manager, Pentair Water

Develop Skills in Bursts of Learning Over Time

Rather than a one-time training event, new managers should develop skills through a series of short courses that focus on the essential skills they need to drive management success.

New managers should be given the time to learn and apply new skills as they progress through the curriculum and an opportunity to interact with and learn from each other.

The Leadership Journey’s proprietary burst learning model provides a flexible way for organizations of all types and sizes to train new managers. Adaptable courses allow you to schedule courses over a period of time, at times and in ways that are most convenient for your managers.

In addition, unlike other programs where new skills are quickly forgotten and training materials are never referred to again, The Leadership Journey incorporates accountability through the use of personal action plans.

Participants develop personal action plans that they share with their managers as they apply new skills in the workplace. Follow-up ensures accountability and real results.

See a course from The Leadership Journey, including a personal action plan, follow-up tools, videos, assessments, and discussion guides.


“I like that our managers learn one subject at a time, then apply what is learned with accountability and follow-up for reinforcement. It’s resulting in change and performance improvement.”

Barry Crandall, Human Resource Manager, Richland Industries LLC


10 Key Skills Every New Manager Must Learn

Over the past two decades, we asked 1000s of organizations, “What skills do your managers need to successfully lead their teams and maximize productivity?”

We built The Leadership Journey around the results of these surveys. This customizable turnkey curriculum is based on 10 key skills that every new manager should have:

1. Accountability

New managers and supervisors will learn:

      • Why preparation and planning is critical for accountability,
      • A practical model to hold their employees accountable, and
      • What to do when followers don’t perform to expectations.

2. Change Management

Managers and supervisors will learn:

      • How to prepare themselves and their teams for change,
      • To respond to change with positive thinking and actions, and
      • The one change factor they can control.

3. Coaching

New managers must make the transition from individual contributors to coaching leaders. It can be a challenging transition! Through The Leadership Journey they’ll learn:

      • An easy-to-apply tool for coaching discussions,
      • Practical steps to overcome resistance, and
      • How to coach employees who have more experience and may be reluctant to listen to their new managers.

4. Communication

Without effective communication skills, new managers will fail. Through The Leadership Journey, they will learn essential verbal, non-verbal, written, and listening skills like:

      • How to give clear directions,
      • Why tone and delivery may matter more when you are a new manager,
      • How to listen well and ask questions, and
      • How to give constructive feedback.

5. Conflict Resolution

New managers will learn:

      • Practical skills to shift potentially negative confrontations into future-focused problem-solving dialogue,
      • How to rebuild difficult relationships, and
      • Techniques to manage emotions.

Get a free preview of a conflict resolution course titled, “Build Accountability and Trust with Positive Confrontations.

6. Empowerment

As managers move from an individual contributor role to a management role they need to shift their focus to managing rather than doing. They’ll learn:

      • A five-step model to provide clear directions,
      • How to hold employees accountable, and
      • How to empower their teams to do the work—instead of doing the work themselves.

7. Motivation and Attitude Improvement

Your new managers will learn:

      • Five techniques to motivate their teams,
      • Motivation strategies that energize even poor performers, and
      • How their behavior affects motivation.

8. Professionalism

New managers more than others are in the spotlight of their teams and superiors, so it is key they learn to behave professionally. They’ll learn:

      • To be consistent in words and actions,
      • How to develop positive habits, and
      • Learn the “magic” that results from doing more than is expected.

9. Relationship Building

Managers who participate in The Leadership Journey will develop strong relationships with senior management, their teams, and with the leaders of other departments. They’ll learn:

      • How to build teamwork and camaraderie across the organization,
      • How to break down workplace silos, and
      • The personal and company benefits of strong relationships.

10. Teamwork

The Leadership Journey will teach your new managers to achieve excellence through high-performing teams. They’ll learn to:

      • Overcome common team pitfalls,
      • Leverage the unique skills of individual team members, and
      • Get everyone working toward a common purpose.

These are the skills new managers need—and the skills that The Leadership Journey embeds through a powerful, flexible, and practical approach to management training.


The Leadership Journey is making a big difference in how my managers handle their communications with their employees. It’s a worthwhile investment of money and time.”

Mike Bunner, President, Electro Chemical Engineering

Is This Program a Good Fit to Teach Your New Managers?

Don’t leave effective management to chance. Make sure your new managers—whether promoted from within or hired externally—have the right skills and competencies to lead their team members successfully.

The Leadership Journey offers managers training that stands out from other programs in a number of ways:

  • Short, flexible modules focused on key core competencies.
  • Built-in accountability to ensure measurable impact.
  • Opportunity for sharing best practices for building high-performing teams.

Try a course today to help your new managers boost their skills and capabilities for more effective management!

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The Leadership Journey is going great. I appreciate that it was totally turnkey with all of the tools I needed and that I could time the delivery to my managers schedules.”

Denise Violette, Vice President Human Resources, American Insurance Trust

Clients We Have Served with Our Management Training

Since 2002 we’ve served more than 1200 companies of all sizes from every industry. We’re sure you’ll recognize a few of their names:

Group of client logos using The Leadership Journey.

Group of client logos using The Leadership Journey.

Free Course Preview

Learn if this program is a good fit for your managers.
Try videos, action plans, follow-up and discussion guides, and more.

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