Bespoke Leadership Programmes for Small Businesses

Why bespoke

Your people are good at their jobs. That's why they're leading teams.

But leadership is a different job to the one they were promoted out of. Most of them were never taught how to do it.

Some are brand new and don't know where to start. Some have been doing it for years but never had any real development. Each is figuring it out their own way, with their own habits and blind spots.

The result is inconsistency. Conversations that should be happening aren't. People who should be growing are stuck. Standards that should be clear are vague. Hires that should be sharp are lukewarm.

The real problem is bigger than any one manager. Your business needs all of its leaders to be better, faster, and pulling in the same direction. That's not something a two-day workshop fixes. It takes a proper programme, built around your business, delivered over months, with coaching built in.

That's what this is.

How it works

We build your leadership team from the inside out.

Four steps. This is the process most training providers skip, and the reason most management training fails to stick.

01

Understand your team

We start by understanding your business, your culture, and where each leader sits today. What are the gaps? Who's struggling? Who's ready for more? We do this work before any training begins, because the biggest reason programmes fail is that the culture contradicts what people learn.

02

Build the right programme

We design a programme around what your team actually needs. Not everyone gets the same thing. New leaders need different content from experienced ones. Operations managers need different tools from sales leads. Bespoke means bespoke.

03

Staggered delivery

Training delivered over months, not crammed into two days. Weekly or fortnightly sessions, your choice. The research on spaced learning is clear: this is how adults actually retain and apply new skills.

04

Coaching throughout

Every participant gets 1:1 coaching with me during the programme. McKinsey's research shows that programmes pairing training with follow-up coaching deliver more than double the ROI of programmes that don't. It's how the development actually changes behaviour.

What they walk away with

Tools your managers use on Monday. Not slides they forget by Friday.

Every Bespoke Programme produces tangible outputs your managers can show, share, and actually use. The capability is the deliverable.

Managing You

Working With Me document

A written document each manager builds across the programme, capturing how they operate: their default settings as a leader, how they communicate, what they expect, where they step in, and what they need from people who work with them. Their team reads it on day one. A new hire knows exactly what they're walking into.

Managing You

AI Leadership Coach

A custom AI tool calibrated to each manager's leadership style, defaults, and growth areas. It asks them the right reflection questions, not generic ones. Their ongoing coach between sessions, and long after the programme ends.

Talent Lifecycle

Ideal Colleague Profiles

Most small businesses hire from instinct. We give your managers a structured framework for defining the people they actually need, then teach them to use AI to generate sharp role profiles and job descriptions on demand. One profile this week. The capability for every future hire.

Talent Lifecycle

Career Development Frameworks

The single most-asked question from your team is "what does my future here look like?" Most managers have nothing to show them. Each manager builds a real progression document for one role on their team. Specific. Useable. Shareable.

Talent Lifecycle

AI Talent Toolkit

A custom AI tool loaded with your company context and the frameworks we teach. It generates Ideal Colleague Profiles, interview questions, job descriptions, and development frameworks on demand. The hiring and development capability your team didn't have, codified.

The Bigger Picture

"What Does My Manager Value?" diagnostic

Most managers guess at what their boss cares about. This turns "managing up" from a vague concept into a specific written assessment: what your boss weighs heavily, where you're delivering, and where you're wasting effort. The 2-3 highest-leverage changes, mapped.

What's included

Everything your leadership team needs. Nothing they don't.

Leadership alignment session(s) with you and your senior team before training starts

Bespoke curriculum built around your business, culture, and challenges

Live training sessions delivered over months (weekly or fortnightly, your choice)

1:1 coaching for every manager throughout the programme

In-person session option for deeper team connection

Platform access with AI assistant, templates, and resources

Community membership for ongoing peer support

Pre and post assessments so you can see the change, not just hope for it

Direct access to me between sessions for questions and support

The AI tools each manager builds stay with them after the programme

From our clients

What happens when a manager actually gets trained.

Jack joined our first cohort as one manager from Base. Twelve weeks later, Base commissioned a bespoke programme for its heads of department.

Base · From one seat to a leadership programme

"I would definitely put people on it. It's one of those things I wish I'd had years ago. I would have benefited, my team would have benefited, my employers would have benefited."

Jack Richens · Senior Engineer, Base

Twelve weeks after the programme, Jack had documented the knowledge that lived only in his head, handed real coaching responsibility to his engineers, and built the confidence to have the conversations he used to avoid. Then Base commissioned a bespoke leadership programme for its heads of department, and Jack is putting members of his own team forward for future cohorts. One manager's training became a company-wide investment.

Leanne Buckley, Head of Customer Success, Twine, on what changed six weeks on · 1 min

"

A lot of leadership development can be quite fluffy: personality types, communication styles, how to work together. This was much more nuts and bolts. Managing yourself, managing your time, managing your team, feedback, difficult conversations. Very specific, tangible, implementable advice.

Olivia · Account Director, PR Agency

"

I'm now meeting with my direct report once every single week, having shorter and more frequent one-to-ones. So the issue of a deadline not being hit, I already know it's not going to happen. I'm not even getting to the point where these situations are arising.

Leanne Buckley · Head of Customer Success, Twine

"

Difficult conversations are really uncomfortable and people dread having them. Having the toolkit, almost like a script for how to approach them, gives me the confidence to actually want to address things rather than going in blind.

Jack Richens · Senior Engineer, Base

Read and watch more from Cohort 1 →

Arran Russell

Why me

15 years of mistakes, compressed so you don't repeat them.

You probably don't need more theory. You need someone who's been where your managers are now, made the mistakes, and figured out what works.

I wasn't the founder. I was the exec the CEO relied on to build the management layer beneath him, inside a business that grew from 25 people to well over 100 and went through a private equity cycle while I was there. I started managing two people. I ended up leading 60 across seven services in five countries, and building the management teams that ran them.

I made every mistake in the book. Hired out of desperation. Avoided the hard conversations. Let small problems become crises because I didn't want to be "that" manager.

Two things fixed that. Before private equity, we sat inside a bigger group, so I got the structured leadership development most small businesses never see. Then I spent a decade putting it to work, training and coaching first-time managers as we grew. The stuff I teach isn't academic. It's what actually worked, what didn't, and what I wish someone had given me in year one, tested on dozens of managers since.

25 → 100+

Company headcount while on the leadership team

60

People led across 7 services in 5 countries

200+

Hires made

3x

Revenue and profit through a private equity cycle

"

The biggest reason management training fails is that the culture contradicts what people learn. We start with you, not your managers.

- Arran Russell, founder

Investment

From £800 per manager.

Every programme is built around your business, so the price depends on what we build. Most land between £800 and £1,200 per manager, depending on how many in-person sessions you want, the depth of leadership alignment work, and how bespoke the build is.

That covers everything on this page: the alignment work with you and your senior team, the bespoke curriculum, live sessions over months, and 1:1 coaching for every manager.

From £800

Per manager

3 managers

from £2,400

5 managers

from £4,000

10 managers

from £8,000

Book a conversation →

Need the structures built too?

If the business also needs career frameworks, a recruitment process, performance frameworks or culture work alongside the training, that's the full engagement with The People Partner. The structures and the leadership team that runs them, built together.

Not sure if this is right for your business?

If you're on the fence, tell me about your team and I'll give you an honest answer about whether this could help. If it wouldn't, I'll tell you that too.

Email me →