Every word below is theirs. No paraphrasing, no invented quotes. Find the one whose situation sounds like yours.
Start with the question you're actually asking
Read this if you want to know whether the change holds after the programme ends, and whether an employer gets its money back.
Jack Richens · Senior Engineer, Base (leads a team of 8)
Base is a fast-growing technology company. Jack runs its support function, a team that had scaled quickly from a handful of people to eight. That growth created the classic manager trap: too much lived in Jack's head, there were not enough written processes to fall back on, and the systems that had worked for a small team were starting to strain. He had also had a genuinely hard experience managing an underperformer, with no playbook for the uncomfortable conversations that come with leading a bigger team.
He joined the Foundations Programme to get deliberate about his leadership rather than learning it by trial and error.
He got the knowledge out of his own head. Jack completed a major documentation push, using the screen-recording and transcription approach covered on the programme to turn how-to knowledge into written SOPs. In his words, "it's still a big job, but I've saved so much time." That cut the single-point-of-failure risk a growing technical team carries, and freed him to lead rather than firefight.
Then he handed real responsibility to his engineers. Rather than keeping the coaching to himself, he passed a large chunk of it down.
"The stuff I would normally talk people through, I've handed to the people that are the least extrovert. They have to face down actually communicating and sharing their skills, which has been really, really positive."
That is delegation doing double duty: work off the manager, development for the people underneath him.
And he stopped letting things slide. Jack made three new hires and started addressing issues immediately rather than waiting.
"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."
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.
"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. I'd have made much better decisions, taken different actions, and done things a lot quicker if I'd done this years back."
Most training gets judged the week it ends. This is a manager telling you, twelve weeks on, that it held. See the programme →
Read this if you think leadership training is personality tests and theory, and you want to know what makes this different.
Olivia · Account Director, PR Agency
Olivia was promoted in January. The promotion put her squarely in the transition every newly promoted specialist hits: the work that got her promoted was the doing, and the job she had just been handed was something else.
"I was promoted, and it was really at the phase where I needed to shift from being more of a doer into more of a coach, directing traffic, managing the team. The opportunity came along at the perfect time to help me take ownership of the new position and get the most out of the teams I'm working with."
The part she expected least mattered most. The programme opens on the manager rather than the team: energy, time, how you show up.
"I was not expecting to get the more personal development stuff out of it. But the earlier work, looking inward to identify your strengths and weaknesses, the way we manage time and energy, things we can change within our week, at home, the way you get up in the morning. That was quite surprising to me, and I actually found it the most valuable part of the programme."
Then a five-minute roleplay exposed her default. A direct report brings a problem, and Olivia's instinct was to solve it.
"It's not your job to fix every problem. Part of shifting into a coaching mindset is that you don't need to come up with the solutions. I'd fallen into a trap where I was always trying to fix the problem, when it's not always my problem to solve. It was only a five-minute exercise, but it left an impact. Now with some of our juniors, instead of offering the solutions I've shifted to asking: what do you think the solution is? What can you do differently?"
And the conversations she used to soften, she now has straight. In her written feedback she put the change in four words: no more compliment sandwiches.
"I've been braver about confronting the difficult conversations, and I've reframed it in my mind: it's not criticism of somebody, it's helping them improve, which is my responsibility as a manager. People appreciate feedback and they appreciate opportunities to improve, instead of feeling like they're getting it wrong all the time."
Olivia, Account Director, PR Agency · 7 min
Asked what she'd say to a manager weighing it up, she went straight at the objection she'd had herself.
"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, plus one-to-one coaching to help with it, really tailored to you and your role."
The newly promoted manager who has to stop doing the work. See the programme →
Read this if you're not managing anyone yet, you want to be, and you're wondering whether management training is any use before you have a team.
Chris Gent · Senior Account Manager
Chris arrived sceptical, and said so.
"Over the years I have done a lot of different training courses, and they are normally pretty shite. It's hours of sitting and listening to a person ramble on, often not very engaging and it rarely feels authentic, like they are reading from a sheet as opposed to teaching from their own experience."
He is also the one person in this cohort who was not managing anybody. The structure where he works is flat, so rather than wait for a job title to appear, he came to build the skills first.
"I was very keen to get eventually into a people management position. So when my manager presented me with the opportunity for this course, I absolutely jumped at it. I thought it'd be a great opportunity to learn and to develop the soft skills, without having the direct experience."
The first thing that changed was not a skill. It was realising that a fair amount of what he was already doing counted.
"Something that you opened my eyes to was, even though I've not got a manager title, that doesn't mean I can't assume a position of leadership. It's elements of leadership and people management, which I just didn't really consider beforehand."
That reframe has a practical edge to it. It changes the answer he gives in an interview.
"Before starting the course, if anyone asked me, have you got any people management experience? I would give a very flimsy answer. I would probably say, no. But now, having done this course and reflecting on my past experiences, I say, yes, I have."
Then the part of his job that already involved other people got better. Chris is the one his team goes to with questions, and the one who takes new colleagues through the work.
"Where previously, if I was onboarding a new colleague, I would walk through the process with them. I'd show them and expect them to have it. The big thing I took away that I'm actually able to implement is how to do that more efficiently. A structured process, much more methodical than what I would previously do."
Chris Gent, Senior Account Manager · 3 min
On the course itself, he came back to the thing that had put him off training before.
"With the Foundations course, I was instantly engaged, as Arran is talking from years of experience as well as contextualising his own views with theories and research, which made every session interesting and useful for my development in people management and leadership."
He is straight about the limitation as well. Some of it stays theoretical until you have a team of your own.
"Do it. Although some of the content is currently theoretical for me and I am unable to put it into practice yet, it has allowed me the opportunity to learn, understand, contextualise and practise the key skills and behaviours of a good people manager before I'm even in the role."
Most management training assumes you already manage people. See the programme →
Read this if you've been managing for years without formal training, and the hard part is being the friend and the boss at once.
Leanne Buckley · Head of Customer Success, Twine
Leanne had been managing for five or six years, never more than one or two people at a time, and had never been given any formal training for it. What she had instead was a problem most managers of small teams will recognise instantly, and few say out loud.
"I had always struggled with switching between somebody who I work with and have social interactions with to managing them, and cracking down a little bit. I knew there was a gap in my knowledge of how to manage somebody to make sure I was getting the most out of them, but we still kept a relationship that worked for work."
Being liked and being effective felt like a trade. In practice it showed up as things being let go.
"I would often let something become something really small and insignificant. Letting deadlines slip, not really being too pushy. My direct report would constantly be like, oh, I'm not going to get that finished today, does that matter? And I'd just kind of say, yeah."
The fix was not the difficult conversation. It was everything before one.
"It was having the smaller conversations beforehand, so we didn't need to get to the difficult ones. Giving regular feedback, addressing situations as soon as they happen, making sure those small difficult conversations don't become big ones. I implemented all of that the minute it became something you introduced, and it has literally been game-changing for me."
The first proof came fast. A stalled piece of work, a conversation that previously would not have happened at all, and in her words, the work "completed within 24 hours". The more interesting result arrived months later, and it is the one most training never reaches.
"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, because I've put all the legwork in to make sure that doesn't happen."
And the change did not stay on her side of the relationship.
"I've normalised feedback to the point where he's not even expecting the worst. The minute I do give feedback that's slightly more critical, he's responding in such a better way, because he just sees it as a small thing, not such a massive thing."
Leanne Buckley, Head of Customer Success, Twine · 5 min
"You might have been managing people for a long period of time and think your method's working. But even if you just took one thing from it, it is going to change the way you behave towards your reports, and then how they treat you in response."
The difference between handling problems and building a system where fewer form. See the programme →
Read this if you've sat through management training before, written the list of actions, and forgotten all of it within a fortnight.
Jake · Senior Account Manager
Jake had been in his role around eighteen months when he took on formal line management for the first time. He had managed a team before, at a startup, but there was never a formal approach to it and he had never been given any training. In his words, he "just sort of felt his way through".
The change started before any of the team content.
"The thing that shifted for me was the mindset. Before we even get into how to be a leader, you need to think about how you're coming across as a person, managing your energy, managing your time. I wasn't really thinking strategically about my own mindset, how I protect my time, making sure I'm not just at the beck and call of everyone."
The leadership style profiling then put a finger on something specific: a style that wants to be liked, and a tendency to avoid difficult conversations because of it. One idea stuck hardest.
"There were a couple of things I'd been letting slide, not deliberately, not even fully consciously. But that really resonated: if you keep walking past things, that is you saying this is the new standard. Because we're so busy it was just, yeah, it's kind of fine, I'll address it when I have time. But you never have time."
So he started having the conversations. The early awkwardness gave way to something better.
"In many cases you might think you're being nice by letting it slide, but actually the nicer thing to do is to be clear. It's made my working relationships stronger and expectations are clearer, and I think the people I've had those conversations with have actually really appreciated it."
Jake, Senior Account Manager · 6 min
"This is very different to other training programmes, and so much better. Where most training is hours or day-long and gives you a long list of unspecific things to do that are probably forgotten within days, this is structured around your personal goals, strengths, weaknesses and leadership style. The fact that you get actual one-to-ones is super valuable, it's so personalised. There's something for everyone, and you have to engage: do the homework, show up ready."
The comparison he makes is against training he has actually sat through. See the programme →
Read this if you're experienced and direct, you've led teams before, and you suspect a coaching style means giving up control.
Head of Marketing · Media Tech Company
An experienced, confident Head of Marketing, hired to build a marketing team from nothing. Their own five-word summary of the starting point: "hiring of new team from scratch." Not a struggling first-time manager. They had run teams before, they knew their craft, and they describe their own style as direct and self-assured. Their line manager put them on the programme. In their own words, they "had no choice".
The challenge was specific. A leader who sets a clear direction and expects capable people to fill in the gaps was now leading two relatively new hires in their first months, who did not yet know how the leader worked. The style that had served this leader well was not the style this team needed.
Two things landed early. The leadership-style assessment came first.
"The assessment has been really important for me. Understanding that I am that visionary and a pace-setter, the two combined isn't always ideal."
Then the programme's opening rule, that leadership is not about you, followed immediately by the realisation that it demands more self-examination than anything they had done before.
"I was surprised by the sheer amount of self-reflection that's involved. When you start the session with 'it's not all about you', and then 'it is about you'. That contradiction, two opposites being true at the same time, was my biggest light-bulb moment."
What changed first was the quality of the questions. And this is the part that matters to any manager who fears that coaching means losing grip.
"I was able to get what I needed from them as a leader without making them feel I'm telling them what to do. The questions help empower the team to think for themselves and think of solutions independently, without too much intervention from me."
Then they stopped fixing. Their instinct, by their own account, is to be a rescuer. Their example is a social media graphic they could have corrected themselves in seconds.
"Where I would normally have stepped in and gone, 'they haven't done it quite right, I'm going to sort it out', it's now, 'no, give them the opportunity to do this and show them.' They chose not to use the one I did and did a different version, but it still did the same job."
And a month after the programme ended, the habit did its real work. They found the team had not been joining up their work in the way they had assumed. The old reflex would have been to ask why the team had not done it. Instead they asked what they themselves had contributed.
"My contribution to the problem is that I've been talking to them separately, expecting them to talk to each other, but I hadn't actually said the words 'you need to be talking to each other'."
That answer pointed straight back at the assessment result. A visionary pace-setter sets the direction and expects people to fill in the gaps. Two new hires needed something different: expectations written down, processes documented, the same message repeated until it stuck, and a manager who was closer to the work for now so they would not have to be later. The programme gave them the diagnosis and the permission to act on it, without treating it as a failure of leadership.
"The combination of what you learn from the sessions, complemented by the one-to-one sessions, helps you see the blind spots as a leader that you wouldn't otherwise see. Don't sit on the fence about the Set The Tone leadership training, do it."
Coaching questions got them more from the team, not less authority. See the programme →
Cohort 2 of the Foundations Programme starts on Tuesday 10 November. If you'd rather talk it through first, book fifteen minutes. No pitch, and I won't chase you afterwards.
See the Foundations Programme →Or book a 15-minute chat, or email me.