Course Highlights
This five-day in-person intensive leadership development program will:
- Clarify what leadership and management look like in day-to-day work and help managers understand their own natural tendencies.
- Strengthen credibility and consistency by connecting behavior to the COMPETENT framework.
- Help managers communicate values and purpose so expectations feel clearer and work feels less ambiguous.
- Improve motivation and follow-through by shaping work conditions and addressing accountability barriers directly.
- Build stronger delegation skill through the DELEGATE framework, with clearer ownership, better checkpoints, and fewer “bounce backs.”
- Strengthen feedback and coaching effectiveness through multiple conversation models and better question discipline.
- Improve follow-through after initial feedback by recognizing feedback failure patterns, managing coaching fatigue, and applying second-round structures such as Recommit.
- Prepare managers to make hard decisions, deliver tough messages using CANDOR, and reset direction after disruption with steadiness and clarity.
- Increase consistency across managers so teams experience clearer standards, earlier problem-solving, and stronger ownership.
Program Overview
A Firm Foundation is an in-depth, five-part leadership development program that changes how managers run the day-to-day work of leading people. By the end of the series, managers stop relying on reminders, rescues, and vague expectations and start creating clear agreements, steady follow-through, and consistent standards across the team. Conversations that used to be avoided—feedback, accountability, coaching, and hard decisions—become structured, calmer, and more effective.
Across five sessions, participants learn how to separate leadership from management, communicate values and purpose so work feels less ambiguous, and strengthen motivation and accountability through better delegation, checkpoints, and feedback. The program then goes further into coaching and development conversations, including what to do when early feedback does not stick. The series closes by strengthening decision-making and change leadership so managers can deliver tough messages, reset direction after disruption, and maintain credibility when not everyone is happy.
The outcome is a more consistent management culture: clearer expectations, fewer dropped handoffs, earlier problem-solving, stronger ownership, and better performance conversations that lead to real improvement.
We can deliver the program on consecutive days for an intensive experience, or we can space it over several days or weeks so managers can apply the tools between sessions and return with real situations for discussion and practice.
The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Day One: Leadership, Management, Values, and Purpose
Session Objectives
At this session’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Outline the difference between management and leadership.
- Discuss the Discovering Your Natural Tendencies: Leadership and Management Spectrum Assessment and their strengths and opportunities as managers and leaders.
- Explain the COMPETENT framework that identifies the characteristics strong managers and leaders share.
- Discuss the management and leadership activities that should occur to satisfy the COMPETENT framework.
- Identify organizational and personal values and the importance of communicating them.
- Explain the Purpose Triangle and its value in reducing ambiguity and increasing engagement.
Workshop Modules
Opening Questions: What Managers and Leaders Do
This opening segment establishes working definitions for management and leadership and connects both to organizational reality. Four guiding questions anchor the discussion, covering what managers and leaders each do, why organizational values matter, and how a clear understanding of purpose shapes outcomes when present and creates problems when absent. Through guided questions, participants will compare the roles, describe what each looks like on the job, and surface where confusion between the two shows up in day-to-day decisions.
Discovering Your Natural Tendencies: Leadership and Management Spectrum Assessment
The session then makes tendencies visible through an assessment that measures natural preferences across four dimensions. Participants will review their results, discuss the strengths and opportunities each reveals, and identify where their default style helps performance and where it creates gaps. The goal is not to label or limit but to build the self-awareness that allows managers to stretch into situations that do not come naturally.
Two Sides of the Coin: Leadership and Management
This module contrasts leadership and management through a set of paired principles and realistic workplace scenarios. Participants will decide whether each situation calls for a leadership or a management response, explain their reasoning, and compare choices across the group. The discussion sharpens judgment about when vision is needed versus when structure drives the better result.
Competent: What Effective Managers and Leaders Do
Next, the program moves to what strong managers and leaders consistently do. The COMPETENT framework names nine traits shared across effective leaders and managers: Communication, Ownership, Motivation, Problem-Solving, Emotional Intelligence, Trust-Building, Execution, Navigating Change, and Team Development. Participants will map both the management activities and the leadership activities that bring each trait to life, then apply the framework to a series of case studies in which managers have missed opportunities to lead and manage effectively. The cases give the group practice diagnosing gaps and identifying what a stronger response would have looked like.
A Balanced Triangle: A Clear Line of Sight
The session closes by connecting purpose to clarity and engagement through the Purpose Triangle, a model that aligns People, Process, and Product around a clearly stated purpose at three levels: organization, department, and role. Participants will work through a series of case studies in which ambiguity in purpose has produced inconsistency, wasted effort, or teams that are reacting rather than executing. The group will diagnose which point of the triangle is misaligned in each case and outline what changes when purpose is stated well versus left vague.
Day Two: Motivation, Delegation, and Feedback
Session Objectives
At this session’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Identify the conditions that should exist to increase motivation.
- Outline ten areas leaders can affect to create a motivational environment.
- Discuss accountability barriers and the link between motivation and accountability.
- Apply the DELEGATE framework.
- Define the task that must be accomplished.
- Evaluate skills and interests when assigning tasks.
- Use direct guidance and guided problem-solving.
- Avoid reverse delegation or reclaiming tasks.
- Tie feedback to the business impact.
- Connect delegation to the Purpose Triangle.
- Explain the importance of regular check-in meetings and what they should comprise.
- Hold an alignment conversation using the Purpose Triangle.
Workshop Modules
Momentum and Motivation: Creating Favorable Conditions
This session opens with a practical look at motivation as a set of work conditions managers can shape. The discussion examines ten elements leaders can affect and identifies the key actions behind each. Participants will analyze a set of scenarios in which managers have created motivational gaps through different patterns of oversight or neglect, identify what each manager undermined, and determine what a more intentional approach would look like.
Motivation and Accountability: Exploring the Link
This discussion connects motivation to accountability and surfaces why follow-through breaks down. The session examines two categories of barriers: those rooted in the individual and those that show up in relationships with others. Participants will work through the barrier list, diagnose what is driving missed commitments in common patterns, and select responses that restore ownership without triggering defensiveness.
The Delegate Framework: A Structured Approach
From there, the session moves into delegation as expectation-setting rather than task-dumping. The DELEGATE framework provides a step-by-step structure for handing off work with the clarity, fit, and follow-through that make ownership stick. A quick case opens the discussion by showing what happens when delegation skips critical steps, and two contrasting dialogues then help participants choose between direct guidance and guided problem-solving depending on the situation and the person.
Three Points: The Purpose Triangle and Delegating
This module ties delegation language to purpose so assignments are owned as outcomes rather than treated as tasks. Participants will connect the People, Process, and Product elements of the Purpose Triangle to a delegation conversation and practice building all three into a single handoff so that purpose, standards, and boundaries are explicit from the start.
More On Checkpoints and Feedback Loops: Track and Talk
The focus shifts to a tracking approach that prevents surprises without micromanaging. Participants will design milestone checkpoints and outline what regular check-in meetings should cover to maintain communication, transparency, and accountability. The session also examines frequency options and helps managers match check-in cadence to the work context and the team’s needs.
In Alignment: Conversation Using the Purpose Triangle
The session closes with a structured alignment conversation for moments when direction drifts. Participants will practice reconnecting an employee to the purpose of the role, addressing a shortcoming clearly and objectively, explaining the impact on People, Process, or Product, collaborating on solutions, restating expectations, and closing with support and a concrete follow-up plan.
Day Three: A Deeper Dive into Conversation Models for Coaching and Development
Session Objectives
At this session’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Apply Quick Appreciation, the PRAISE model, the LLC framework, the Opportunity-Question structure, the Modified Sandwich, the GROWTH model, and COIN framework.
- Determine the most appropriate feedback model for a range of situations.
- Implement best practices for allocating time to provide feedback.
- Ask strategic questions before selecting a feedback approach.
- Improve vague or blunt language.
- Align manager and employee expectations related to feedback.
- Develop performance solutions with employee input.
- Explain the feedback reaction continuum and how to respond to each level.
- Outline the importance of questions during feedback.
- Develop effective questions.
- Make feedback agreements with employees to avoid future problems.
- Approach employees who agree to improve their performance but don’t.
Workshop Modules
Developing An Effective Feedback Model: Participant Input and Agreement
This session opens with a build-your-own model exercise to surface what the room thinks effective feedback must include. Research on feedback frequency, productivity, and engagement frames the discussion before participants create their own model in teams. The group will then compare what they built to seven frameworks used throughout the session: Quick Appreciation, the PRAISE model, the LLC framework, the Opportunity-Question structure, the Modified Sandwich, the GROWTH model, and the COIN framework.
Fitting It In: When to Give Feedback
The focus shifts to timing and manager bandwidth so feedback does not become a once-a-quarter event. The session surfaces the questions managers should ask themselves before any feedback conversation and examines what separates in-the-moment feedback from feedback that belongs in a planned discussion. Managers will apply best-practice timing choices to common situations and leave with a clearer sense of where their current habits are costing them.
What Good Feedback Looks and Sounds Like: Picture Perfect
Participants will tighten language because wording is where feedback often breaks. A grade-and-improve exercise asks the group to evaluate a set of feedback statements and rewrite the ones that fall short. A second exercise converts directive statements into questions that invite ownership and reduce the defensiveness that shuts down productive conversations.
Agreeing In Advance: How to Give and Receive Feedback
This module establishes the groundwork that prevents surprise and defensiveness before a feedback conversation happens. Participants will work through a framework for building a shared feedback agreement with a direct report and examine a model dialogue that shows what a well-structured expectation-setting conversation sounds like. The work done here changes the emotional conditions of every feedback exchange that follows.
I Didn’t Expect That: Managing Employee Reactions
Participants will plan for what happens when feedback lands badly. Using the feedback reaction continuum, the group will map employee responses across a range and match leadership moves to each level. A full dialogue demonstrates how question-first moves keep the exchange productive when an employee pushes back hard. Case studies then give participants practice developing questions that help employees assess their own performance rather than receive a verdict from outside.
Seriously, You’re the Person Telling Me This?: Credible Communication
At this point, the session addresses credibility, since the same message lands differently depending on the source. Participants will examine the specific behaviors that build manager credibility over time and consider what happens when those behaviors have been inconsistent. For situations where credibility has been damaged, the session introduces the RESTORE model, a structured approach to rebuilding trust that a case study brings to life.
When Employees Agree to Improve Performance but Don’t: New Agreements
The session closes with three tools for situations where improvement has stalled after a verbal commitment. Participants will practice establishing upfront contracts that make expectations and consequences explicit before a performance conversation begins, apply two reciprocal agreement structures that link employee action to manager response, and work through an accountability meeting framework that provides a step-by-step structure for addressing issues that have recurred despite earlier conversations.
Day Four: Getting Beyond Initial Feedback Sessions
Session Objectives
At this session’s conclusion, attendees should be able to:
- Explain an inventory of frameworks, models, and language patterns introduced in earlier sessions for leading and managing employee performance.
- Identify four common feedback failure patterns that derail post-conversation progress.
- Evaluate their own coaching tolerance using the Coaching Fatigue Diagnostic and recognize where personal discomfort disrupts follow-through.
- Deliver second-round coaching using the Recommit Conversation Framework (Reconnect, Recheck, Reassert, Refocus).
- Differentiate between coaching and performance correction using the Escalation Without Alienation approach.
- Decide whether to recommit, restructure, or release an employee using a structured case-based exercise.
- Analyze how delayed intervention affects team trust, business risk, and leadership credibility.
Workshop Modules
Where We’ve Been: Feedback, Leadership, and the Work of Alignment
This session opens with a recap that reconnects the earlier sessions to the real leadership problem: follow-through over time. The class will revisit the full toolkit introduced across the first three days, examine how drift shows up even after a “good” first conversation, and identify which tools are most relevant when a manager needs to circle back to a situation that has stalled.
After Initial Feedback: When Models Meet Real Life
The session shifts to the gap between “the model” and “the Monday after” using the Champion Fund-Raisers case study. Three months have passed since the initial round of feedback conversations across the organization, and the picture is mixed: some leaders have made real progress, others have taken only partial steps, and a few have fallen back into old habits. Participants will assess the current state of each department head, consider what the manager did or did not do to shape the outcome, and identify which tools could still move each situation forward.
Rinse and Repeat: Naming Feedback Failure Patterns
This module focuses on four predictable patterns that derail progress after early commitments. Each pattern represents a different way that accountability quietly unravels after an initial conversation. Participants will identify which patterns are present in the Champion Fund-Raisers case, consider where they have seen each pattern in their own experience, and work through the specific manager responses most likely to interrupt them.
Coaching Tolerance: Managing Feedback Fatigue
The session addresses the internal friction that causes managers to rescue, avoid, overcorrect, or give up. A short diagnostic helps participants identify their own default move when a coaching situation becomes uncomfortable or frustrating. Participants will name what their response suggests and practice a planned alternative they can reach for before the moment arrives.
Back in the Saddle: Recommit Conversation Framework
The session provides a second-round structure for restarting progress without replaying the same conversation. The Recommit framework moves through four steps: Reconnect, Recheck, Reassert, and Refocus. Participants will build a coaching script for a Champion Fund-Raisers character using the structure, then examine and evaluate what each manager actually said in their real follow-up conversations.
When Results to Materialize: What’s Next?
This discussion turns to decision discipline when improvement still does not happen after clear expectations, structured support, and consistent follow-through. Using the Champion Fund-Raisers case at a later stage, participants will examine how a situation that was managed carefully has still not resolved, consider what the continued pattern is costing the business and the team, and work through what the Escalation Without Alienation approach looks like in practice.
The Decision: A Team Debate
The session closes with a structured debate that forces tradeoffs into the open. Three groups will each argue a different path forward for a Champion Fund-Raisers leader whose behavior has not changed despite sustained coaching: end the role, retain the person with additional investment, or reassign to a different position. After each group presents, the full class will evaluate which case felt strongest, what values shaped each argument, and how the decision would shift if the situation were unfolding on their own team.
A Time Travel Exercise: What Could Have Been
The course returns to a real past moment in the case and rewrites it with better choices. Participants will mark the point where they believe a firmer response was needed, draft what that conversation could have sounded like, name the tool they would have used, and connect that rewrite to one concrete change they will carry into their own follow-through going forward.
Day Five: Decisions, Direction, And Disruptions
Session Objectives
At this session’s conclusion, attendees should be able to:
- Apply the Intentional Courage framework to make difficult decisions that align with values, acknowledge fear, and protect dignity.
- Use the CANDOR model to deliver tough news with clarity, composure, and respect—without overexplaining or softening standards.
- Craft a reset message that calms speculation, reinforces expectations, and focuses energy after high-impact disruption.
- Distinguish between reactive and proactive change and align messaging to the type of shift—people, process, or product.
- Use the Change Curve to recognize emotional responses to disruption and adapt leadership behavior accordingly.
- Reengage teams by clarifying roles, naming the “now,” and reinforcing shared direction.
- Leverage the COMPETENT model to lead through uncertainty, resistance, misalignment, and fatigue with consistency and credibility.
- Anticipate potential disruption using futurecasting and plan leadership responses before a crisis hits.
Workshop Modules
The Cost of Leadership: When You Can’t Please Everyone
This session opens by naming what makes leadership hard when every option creates friction. The group will examine several categories of difficult decisions and work through the difference between something that is hard and something that is wrong. The central idea is that delaying a necessary decision sends its own message about what the leader values and whether standards have real limits.
Intentional Courage Framework: Sorting Emotion from Action
This discussion introduces a four-part decision structure for high-stakes moments. Learners will work through Core Values, Choices, Courage, and Care to clarify what matters, identify the real options and their tradeoffs, name what fear is driving delay, and determine how to act with dignity while still acting. Participants will apply each element before bringing the framework to bear on the Champion Fund-Raisers situation.
Should Vessa Stay? Should Vessa Go?: Applying the Framework
The class returns to the ongoing situation with Vessa, whose instincts are strong but whose delivery has continued to create friction and stall collaboration despite earlier coaching and feedback. Participants will apply the Intentional Courage framework to evaluate the three available paths, weigh the consequences of each for the individual, the team, and the culture, and decide what message their choice sends about what the organization actually stands for.
CANDOR: A Model for Saying the Hard Thing Well
The session shifts from deciding to delivering. CANDOR is a decision-delivery tool, not a feedback tool. Its purpose is to protect dignity while reinforcing standards in a conversation where the decision has already been made and is not open for debate. Participants will examine a model delivery conversation, analyze what each step accomplishes, and discuss where tone, word choice, and sequence either protect dignity or introduce uncertainty the situation does not need.
Build Your Own CANDOR Statement: Practice with Tough Scenarios
This module provides practice that mirrors real leadership pressure. Participants will write a CANDOR statement for one of three scenarios and then have their statements reviewed for tone, wording, and sequence. The work surfaces how easy it is to soften language at exactly the moment when clarity matters most.
Resetting The Tone: Moving Forward After Tough Decisions
The focus moves to what happens after a high-impact decision, when silence triggers speculation. An activity opens the discussion by giving participants a visceral sense of how fast misinformation travels and what it costs a team when leadership does not step into the vacuum. Participants will then apply four principles to draft a short reset message that grounds the team without overexplaining.
A Certainty: Change Is a Constant
This module broadens the lens from one decision to the change it creates. Participants will distinguish reactive from proactive change and categorize shifts across people, process, and product so that messaging matches the specific situation rather than defaulting to a single script. A new development in the Champion Fund-Raisers story introduces a significant organizational change and gives participants fresh material for applying what they have learned about communicating through disruption.
The Change Curve: Reading Reactions and Responding Well
The session addresses predictable emotional and behavioral responses after disruption. Participants will map common workplace behaviors to stages of the Change Curve and choose leadership responses that fit each stage. A set of scenarios drawn from the Champion Fund-Raisers story gives participants practice identifying where individuals and teams are in the arc and deciding what kind of leadership contact each situation calls for.
A Calm in the Storm: How Leaders Handle Change
This module anchors leadership behavior during transition using COMPETENT in a change context. Participants will connect each of the nine framework components to the specific demands of disruption and identify what “steady leadership” looks like when teams are navigating uncertainty, resistance, misalignment, and fatigue.
Imagine the Year Ahead: Futurecasting and Preparation
The session closes with a futurecasting exercise designed to move leaders from reaction to readiness before a crisis hits. Working in groups, participants will describe a realistic change their organization could experience within the next year, map how different teams and roles are likely to respond, and use COMPETENT to plan how they would lead through it. The goal is to make the first 30 days of a future disruption feel less like a surprise and more like a situation the team has already thought through.
Target Audience
This program is designed for groups that want to:
- Build stronger manager consistency across delegation, feedback, and accountability.
- Improve leadership credibility through clearer expectations and steadier follow-through.
- Strengthen motivation, engagement, and ownership without relying on reminders and rescues.
- Improve coaching effectiveness when early feedback does not stick.
- Build decision-making and change leadership skill for high-friction situations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend this five-day leadership development program?
This program works best for managers and supervisors with direct reports who want to build more consistent habits around delegation, feedback, and accountability. It fits organizations that want to close the gap between leadership expectations and day-to-day manager behavior across a team or department. It also serves individual managers who recognize that their current approach to coaching, difficult conversations, and follow-through is costing them time and credibility.
Can we spread the five days out rather than running them consecutively?
Yes, and for many organizations, spacing the sessions produces better outcomes than running them back to back. When participants have time between sessions, they can apply the tools to real situations and return with specific examples to work through in the room. We can run the program across weeks or months, and we can adjust the design so each session stands on its own while still building toward the full arc.
What tools and frameworks will participants take away from this program?
Participants leave with a complete set of practical tools, including the COMPETENT framework, the Purpose Triangle, the DELEGATE framework, multiple feedback and coaching models, the Coaching Fatigue Diagnostic, the Recommit Conversation Framework, the Intentional Courage framework, the CANDOR model, and the Change Curve. They will have applied each tool in the room so the language feels familiar before they return to work. Participant materials give them a reference they can return to when real situations arise.
How does a five-day series differ from a standard one-day leadership workshop?
Depth and repetition are the main differences. A one-day program can introduce concepts and spark reflection, but it rarely gives managers enough time to practice a tool, receive feedback, and try again before the day ends. A five-day program allows the cohort to build shared language, return to earlier frameworks in new contexts, and work through the harder questions that surface after the first round of practice. The extended format also makes room for case-based work and real-situation coaching that a shorter program cannot accommodate.
Can the content be customized to fit our organization?
We shape every program around the group attending it. Before the sessions begin, we gather information about the management challenges your organization is navigating, the experience level of the participants, and the outcomes that matter most to your leadership team. We then adjust scenarios, examples, and emphasis to reflect your environment. The core frameworks remain consistent, but how we teach and apply them reflects your specific situation.
What group size works best for this program?
The program works well with groups ranging from 6 to 30 participants. Smaller groups allow for more individual attention and deeper discussion, while larger groups bring more varied perspectives to case work and team exercises. If your organization has more people to train than a single cohort can accommodate, we can schedule multiple runs or discuss a phased rollout that fits your timeline.