Growing Together: Management Mastery - a new course for a new age of managers by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development

by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development

In spring 2025, I was approached by the HR team with a problem. Our leadership programmes were doing a lot of good to support people to have vision and aspiration, make evidence-informed decisions, and talk with confidence about the theory of being an effective leader… but there was something missing. Being a driven person with vision and values is not enough to excel in a role with managerial responsibilities. Colleagues were excelling in their former roles, and so earmarked for promotion. They were making the next step, complete with line management responsibilities, and then just left to work out exactly how to do the job practically day to day.  

Rising to the challenge of being a good people manager is not a role you can simply inspire your way through; there is a whole lot more to the less glamorous side of leadership which involves following policy, consistent systems, having difficult conversations, running an effective meeting, recruitment, crisis management, leading sustainable solutions which stand the test of time… the list is endless. Yet, how many people are left to work out how to deal with these things with little to no guidance? I am sure many, and I was one of them. 

You are excellent at your current role, so you will be an excellent line manager! Right? Wrong! 

I was in my fourth year of teaching when I became a line manager for the first time. I had a line management agenda on a spreadsheet, copying the practice of my own line manager, but beyond that, I had no true clue what I was doing. Thank goodness I did not have to deal with anything knotty about absence, performance and wellbeing until slightly later in my career because I would have floundered. Even now, I encounter people management issues for the first time, and I look to HR to support my next steps, not wanting to do the wrong thing by the team I line manage. 

Enter Management Mastery, a new course we have designed to give line managers the practical tools they need to be effective people managers. Aldridge Education policy and process, psychological safety and wellbeing, appraisals, leading recruitment… we are teaching managers how to do the practical part of their roles more effectively. Let’s equip people with the nuts and bolts of being a manager. It does not have to be guesswork, and they do have to embark on this journey of learning completely alone. 

Two terms in, what have I learnt from writing and facilitating on this course? First and foremost, the greener, less experienced version of me would have wished for a course like this to exist. It is a pleasure to be in that room with my inspiring co-facilitators, one representative from a school environment and another from HR. In our pilot cohort, we have fantastic managers from all areas of our organisation, collaborating, thinking deeply and making real change to their practice. Communication has more clarity, they are pushing for more ‘balcony’ time in their roles to think deeply about strategic change in their teams, meetings have stronger agendas and follow through, the group are confident to be recruiting managers for roles in their teams, and the next appraisal window is going to run like a dream.  

One participant has reflected on the impact the course has had on their work: 

“As a leader in schools, you’re constantly taught how to teach, how to develop classroom-specific skills, how to lead teaching and learning. However, you’re never instructed on the extra management skills needed as a leader, how to recruit, write policy, lead meetings, and have challenging conversations.  
 
The management mastery fills this gap - it neatly dovetails your expertise in the classroom setting to those new, wider, essential skills and tools needed to be an effective leader and manager. 

One example of this is understanding all the nuts and bolts that go into recruiting new staff to your team. Now, the first time I do this isn’t when I’m recruiting, but in a safe environment with excellent instruction and feedback. Instead of muddling my way through a recruitment process in the middle of term, I’ve done it all before and have clear-cut ways of working to maximise that process. It’s had a real impact on my work.” 

Our final workshop in June is called ‘What to do when things go wrong.’ How do we tackle issues with things like attendance and performance? Leading with kindness and making our people feeling psychologically safe while following policy in a fair way is key as a manager, and so often getting this wrong leads to complaints, grievances, and colleagues not wanting to stay in their roles. As managers, we have a responsibility to look after our people and do the right thing for the organisation, so we are going to explore exactly what that looks like, instead of only addressing issues as they arise. Let’s give new managers a toolkit of strategies that many of us have learnt through experimentation over the years. Why should they be left to get it wrong when we know how to get it right? 

And looking towards the future? We have a queue out the door, desperate to apply for one of the spots in cohort 2. What a privilege to train the new generation of managers, building a more sustainable, people centred approach to line management and team development across the trust. Why didn’t we do this sooner? 

Does this blog resonate with you? Are you looking for a similar course for your team? 

Fill in our enquiry form to get in touch as we would love to work with you: https://aldridgeeducation.org/Growing-Together-Professional-Development/