lead / managing and developing people remotely
TLDR
A full-day, experiential workshop that builds the individual skills public sector managers need to manage their team with understanding, set clear expectations, and manage the performance and development of people they lead remotely.
Hybrid and remote working are now permanent features of public sector working life. Research consistently shows that the manager, more than any other factor, determines how engaged a team is. Yet trust is one of the hardest things to build at a distance: many managers who supervise remote staff don't fully trust their team to be productive, and many employees don't feel that trust in return.
This workshop is for public sector managers who line manage people working remotely or across locations. It builds the individual skills of managing well at a distance: building the relationships that let you support their work priorities and wellbeing, setting expectations that hold up outside the room, coaching and giving feedback through a screen, and developing people fairly when you don't see them by chance
It's an experiential workshop. Participants learn the principles and techniques, then practise them straight away in exercises built around their own day-to-day situations, with constructive, immediate feedback from an expert trainer, delivered in a psychologically safe and supportive environment.
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To help managers build practical ways of reading how someone's doing, replacing or supplementing to the cues they'd naturally pick up in person.
To practise setting expectations clear and specific enough to act on well after the conversation ends.
To build trust through habits that work when day-to-day contact is limited.
To develop confidence in coaching, feedback and difficult conversations conducted mostly or entirely through a screen.
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Managers who build strong enough relationships with their team to support their wellbeing and priorities, without relying on daily contact
Clearer, more consistent expectations for people managed at a distance.
Practical techniques for coaching, feedback and difficult conversations that work when contact is mostly online.
A fairer approach to development and advancement for people managers don't see every day.
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09:30 – Welcome and introductions
Name, role, and how much of your team works remotely or across locations
09:45 – Expectations
10:00 – What managing at a distance demands
Activity: in small groups, discuss what's hardest about managing people you don't see day to day
Groups share back, then we bring it together as one list
10:30 – Connecting with your team at a distance
Activity: in pairs, one person gives a short work update, the other actively listens and notices what's underneath it, then asks two follow-up questions
Group discussion: what did you notice that the words alone didn't tell you?
The remote signals worth watching for: quieter meetings, slower replies, dropped cameras, changes in tone
11:15 – Break
11:30 – Making the unwritten written
Activity: in groups, each person names one expectation they've never actually said out loud to their team, and why they assumed it was clear
Setting expectations that hold up when nobody's in the room to reinforce them, using the SMART framework applied to remote working
12:15 – SMART expectations for distributed teams
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely, each worked through with an example set for a remote or hybrid team member
12:45 – Lunch
13:30 – Coaching at a distance using GROW
Goal, Reality, Options, Way forward
Practised in pairs: one plays the manager, one plays the team member, working through a real coaching conversation with the model
Immediate, constructive feedback from the trainer after each round
14:15 – Feedback and difficult conversations at a distance
The four-stage technique: describe the behaviour, identify the situation, describe the impact, agree the way forward
Practised in pairs, applied to a real conversation each participant needs to have
14:45 – Break
15:00 – Managing performance without daily visibility
Activity: why is it important to manage performance when you don't see the work happening day to day?
Groups share back, then we bring it together as one list
15:30 – Developing and advocating for people you don't casually observe
Activity: think of someone on your team who's easy to overlook for opportunities because they're not visible day to day. What would you do differently for them?
16:00 – Commitments and close
Individually, agree what you'll do differently from tomorrow
Share it with a partner
16:30 – Close
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Discovery
Before the workshop, we run a confidential pre-workshop questionnaire and a full discovery with the client to understand the challenges participants are facing and the organisation's expectations, so that we can build the right programme for them.Workshop
A full-day session, delivered face to face or virtually, focused on the real management situations participants are dealing with. For smaller groups or focused topics, the workshop can sometimes be run as a half-day.One-to-one coaching (OPTIONAL)
Following the workshop, individual coaching can be offered to selected managers to work through a specific management challenge on a one-to-one basis.Follow-up session (OPTIONAL)
Around two months later, we can run a short virtual follow-up session to review progress, share learning and refresh commitments.
