Frontline managers running multiple locations don't get much time to build trust with their teams. This group got a year.
Baker spent a year working with a multi-location operational services organization to help frontline managers lead their teams instead of just managing them: six workshops, spaced every other month, paired with monthly coaching calls in between.
The coaching conversations tell the story better than any report could. Leaders stopped relaying instructions and started coaching their teams through problems instead. One manager put it simply:
We shifted the conversation from compliance to ownership.
Frontline Manager
Others talked about handing work back to their teams instead of doing it all themselves. One leader described pausing during a conflict instead of reacting to it, using a communication framework the group had built together in the workshops. Several started treating their own capacity, boundaries and recovery included, as something to manage on purpose rather than an afterthought.
I would plan your route for you. Now I'm just planning your destination. More often than not, I'm letting you pick the route up the mountain. You decide how you're going to get there.
Frontline Manager
By the end of the year, these leaders had a shared language for accountability, trust, and capacity. They were using it in real moments: coaching a direct report, working through a conflict between two team members, deciding what to hand off and what to keep.
That's Baker's Develop stage doing its job, building the skills people need and giving them a way to keep using them.
See the Full Story
We put together a short booklet walking through what changed, session by session, in the leaders' own words. If you're thinking about what leadership development could look like for your team, it's a good place to start.
Download the Booklet →