Manager Essentials

Who it's for

Team leads in their first year with direct reports, supervisors promoted from the work, and managers of small teams with a hard conversation on the calendar.

Output

• A scored report after every room, with the moment that earned each score and one recommended focus
• Six real conversations held in the first cycle, each rehearsed once before it counted
• A trajectory across every attempt, and for the manager a Ren summary of each participant and a team report
• Scored against published frameworks: high-stakes dialogue, care and challenge, clear communication, disciplined prioritisation, conversation layers, conflict-mode flexibility, participatory facilitation, Roger Schwarz's ground rules and Cohen and Bradford's influence without authority

Program contents

1. Hard conversations · Refusing well — Difficult Conversation · Saying No Simulation
2. Performance conversations — Performance Conversation
3. Conflict resolution · Chairing decisions — Team Conflict · Meeting Facilitation
4. Managing upward — Managing Up

How the program works

A four-week program for new and first-line managers, assigned by their manager, an HR or L&D lead or a facilitator, built on Renatus. Six simulation rooms · Four weeks, one or two rooms a week, each followed by the real conversation · Unlimited attempts · Ongoing thereafter.

The rooms

Why this program exists

A new manager is promoted for the work and then handed the conversations that come with a team: telling someone their work is not where it needs to be, refusing a request from above, stepping between two people who both report to them, chairing the meeting that has to decide, and pushing back on their own manager. Each one carries a cost when it is postponed, and the cost lands on the team. This program prepares them through simulation. Ren builds each scene from the manager's real role, team and situation, and plays the other person in it, so every conversation is new and moves with what the manager says.

What you'll achieve

1. Rehearsal of the six conversations that come with a team, as often as they want: the hard conversation, the refusal, the performance message, the conflict, the meeting that decides and the conversation upward
2. A scored report after every room: each dimension with the moment that earned its score, what worked, the risk signals, strengths, development areas, blind spots where the evidence shows them, and one recommended focus with a first step
3. Six real conversations held in the first cycle, each rehearsed once before it counted
4. Unlimited attempts at every room, each a different scene for their current role, scored on the same dimensions and charted against every attempt before it

At a glance

Who it's for

New and first-line managers: team leads in their first year with direct reports, supervisors promoted from the work, and managers of small teams. It suits a cohort of new managers starting together, a management layer taking it as a refresher, or one manager with a conversation on the calendar. It is assigned by their manager, an HR or L&D lead or a facilitator; the manager's lines are for whoever that is. Every room calibrates to role, level and situation, so one cohort can hold a first-time team lead and an experienced department head. It assumes participants know their work and their people. It rehearses the conversations the role asks of them, and scores them the same way every time.

Cadence

4 weeks

1

Hard conversations · Refusing well · Difficult Conversation · Saying No Simulation · Read Framing and Follow-through; read Alternative

2

Performance conversations · Performance Conversation · Read Clarity of Message and Path Forward; read the Ren summary across three rooms

3

Conflict resolution · Chairing decisions · Team Conflict · Meeting Facilitation · Read Fairness and Aftercare; read Air-time Management and Closure

4

Managing upward · Managing Up · Read Grounding and Outcome; read the team report; set the ongoing plan

Session by session