How you’ll feel AFTER TAKING
THE sUPERVISORY lEADERSHIP development Program

more confident, capable, and positive about your leadership abilities

SLDP Program summary

Executive Summary

Supervisors shape employee engagement, retention, accountability, and team culture — yet many organizations promote strong individual contributors into leadership roles without providing sustained leadership development.

The Supervisor Leadership Development Program (SLDP) is a 10–11 month, virtual, instructor-led leadership journey designed to help supervisors and managers build the practical skills needed to lead effectively in today’s workplace.

Unlike stand-alone workshops or short leadership conferences, the SLDP combines live instruction, mentoring, coaching, assessments, discussion, and workplace application over time to help leadership learning transfer into everyday supervisory practice.

Participants strengthen the capabilities most critical to supervisory success, including communication, conflict management, emotional intelligence, team leadership, performance management, accountability, and self-awareness.

The result is stronger supervisors, healthier team dynamics, improved employee engagement, and a more sustainable leadership pipeline for the organization.

Why Choose the SLDP?

Organizations have many options when it comes to leadership development, yet many medium- and smaller-sized organizations struggle to justify the cost, staffing, or participant volume needed for a fully internal leadership academy.

The SLDP solves this challenge through a flexible cohort model that allows organizations to enroll only the supervisors and managers they need developed, while still benefiting from a comprehensive leadership experience.

Organizations benefit from:

  • Standardized leadership development for new and seasoned supervisors and managers

  • Practical, action-based learning supported by mentoring and coaching

  • Scalability for organizations with varying leadership development needs

  • Measurable outcomes related to engagement, retention, readiness, and leadership capability

Because the SLDP is offered multiple times throughout the year, organizations can develop a small number of leaders or a larger pipeline of supervisors as needs emerge.

Program Objectives & Outcomes

Why is the SLDP a good fit for the organization?

The SLDP helps organizations strengthen leadership capacity in practical, sustainable ways.

A Standard Leadership Approach
Participants develop a common mental model of leadership, creating greater consistency in how supervisors communicate, coach, manage performance, and lead teams.

Scalability
Organizations no longer need to build or staff a complete internal supervisory academy. Smaller organizations may only develop a handful of supervisors each year, while larger organizations may enroll multiple leaders across cohorts.

Support for Employee Engagement
Leadership quality remains one of the strongest drivers of employee engagement and retention. The SLDP helps supervisors build the skills necessary to create healthier, more engaged workplaces.

Stronger Succession Pipelines
Developing supervisors early strengthens internal leadership readiness and creates a healthier bench for future leadership openings.

Reduced HR Burden
HR teams often spend significant time responding to preventable managerial mistakes. Better-equipped leaders can reduce unnecessary employee relations issues, improve workplace decision-making, and strengthen compliance awareness.

A Stronger Mentoring Culture
The SLDP intentionally incorporates internal mentors to support learner growth. Over time, this strengthens organizational connection, knowledge-sharing, and leadership continuity.

Why is the SLDP a good fit for participants?

Participants benefit from a practical leadership experience that supports both personal and professional growth. Learners will:

  • Gain greater self-awareness

  • Improve communication skills

  • Better understand conflict management and emotional intelligence

  • Learn how diverse teams strengthen performance

  • Develop an Individual Development Plan (IDP)

  • Grow through structured mentoring and reflection

  • Feel valued through intentional investment in their development

The SLDP Experience

The SLDP is a sustained 10–11 month leadership journey designed to move learning beyond the classroom and into everyday supervisory practice.

Participants progress through ten core leadership modules, supported by assessments, mentoring, coaching, discussion, and practical workplace application. Rather than relying on a one-time event or short conference, the SLDP creates repeated opportunities for leaders to learn, reflect, experiment, and grow over time.

The program integrates multiple developmental modalities because leadership growth rarely occurs through classroom instruction alone. Participants learn through facilitated discussion, real-world application, assessment feedback, structured mentoring, coaching conversations, and reflective practice — all designed to strengthen transfer of learning into day-to-day leadership behavior.

Ten core modules

modules

1. Orientation - Program overview and roles, working in our online functionality, discussion board expectations, some early assignments, setting up some assessments—up front work that will be used/referenced later. Group discussion and getting to know other cohort members. We will introduce concepts like the the increasing fragmentation of attention leaders experience today and the importance of psychological safety.

2. Introduction to Leadership - A discussion of how leadership expectations have evolved over time, what we learned about leading others, what works, what doesn’t. We will examine the grand narratives we live by, the stories we measure ourselves against, and an essential leadership skill that traditionally never gets covered—sensemaking.

3. Leadership Communication - Verbal/non-verbal communication, the communication process and the Mehrabian Rule. We will also discuss the role of storytelling for the leader.

4. The 360: Understanding Our True Selves - Learners will get feedback from their 360 assessments. We will make sense of the meaning of these assessments and what they say about us as leaders, where we show up strong to our teams, peers, and superiors. We will also explore the concept of how leadership identity shapes how others experience us. Learners will start crafting their individual Development plans (IDPs) and work in conjunction with the mentors to put the development plan in motion.

5. Understanding Teams/Leadership Styles - In this session, we talk about Tuckman and Lencioni, two prominent thinkers on teams. We also introduce the connection that We also explore how competing priorities, fragmented attention, and psychological safety influence team trust and cohesion.

6. Managing Conflict - In this workshop, learners will receive their TKI assessment results and we will discuss the significance of that feedback. The importance of sensemaking and power and attention are themes what will also emerge in our group conversation. Competing narratives, assumptions we make (as leaders), attention we give and deny, who gets heard and who doesn’t.

7. Emotional & Social Intelligence - Learners will receive their EQ-i feedback and we will deconstruct the meaning of that feedback (which will guide and inform the IDP). Connecting themes around leadership identity and psychological safety, we’ll explore fundamental questions: Who am I trying to be as a leader? What happens to my leadership when I feel threatened? How do emotions shape how we interpret situations and respond to others?

8. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging - We’ll revisit some (not all) of the critical legislation that sets the framework for this topic, but spend the majority of time on the learner’s relationship and behaviors with diversity, identity, and power.

9. Performance Management (PM) - Organizations often have a nuanced approach to performance management and evaluation, but we’ll cover the foundational elements of PM. We’ll examine sensemaking and performance management as art (versus objective evaluation).

10. Time Management, Delegation & Flow - We will examine the fundamentals of time management (the Eisenhower Matrix) and the difficulty some leaders (new and seasoned) have with delegation. This topic also incorporates the impact of fragmented attention, cognitive overload, interruptions, role switching, digital distraction, and boundary management on leadership effectiveness.

These topics form the core competency conversations. They would be incorporated in one way or another in most leadership development programs for supervisors and managers. However, the SLDP takes a more comprehensive approach. Effective leadership growth is not simply embedded in the topics, -it transitions from the multitude of modalities and application strategies that move the theory and classroom content into one’s leadership behaviors and acumen.

Integrated Modalities. We recognize that people learn differently. While the classroom model has been with us for a long time, we have learned that it is not always the one and only learning modality that works for everyone. The SLDP incorporates progressive learning theory regarding how we learn: from leadership studies and the critical importance of leadership self-awareness, the neuroscience of mindset and insight, to the action-learning principles from Reg Revans (learning by working on real problems). To achieve that, the learner will experience these learning modalities. 

  • Assessments: 360, EQ-i 2.0, Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Assessment, Mouton-Blake Managerial Grid, Lencioni on Teams, and others…

  • Coaching: Two (2) private 60-90 minute sessions with a certified coach

  • Mentoring: Six-month structured mentoring relationship (with a separate learning session for Mentors alone)

  • Discussion Board: Ongoing peer-to-peer dialogue

  • Assignments & IDPs: Practical exercises and Individual Development Plans (IDPs) to anchor learning in the learner’s world

Mentoring

One differentiating factor of the SLDP is our Mentoring program. The learner’s growth is in many ways contingent upon the support that they’ll receive along the way. Supervisors may provide encouragement and facilitators provide instruction, but mentors create something different: a trusted relationship for reflection, challenge, accountability, and growth. 

In the first session that we meet with the learners (at Orientation), one of their first assignments is to seek out and identify a Mentor. Typically, someone within the organization that has been successful in that organization (or discipline) and would be amenable to working with the next generation of leaders will be enlisted and trained as a Mentor for the SLDP. This involves a 90-minute session just for the Mentors to learn about Mentoring, -specifically the Socratic Method.

In addition to the virtual, instructor-led session, the Mentor will receive a booklet that addresses the topics, the objectives, the action-items recommended for the learners, and they will understand the assessments that the learner will take. For each session, a list of open-ended questions are provided as support material for the Mentor to use as appropriate.

Program Schedule & Learning Journey

The SLDP is intentionally designed as a paced, high-impact learning experience. Sessions occur monthly, allowing participants time to apply concepts, reflect, engage with mentors, and practice new leadership behaviors between workshops.

Format: Virtual, Instructor-Led (V-ILT)

Session Length: One 4-hour workshop per month

Meeting Time: Third Tuesday of each month, 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST

Program Duration: 10 Months

Additional Activities: Mentoring, discussion board participation, coaching, and practical application exercises

2026–2027 Cohort Schedule

Session Topic Date Time

Module 1 Program Overview & Setup Sept. 15, 2026 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 2 Introduction to Leadership Oct. 20, 2026 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 3 Leadership Communication Nov. 17, 2026 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 4 The 360: Understanding Our True Selves Dec. 15, 2026 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Individual Coaching Session #1 TBD TBD

Mentoring (for Mentors only) Jan. 12, 2027 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM

Module 5 Understanding Teams/Leadership Styles Jan. 19, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 6 Managing Conflict Feb. 16, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 7 Emotional & Social Intelligence Mar. 16, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Individual Coaching Session #2 TBD TBD

Module 8 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Apr. 20, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 9 Performance Management May 18, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Module 10 Time Management, Delegation & Flow Jun. 15, 2027 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Summary & Next Steps

The Supervisor Leadership Development Program (SLDP) offers a scalable, high-touch leadership development solution for organizations seeking to strengthen supervisor and manager capability over time. Available as either an internal cohort for a single organization or an open-enrollment consortium model, the SLDP provides a practical pathway for developing leaders without requiring organizations to build and sustain a comprehensive program on their own.

By partnering with the SLDP, organizations can extend their leadership development capability while allowing internal learning teams to remain focused on other organizational priorities (sales, customer service, quality, safety, compliance, and technical training).

Every organization’s leadership needs are different. If you are exploring ways to strengthen your leadership pipeline, support new supervisors, or create a more intentional leadership development experience, let’s schedule a conversation to determine whether the SLDP may be a fit for your organization.

Accelerated Leadership Growth & ROI

The SLDP strengthens leadership pipelines by accelerating supervisor maturity. Organizations benefit from several metrics, some immediate, some evident over time: 

  • Higher engagement and retention

  • Improved succession readiness

  • Stronger team performance

  • Measurable growth through assessments, IDPs, and applied exercises

Participants grow by trial-and-error application, reflection, and ongoing mentoring. Some organizations follow up with 360 assessments 12-18 months post-program to measure leadership development impact.