Welcome to Star^® Manager
An award winning and groundbreaking management development programme designed to rocket your organisation's:

ENGAGEMENT

PERFORMANCE

PRODUCTIVITY

Watch this video to find out how Star® Manager could transform your performance

THESE WERE THE JUDGES COMMENTS...

“Notion’s STAR^® Manager, is a fun, interactive, virtual blend that includes workplace missions, short online training modules, critical guided reflection and live tutor support.

Judges were impressed by its integration of deep subject expertise and robust instructional design with a strong technology platform to bring a high-quality management development programme to market. They were also impressed by the mix of methodologies and the clarity of purpose espoused in the adoption of the ‘learn-do-review’ approach. An innovative and comprehensive solution to a long-time problem and the coaching world will be in a much better place for it.”

Who is STAR^® manager for?

It’s for anyone who has line management responsibility for others.

Select each button to learn more about how STAR® supports different groups of managers, which sectors it can support and how it can dramatically help you improve or resolve the current issues that many organisations are facing.

Strategic Leadership

Changing the culture of an organisation starts at the very top.

By working through the STAR^® programme, senior leaders will role-model an ‘enquiry-led approach’ and, by doing so, will increase the engagement and productivity of the core group of senior managers, and customers or clients, that they interact with on a daily basis. Asking powerful questions at this level can have a huge impact by driving overall performance and creating an organisational growth mindset.

Senior Executives

The STAR® programme has delivered transformative results amongst senior managers who are used, and perhaps expected, to operate in a directive way.

They make those who report to them responsible for carrying out tasks, but do not empower them and give them accountability for delivering outcomes. The STAR^® programme makes this level of management more self-aware, enables them to stop their habitual behaviours and to introduce a more ‘enquiry-led approach’. In turn, when they see their direct reports step up and engage more, they become freer to add more value to the organisation by leading change and driving increased performance.

Hi-Potential Managers

The ‘rockstars’ of any organisation still need STAR®!

Their natural ability, charisma, gravitas and drive will be supplemented with improved operational and developmental coaching and management skills, enabling them to unlock even more potential in themselves and those they interact with.

Mid Level Managers

Imagine the performance improvement that would take place in your organisation if your middle management tier took more of a coaching approach to management.

The STAR^® programme is interspersed with workplace-based ‘Missions’ that will reap immediate rewards in terms of greater team engagement and performance.

First Line Managers, Supervisors & Team Leaders

Those who have just received their first managerial promotion are frequently very capable ‘doers’ who have shown promising supervisory and team leadership skills.

The STAR^® programme is ideal to give new Managers the skills and confidence to delegate to, engage and empower their team so that they can re-focus their efforts away from ‘doing’ towards ‘leading’ and ‘coaching’ by using more of a coaching approach to management.

Apprentices & New Graduates

For many embarking on an apprenticeship or graduate programme within an organisation, this is their first experience of working in a professional team.

Bright, driven they often lack the skills and experience in managerial situations. The STAR^® programme will give apprentices and new graduates the skills and confidence to ask more experienced team members insightful questions, to work collaboratively and learn to support and add value by developing these key skills alongside developing their technical knowledge.

Higher Education

Whether it is in their interactions with team members, students or other academics and researchers, the use of an ‘enquiry-led approach’ can pay dividends for both Professional Services and Academic staff.

The STAR^® programme gives staff the skills to spend less time directing, answering questions and problem solving, by encouraging others to take ownership of their work and think through their solutions. In turn, this will release more of their time to work on new projects and strategic collaborations.

Retail

The pace of change is perhaps more acutely felt in retail than in any other sector.

With the rapid evolution of retail, and customers choosing how and where they shop, the relationships and added value created on the shop floor are eminently more crucial today than ever. Retail organisations often experience a higher turnover of staff than other sectors, so the need to engage and motivate team members to drive higher performance and productivity is even more vital. The STAR^® programme has already delivered significant levels of return on investment (ROI) to major retail organisations by giving managerial and supervisory staff the skills to ‘coach’ staff in the moment to increase performance and drive incredible results.

Hospitality

In the hospitality industry the entire workforce is a reflection of the organisation’s culture and customer service standards.

Engendering an ‘enquiry-led approach’ to management can deliver an improvement in the whole team’s performance and can also have a transformative effect on company culture. As a virtual learning programme, STAR^® has the potential to reach a large, diverse workforce to increase engagement, performance and productivity.

Manufacturing and Operational Businesses

In manufacturing and operational organisations, managers are often promoted because of good performance on the operations/production floor.

Their new role, supervising employees, requires an entirely different set of skills than their previous job, but they often do not receive any training to support them through the transition. To decrease staff turnover and increase employee retention, fostering relationships between supervisors and their teams is critical. Managers and supervisors in this environment will benefit from the STAR^® programme to give them the skills and behaviours to build an effective and productive work environment, based on a ‘coaching’ approach to management.

Professional Services: Law/Consultancy/Accountancy

The focus in many Professional Services firms is on the development of their people’s professional skills and qualifications, rather than their management skills.

The STAR^® Manager programme can be a revelation to staff in firms in this industry as it opens their minds to a brand new skill set that provides them with a toolkit to use in their managerial interactions, as well as their professional ones. Being able to leverage the skills and knowledge of their team members by asking insightful questions can deliver improvements in team performance, as well as freeing up managers to add more value by ‘leading’ and ‘coaching’.

Finance and Banking

Financial Services organisations rely on their managers to make good supervisory decisions and manage corporate risk but often their capacity is taken up ‘doing’ and ‘managing’ day-to-day activities.

The STAR^® programme equips managers with the tools to stop their habitual behaviour of interrogating and directing their teams and to take a step back and think about the objectives of what they need to achieve. By doing this, managers empower their team and make them accountable for the outcome, not just for delivering tasks. This shift in management approach can engage and motivate teams, rocketing their performance.

Technical specialists: IT/Digital/Engineering

Seen as experts in their field, technical specialists are used to being directive and providing advice, often in response to others asking for assistance.

The STAR^® programme can provide a whole range of skills to enable technical specialists to use an ‘enquiry-led approach’ to help others to solve more of their own problems and own the solutions. In turn, this gives the technical specialists more time to concentrate on higher value-add activities increasing productivity and performance.

Aerospace and Defence

Many organisations in the Aerospace and Defence industry have a ingrained ‘command and control’ culture that can stifle innovation and creativity.

The STAR^® programme can be used at scale to shift management culture to one of ‘ask’ rather than ‘tell’. This change can engage and motivate teams to problem solve and own their solutions, delivering increased efficiencies and productivity gains.

Health and Wellbeing: Medicine/Care/NHS

Organisations in the Health Service have been going through a period of significant organisational change, often resulting in staff changing roles or refocusing their existing one.

These changes along with the need to make efficiency savings have led to staff feeling under increasing pressure. The STAR^® programme can give managers and leaders at all levels the tools and the confidence to take more of a ‘coaching’ approach to management and support their teams in times of change.

Coaching culture

In spite of high awareness of coaching and wide usage it has yet to have the transformational impact it is capable of in most organisations.

Our research shows that this is because coaching interventions typically only reach the top 5% of organisations. The STAR^® programme provides organisations with their first chance to deliver large-scale, transformational behavioural change and a significant RoI.

Leadership development

The STAR® programme gives Leaders skills and tools to ‘intentionally enable’ and develop their teams by supplementing ‘in the moment’ coaching conversations with more planned, developmental interventions.

The coaching culture that the STAR^® programme can embed facilitates succession planning, as comes easy in companies with a coaching culture. With employees learning and growing, a company is creating a leadership pipeline.

Engagement

A recent survey has shown that 60% of employees rate themselves as “highly engaged” in organisations with strong coaching cultures, as opposed to 48% in organisations without.

The STAR^® programme can help managers across your organisation use more of a ‘coaching’ approach to management that helps employees accept ownership of their work and learn personal accountability, which gets them more engaged in their performance and career. As they spend more time ‘coaching’ rather than ‘managing’ they see that this eases the burden on them as Managers don’t need to directly supervise their staff as they continue to develop skills for success and perform at levels that are meeting and even exceeding expectations.

Management development

Research shows that up to one third of employees leave their jobs due to a poor relationship with their manager.

Organisations can’t afford the loss of skilled, talented staff, nor the costs that recruitment and re-training involve. The STAR^® programme can equip your managers with the skills to change their management style to use a more ‘enquiry-led approach’ that has been demonstrated to engage and empower team members more, providing them with greater motivation and job satisfaction, and boosting retention rates.

Commercial Performance and Productivity

The skills learned by completing the STAR® programme are not just applicable to interacting with team members and peers within your own organisation, they can also be used to great effect with clients and suppliers in other organisations.

Many teams working in commercial environments have noticed an uplift in their performance from using the techniques taught in the STAR^® programme – winning new business, building rapport and managing relationships, and delivery of higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Continual learning environment

In organisational surveys, having the opportunity to continually learn and develop new skills usually ranks positively among employees.

It is important that individuals and organisations have a growth mindset to support the provision of ongoing learning and development. Having a growth mindset is about the belief that someone can learn and improve supported by the delivery of quality feedback. The STAR^® programme supports the development of a growth mindset by giving managers the skills to develop more of a ‘coaching’ style of management, which includes regularly providing both appreciative and developmental feedback to team members.

Developing an agile culture

Many organisations understand the benefits that working with greater agility can bring.

Becoming more agile is often a change to the culture of an organisation and the STAR^® programme can be used to support this change and introduce managers and leaders to a more agile, ‘enquiry-led approach’ to management and leadership.

Challenging conversations

Managers often shy away from difficult conversations with their team members, or handle them badly, creating more resentment and disengagement.

The STAR^® programme can help managers unpick some of the underlying assumptions about both their own and their team members’ behaviour and help them prepare for challenging conversations that have a much more successful outcome.

Continuous performance management and Appraisals

Annual performance appraisals have been traditionally used to measure and manage employee performance, but more and more organisations are finding them of little value.

Rather than waiting for the appraisal cycle to come around, managers need to check in with their team members much more frequently and provide performance feedback ‘in the moment’. Notion’s STAR Coaching Model^® gives managers the skills and the confidence to change their day-to-day approach to management to more of an ‘enquiry-led approach’ that can drive staff engagement and performance improvement.

Change programmes

Where large-scale cultural changes have been most successful, there has been a highly visible senior sponsor endorsing the programme and role modelling the behaviours.

The flexible and scalable nature of the STAR^® programme enables you to roll-out training in coaching-style behaviours to all leaders within your organisation to support and sustain organisational change.

A remarkable blended learning programme…

These are just a few examples of how STAR^® Manager has been created to provide you with maximum flexibility as well as delivering amazing results:

See Dramatic Improvements in just 4 months

These programme results show what learners are achieving as a direct result of STAR® Manager. What would it be like if your organisation could achieve this too in just 4 months from now?

1 %

Improvement in team members being more engaged.

1 %

Improvement in asking better questions more frequently.

1 %

Improvement in personal productivity.

1 %

Improvement in team members

What would it be like if your organisation could achive this too in just 4 months from now? Why not take a tour through the STAR® Manager programme to learn more...?

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT STAR^® MANAGER

Play the videos to hear a range of opinions about STAR^® Manager

Russ Hartland-Shaw

Global Transformation Project Manager, Costa Coffee

Andrew Joly

Director of Strategic Design, LEO

Anita Byrne

Senior L&D Manager, Santander

Anne Williams

Learning Manager, Thomson Reuters

Our clients

Notion’s STAR® Model has been having a positive impact and generating amazing results in a wide range of organisations for years. Here are just a selection of clients that have had their managers participate in Notion’s programmes that have incorporated STAR®.