Build the team you actually need, together with practical, face-to-face development for accidental managers, seasoned leaders, and everyone in between.
Culture
A healthy workplace culture is the glue that holds everything together – it shapes how people behave, make decisions, and show up for each other and your customers. When it’s strong, you see higher engagement, better performance, and far less drama.
The biggest culture killers are poor communication and unclear expectations set by managers, inconsistent leadership, and the toleration of bad behaviour.
By working together, we can surface what’s really going on, involve your people in defining the culture you want, and put practical habits, systems, and behaviours in place that support it every day. That way, culture becomes a real business asset, not just a set of words on the wall.
The curse of the accidental manager
Most managers never asked to be managers.
Research from the Chartered Management Institute found that 82% of people who step into management have had no formal management or leadership training. They were promoted because they were good at their job, not because anyone taught them how to successfully lead a team. The knock-on effect: 60% of managers underperform in their first year, simply because nobody gave them the tools. These “accidental managers” have to make a shift almost overnight – from being the person who does the work, to being the person who helps everyone else do theirs.
If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. And if you’re an experienced leader rather than an accidental one, gaps still show up. Nobody ever finishes learning how to manage people well.
This is where we come in.
Ducks Away can help teams and leaders build the skills that actually make a difference day to day, through practical, face-to-face learning, not just another set of slides.
We focus on the areas that come up again and again:
- Problem solving – as a team, not just as an individual
- Team building – growing trust and understanding between people who have to work together
- Team development – of real communication and effective collaborative working
- Difficult conversations – so they happen calmly and constructively instead of being avoided
- Managing performance – fairly, consistently, and with the aim of supporting everyone to be the best they can
Why face to face, hands on learning?
We are great believers in experiential learning because we know that people remember what they build with their hands and talk through with each other, far more than what they read in a slide deck.
We create a safe, supportive room where every voice gets heard, not just the loudest one. That matters because the people who stay quiet in a normal meeting often have the insight everyone else has missed. Learning together, in the same room, lets a team build its future they are invested in.
We use a mix of proven, experiential methods, chosen to suit what your team actually needs to work on. this may look like child’s play but this is Serious Play for Serious Business.
LEGO® Serious Play®
Team development, identity, values, culture, and planning and strategy, built quite literally, brick by brick. People say things with a model in their hands that they’d never say out loud in a normal meeting.
MTa Team (Collaborative Construction)
Team development, collaborative working, communication and problem solving, through shared, tasks using brains and plastic pipes that surface exactly how your team operates under pressure, in a way any discussion never quite manages to.
Belbin and DISC
Two well-established tools for understanding interpersonal and team dynamics, and for personal development. They help people understand not just how they work, but how they may work differently to the person sitting next to them. From this comes insight into how to get the best from a team.
Playmobil Pro
Culture and communication, explored through role play, without the awkwardness of actual role play. Most people would rather do almost anything than act something out in front of colleagues. Hand them a little plastic figure to move around instead, and the same scenario suddenly becomes easy to explore, honestly and without the cringe.
Line manager development programme
For a more structured approach to building your managers’ capability, we run a Line Manager Development Programme, covering the core skills every manager needs, delivered in the same practical, hands-on way.
Network Pals
If you’re self-employed, or part of a smaller network, you don’t have to miss out. Through Network Pals, four or more of you can come together, choose your training, and access it at a rate that reflects a group booking, not an individual one.
The practicalities
You can book as a one-off session or devise a programme, priced for exactly what you need. Or, if you’re already working with us through Retainer Plus, any advice hours you haven’t used simply roll up into a learning and development pot, ready to fund exactly this kind of team development, at no extra cost.
Are you ready to build your team?
Let’s talk about where you are tight now, what’s getting in the way, and which approach would help most.
Book a call.