New Manager Cohort Program
A ten-week cohort plus ninety-day sustain that moves your newest managers through their first six months together, with structured practice, peer coaching, and real accountability.
Emergent moves a group of your newest managers through their first six months together, with structured practice, peer coaching, and real accountability to their own managers. It is built on the book, The Emergent Manager: Field Guide to Your First Six Months as a Manager, and is part of the wider Emergent Manager system.
The Chartered Management Institute puts it at 82 percent: new managers who receive no real training. They are promoted for what they did in their last role, then left to work out the new one alone. The cost lands on their teams first and on retention shortly after.
A one-day workshop does not fix this. The management transition is not an information problem. It is a practice problem, and practice takes time, feedback, and people going through the same thing at the same time.
Why a cohort works where a workshop does not
Management is learned by doing it badly, getting feedback, and doing it better. A cohort creates the conditions for that on purpose rather than by accident, and it does it while the transition is still underway.
Practice, Not Exposure
Every session works a live problem from a participant’s own team.
Peers in It Right Now
Participants work together in small pods throughout the program with people facing the same transition.
Manager Accountability
Each participant’s own manager nominates them and hears their closing commitments.
Six Months of Coverage
The program matches how long the transition actually takes, not how long a workshop fits in a calendar.
The program structure
- 1
Kickoff
A two-hour opening session where participants set their goals, meet their pod, and agree on how the group will work together. Their managers are briefed separately.
- 2
Eight Weekly Workshops
Ninety minutes each, moving through the four phases of a leadership transition: taking hold, immersion, reshaping, and consolidation. Each session pairs a concept with an application lab on a real situation from the room.
- 3
Pod Coaching
Groups of four that meet between sessions at the points where the work gets hardest. Pods are where participants bring the messy version of a problem before it is solved.
- 4
The Next 90
A closing session where each participant presents where they started, what they changed, and what they will do over the next ninety days. Their manager attends and responds.
- 5
Ninety-Day Sustain
Three monthly peer-coaching sessions, ongoing access to the AI Coach grounded in the full program material, and a progress check at the six-month mark.
- 6
Sponsor Reporting
You receive themes at the organizational level: where your new managers are consistently strong and where they are consistently stuck. Individual performance stays with the individual.
Cohort programs begin at $48,000
Investment is scoped on cohort size, delivery format, and organizational requirements. Every cohort includes all live sessions, participant materials, the AI Coach, measurement, sponsor reporting, and the ninety-day sustain period.
Standard Cohort
- All ten live sessions
- Participant materials and AI Coach
- Sponsor reporting and measurement
- Ninety-day sustain period
Large Cohort
- Everything in the standard cohort
- Expanded pod structure
- Additional facilitation capacity
Customization
Added where a program calls for significant customization to your context, competency model, or delivery format.
- Tailored content and cases
- Alignment to your competency framework
Build the managers your strategy depends on
Every transformation you are planning will be executed by people who moved into management in the last two years.
A track record across industries and functions
Emergent has experience across a wide array of industries and business functions. We have a solid track record of helping companies implement strategic initiatives and achieve business transformation objectives.
Fortune 50 Retail Store
Transformation of Store Operations to a matrix organization structure. Transition to an Accounting shared services, outsourced model
Global Financial Services Company
Process re-engineering to reduce time spent on low-value activities
Fortune 50 Drugstore Chain
Acquisition and integration of regional drugstore competitor