How to build a manager development program from scratch

Sarah Bright (00:00):

Chase action over perfection. Be agile, understand the changing needs of the business and improve, and that’s how you get the snowball effect and the development of a program that’s going to be truly successful.

Hannah Beaver (00:13):

You’re listening to How to Make a Leader, a leadership development podcast from Big Think Plus, where we take the best ideas from the biggest minds in learning and development and distill them into actionable insights. I’m your host, Hannah Beaver.

 Today I’m joined by Sarah Bright, who is the head of learning and development at the AI cybersecurity company, Darktrace. Sarah has been at the company for five years, where she’s moved from roles in sales operations to people operations to ultimately building and leading the L&D function. Since joining the company in 2020, the employee count has more than doubled. With that growth came an urgent need for manager development, and so I thought there would be no one better to speak to about scaling and building those manager development programs than Sarah herself. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sarah Bright (01:04):

Thank you for having me.

Hannah Beaver (01:05):

I think I was particularly excited as well because you didn’t inherit kind of a fully fledged L&D function. You built this and specifically the manager development programs that we’ll talk about today, you really built from a business need that arose. So I guess starting from the beginning, how did you see the need for this program? What were the signals that you were seeing?

Sarah Bright (01:26):

So as you mentioned, I joined Artrace in 2020. I started in sales ops. So very different to L&D, but learned a lot about data and kind of understanding business needs. But in 2022 I made the transition into the people team. Up until that point, we actually didn’t have a chief people officer, a seat at the exec table looking at people initiatives. So at that date, a chief people officer came and I moved into the team with kind of the lens of what can we do to support people. And it was really clear immediately that the area that people were most hungry for was learning and development. I was getting countless emails about trainings, about how I can develop myself, how I can develop my teams. And with the kind of initial mandate of doing lots of spinning plates, it kind of became a focus area for me and then built out a team from there, which I’ve been super grateful to be able to grow, not just me anymore.

(02:24):

It’s now three of us, a small team, but small, but my team. Smaller money.

Hannah Beaver (02:27):

Yeah.

Sarah Bright (02:28):

So yeah.

Hannah Beaver (02:29):

I feel like as is usually the case with a lot of companies, a small MD team doing a lot. Yeah,

Sarah Bright (02:34):

Exactly.

Hannah Beaver (02:34):

And then would you say it was easy to get buy-in to build out this program?

Sarah Bright (02:38):

To be honest, because we saw such a hunger for that development, first of all, from our employee engagement survey, there was really strong results showing that people were wanting more in terms of development, their career development, clarity in their career development and what’s next for them at the company. So that was kind of the quantitative data that was super useful. But also, as you mentioned, DarkTrade has grown super quickly. So we hire a lot of people straight out of uni, might be their first job. And oftentimes people are really, really talented individual contributors and then they’ll get promoted into their manager role. So people were becoming managers with little to no training. They’re kind of using examples of what they’ve learned, what might have been good for them. And we could see that they could really wanted more development opportunities to excel in their management career and they hadn’t had that.

(03:28):

That wasn’t kind of a shared language in what a manager is at Dartrace. So that was kind of the clear need and the execs understood that need for the buy-in for the L&D manager development. Nice.

Hannah Beaver (03:39):

And then what did version one, like the drafts, you’re drafting out the management development program, what did that look like to begin with?

Sarah Bright (03:46):

The V1 of the program really looked like going two ways about it. So first of all, we tried it in person. We did it in Cambridge two-day program. It was a chance for everyone to get together and give it a go and see how it was like. And we obviously did some surveys to see what people found was useful. And then we also tried the same program online, so it was virtual to see how it would best scale across our global business. We’ve got 40 offices around the world. Both actually worked out really well. Both were good initiatives, but we felt that the in- person collaboration really gave that additional benefit. Meeting each other in person, having those coffee chats, making connections was something that was a really valuable byproduct of our leadership program. So that was V1. It was in January 2024. So a little while back, it’s now scaled across the globe.

(04:38):

We’ve been to APAC, we’ve been to the Americas and EMEA, and now almost 20 cohorts later from that initial program. Wow.

Hannah Beaver (04:46):

Two years on and 20 cohorts is very impressive. Can you walk me through your tiered manager curriculum? So how have you named these different levels of the program? And for someone listening that may be looking to build a similar program, I think this could be a great framework or inspiration for how they could approach this.

Sarah Bright (05:02):

Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, we started with our first program, and that was called Manager Excellence. It’s kind of for our leaders that haven’t had any training before, any formal training. So we wanted to get a baseline covers a lot of different areas, but we’ve built that out since. Now we’ve got a Manager Essentials program, which is for people that are thinking about leadership, aspiring managers or people that aren’t sure exactly what management entails. So that’s Manager Essentials. It’s a 12 week coaching program to meet each other, discuss it. Then we’ve got Manager Energize, which is in person, small development chats about best practices, feedback, coaching, getting the most out of your people, motivation. And that’s geared towards newer managers or even managers at any level that want to refresher and kind of just to learn from each other. We found that super useful.

(05:57):

Then I mentioned the manager excellence. And after that, we’ve got Manager Elite, which is kind of for the most senior leaders at our business. It looks at the more strategic layer of management, tying up what our business goals are and how they can make a difference within their function, but also from a systems thinking perspective, how the company can get to those goals, but also what they can do and how they can work as a senior leadership network to get there.

Hannah Beaver (06:24):

Awesome. And then you mentioned a few just now, but can you run me through some of the core competencies that you’re focusing on to develop among those managers?

Sarah Bright (06:32):

So the core competencies that we’ve been looking at have been self-awareness because we believe that you operate best when you know your own impact and how you see the world and how you operate and understand everyone operates different ways. Self-awareness is a big one. We also look at change leadership. So how you can communicate through change and how you can support your teams, motivation and different theories and how people best motivated to come to work. So they’re kind of the main areas, but there’s also the kind of practical ones of difficult conversations, different ways to help people, coach people. So lots of different areas. And actually in our manager excellence program, one of the activities that we ask our cohorts to do within the first morning is to write down all the different things that they wish to get out of the program. Oh, that’s great.

(07:20):

So you’re

Hannah Beaver (07:20):

Getting the feedback

Sarah Bright (07:21):

Right now. Exactly. So immediately you were like, “What do you expect to learn?” And 99% of the things are things that are already on the program that we’re covering. That’s great. But I think it’s kind of a nice sense check that, yeah, you’re still on the right page. So it’s kind of a good tip and trick to use.

Hannah Beaver (07:39):

I guess maybe not because you said about 90% of those were already in the program, but were there any surprises or themes that you noticed when you were getting that initial feedback from the areas that managers were looking to develop?

Sarah Bright (07:49):

To be honest, a lot of the managers, the main thing that they want is getting the most out of their people

Hannah Beaver (07:54):

And

Sarah Bright (07:55):

How they can best connect with their teams to get the most out of them. I think that managers see the potential and can see how someone could navigate their careers and grow and do their best work, but it’s kind of how do you get someone from A to B? Yeah. So that was a key theme, but yeah, it’s one that we definitely do cover. Nice.

Hannah Beaver (08:16):

So once the program was up and running, how did you measure and define success?

Sarah Bright (08:21):

It’s really hard to actually measure success in any L&D initiative, but for us, we’ve tried to get it from all different angles or different areas. One of the key ways that I’ve found it really useful is to do surveys after any L&D initiative. And we’ve found that feedback’s been super helpful in how we tailor it, how we adapt it for future cohorts. And one of the key stats that I love is that almost 90% of people feel more prepared to step in their leadership role after going on a leadership development program. And it’s already covered 75% of our managers at this point. So that amount of impact is obviously showing that it’s super effective. So obviously we’ve got those quantitative metrics. Our employee engagement survey covers L&D in one of the sections, so that’s always useful to see how we’re tracking. But also I think that anecdotes and stories are also really useful to gather.

(09:16):

So wherever you can, our small but mighty L&D team do connect as much as we can with the business and with our HR VPs. I think it’s super useful to keep those connections and always understand from them what people are feeling and saying and how people have even grown since. But one of the stories that I’ve heard lately is that even yesterday in the office, one of our past participants of our manager program is really excited for future cohorts to send her team members onto who are leaders.

(09:46):

So even in those small anecdotes, it’s important to kind of track those and measure success in that way too, because it’s hard to measure L&D success.

Hannah Beaver (09:55):

Yeah, no, that’s definitely a consistent theme I hear across nearly all the guests I speak to. So I love hearing the different ways that everyone’s trying to measure and define success, but it’s great to hear that like 90% statistic and the fact that you’ve already covered 75% of managers, I feel like that’s just a great proof of the ROI on these programs. You just mentioned the anecdote from yesterday, but I am curious, was there a specific team or kind of a story where you first realized, wow, this is actually really working?

Sarah Bright (10:21):

Yeah. So actually I think that there has been certain points that are more defining and in the US doing a cohort of manager excellence, we always have different personality types on the program. There might be some that are more reserved, some that are super engaged into it from the get- go.

Hannah Beaver (10:37):

I’m sure cultural differences too.

Sarah Bright (10:38):

Y might see different

Hannah Beaver (10:39):

Engagement and reaction.

Sarah Bright (10:41):

Definitely. Especially US, UK, APAC as well. It’s very different. But this particular individual has a very senior role and you’d assume super sure of themselves and very keen to share opinions, but actually wasn’t and revealed that this person is quite shy and quite reserved, but actually after the program had accepted a speaking opportunity to grip high school students that probably the most daunting group of people

Hannah Beaver (11:09):

That you could speak to.

Sarah Bright (11:10):

Maybe middle

Hannah Beaver (11:11):

School. I don’t

Sarah Bright (11:11):

Know which one. Exactly. So I mean stories like that, always nice. And in certain cohorts later on down the line, when we’ve also discussed like future L&D initiatives and how we’ve grown the program and what’s next, there’s been like genuine shock that we’ve done this so quickly and excitement at the investment and like spontaneous rounds of applause, which has been natural.

Hannah Beaver (11:35):

The validation. Yeah.

Sarah Bright (11:37):

It’s just kind of been nice stories to come away with that people really feel the impact. So I think you’ve just kind of got to start and then keep rolling with it. And it’s like a snowball effect of how it grows. I’m

Hannah Beaver (11:48):

Sure that makes all the late hours and the travel worth it when you can see the impact. Yeah. I want to talk to you about the manager community. So I think you would agree that having those managers complete the training is very important, but just as important is maintaining that momentum and building that community. And you have named it manager community. So what does that look like for you?

Sarah Bright (12:10):

Yeah, definitely. It is very important. And we always say that this isn’t a one and done training program. We are here to support you. It’s a small team that are across the manager development community as much as we can. And we have different strands of that. So there’s online and we’ve got a Teams forum, we’ve got an intranet forum and on there we’ll share updates, we’ll share inspirations, learnings and ideas that managers should know about or things coming up for them. So it just keeps people in contact in that way. But we have also recently launched a new quarterly webinar called our Manager Meetup. And this is a chance for all managers to come together to hear from the exec leadership, first of all, kind of straight off the press, what’s new for them, what should they be percolating down to their teams. Then we’ll have an external speaker come on and give a mini masterclass about something that is resonating at the moment.

(13:05):

So one example was leading through change. Times are changing in the world a lot. Our next one will be inspiring hybrid and remote teams. So another one that’s very, very useful for everyone, but kind of as we’re moving along our financial year, it’s always important to keep that momentum and keep the inspiration. So it’s a key way to get our community together, to get our managers feeling that you might be sitting at a home office in Sydney by yourself. You might be sitting in Miami, but it’s an area in which we can get all managers as much as possible together and chat on the chat and sharing ideas and insights. And we also actually have a manager panel of three managers sharing questions and answers about how they’ve done it. So you get a real sense of connection and stories to understand what leaders have done and how people can maybe use their practices, connect to each other afterwards and learn.

(14:02):

So it’s been super valuable.

Hannah Beaver (14:04):

Nice. And I’m sure that peer-to-peer learning exchange is just, like you said, very valuable for everyone that engages. What is one thing you would do the same and one thing that you would do differently if you were to build this manager development program again?

Sarah Bright (14:18):

For me, I think that hindsight, it’s easy to say certain things that you would’ve done, but I actually don’t think I’d have changed anything. Very cheesy answer, but we wouldn’t have learned any of the lessons that we’ve learned. And for us, I think as a small growing team, we have been able to obviously scale quite effectively and build it out. And I think that you’ve got to be quite agile as to what the business needs and to kind of what the industry looks like as well. So I wouldn’t change what we would’ve done, but I think that I’d have just continued to learn on the way and to not be scared of changing and growing and collaborating. And I think for anyone starting out an L&D program, it’s always useful to collaborate with your HR VPs to

Hannah Beaver (14:59):

Understand

Sarah Bright (14:59):

The business needs. So that’s been a key thing for us lately. They’ve got a more established model in our business, so we’ve been able to collaborate more.

Hannah Beaver (15:08):

So what’s next for learning and development at Darktrace? I want to know what you’re focusing on. Any goals, maybe like the manager community, any more initiatives that you’re thinking about there?

Sarah Bright (15:17):

Yeah, definitely. So we’re going to continue to be developing our manager community. We’re continuing to roll out Elite. Our first one’s actually going to be coming very soon. So an area that we are focusing on in our L&D team is definitely continuing with that manager development. It’s an area that we’re continuing to invest in and to grow. So it’s the community side of things with our meetups and

Hannah Beaver (15:38):

It’s

Sarah Bright (15:38):

Also boosting out the essentials, the elite, those two kind of areas at the top and bottom of manager seniorities. So we’re really looking after those communities and developing them. But also outside of manager development, we’re focused on our performance management process. We want to ensure that people are being developed in the areas and upskilling in the areas that they want to grow in. So currently it looks a lot of like discussion based, but we’re going to be moving that to looking at people’s competencies related to their role, and then people will be able to understand the areas that they need to upskill in order to grow in the career track that they want to. So that’s kind of a key kind of solutions area that we’re looking at, but it ties together with our management development. So it’s how you can best develop your people, what areas they need to upskill and how can you best support that.

(16:26):

So yeah, we’re looking forward to what it will do for us.

Hannah Beaver (16:29):

Nice. I’d actually like to ask you a question on that. To get more technical, as you’re building that out,

Sarah Bright (16:36):

I know

Hannah Beaver (16:36):

You mentioned it’s mostly discussion based right now, but what else will you be doing to kind of gather that information? So

Sarah Bright (16:42):

I’m working very closely with our HR VPs and they’re having conversations with business stakeholders from a practical perspective and we’re gathering all the competencies that probably about 10 competencies per role that are core, that are very important in order to be doing well at your job. So this will be able to be an employee self-reviewing their competencies against how they think they’re doing and their manager would then be able to do an assessment against that. So it’s just going to give people kind of a clear area as to where they might be having some gaps in terms of getting to that next level and we’ll be able to have targeted L&D interventions in those areas. So it’s going to give us some really rich TNA data and focus areas of how we can get the business to cover those skill gaps and to help people grow.

(17:29):

So it’s kind of what it looks like from a technical perspective.

Hannah Beaver (17:32):

Nice. And I know earlier you mentioned too that self-awareness is really important. So that also allows employees to have that self-awareness of where they’re at in those skills and alignment with their managers, which is very empowering. So awesome. I’m excited to have another conversation with you in a couple years. See why you’re up with that. If you could give one piece of advice to a listener that’s maybe on a similar journey, what would that piece of advice be?

Sarah Bright (17:55):

For any L&D practitioner thinking about rolling out manager development programs, I would advise to chase action over perfection. People can spend lots of times trying to perfect something, but at the end of the day, the best thing that an L&D practitioner could do is to get something very good, as good as they can get, get it out there, roll it out, and then iterate as you go. Be agile, understand the changing needs of the business and improve, and that’s how you get the snowball effect and the development of a program that’s going to be truly successful.

Hannah Beaver (18:25):

I love that. I was actually at a one-day learning conference yesterday, and there were like two main themes that I had on every single talk. And one, we’re talking about internal podcasting programs for learning, and everyone was talking about like the main theme was just start. You’re never going to know unless you just start doing it. And I think that your response around learning and development, you wouldn’t change anything. As an industry, it’s learning and development. So you’ve just got to learn from your mistakes, just do it, see what works, see what doesn’t, that’s the only way to actually execute successful programs. So that was a very L&D response. In the spirit of how to make a leader podcast, I have to ask, what is the best piece of leadership advice that you’ve ever received?

Sarah Bright (19:10):

So the best piece of leadership advice that I’ve received is leadership is a lot about how you make people feel. And a mentor told me that you have the power to make someone not want to come to work. And whilst this sounds really heavy, the converse is true as well, but I think it is important for managers and leaders to kind of take on that responsibility that leadership is about often how you make people feel and people do remember that. So you got to value your professional connections and relationships at work.

Hannah Beaver (19:38):

Thanks for listening. I’ve dropped Sarah’s LinkedIn in the show notes should you wish to connect and learn more. For more from How to Make a Leader, you can subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll be back next month with another L&D perspective on How To Make A Leader.

Building a manager development program from scratch is hard. But scaling it is harder.

Sarah Bright leads Learning & Development at Darktrace. She built a tiered manager development program from scratch, training 75% of all managers across 20 learning cohorts in two years.

She shares how her team designed a program that adapts to a fast-moving business, the core competencies that define great managers, and how to measure the real impact of leadership development.

Things to listen for:
(00:00) Introducing Sarah Bright
(01:13) Building the L&D function from scratch
(02:33) Getting buy-in for manager development
(03:49) The first version of Darktrace’s manager program
(05:10) Tiered manager development curriculum
(06:39) Core competencies for developing leaders
(08:31) Measuring the success of L&D initiatives
(12:20) Creating a thriving manager community
(15:26) What’s next for L&D at Darktrace
(19:19) One piece of leadership advice


About Sarah Bright:

Sarah Bright is the Head of Learning and Development at Darktrace, where she leads global initiatives that support more than 2,500 employees, including scalable learning pathways, clear career progression frameworks and manager development programmes. She started at Darktrace as a Sales Operations Analyst, where identifying trends and patterns contributed to her evidence-based approach to people development.  

This analytical mindset influences how she creates systems that help people feel clearer, more engaged, and able to progress in their careers. Sarah is passionate about combining data, storytelling, and emerging learning technologies to create development experiences that empower employees to grow with confidence and purpose.

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn. Learn more about Darktrace.