For managers whose team brings them everything
You’re good at your job. That’s exactly why your team can’t move without you.
Manager2Leader™ is 12 weeks of live group coaching for managers who want a team that brings them thinking instead of problems, so they can finally lead instead of firefight.
Join the founding cohort
- 20+ yearsin business
- 3 countriescoaching rugby: NZ, Canada, England
- Live2Lead NZco-host
- MaxwellLeadership certified
As featured in
Watch this first: what Manager2Leader™ is and who it’s for
Let me guess…
- Your team brings you every decision, big or small
- You take jobs back because it’s quicker to do them yourself
- Your own work waits until everyone else has gone home
- You know you should delegate more, but it never quite sticks
If you ticked even one, keep reading.
Sound familiar?
You were promoted because you were good at the work. So you kept doing what got you noticed. You answer the questions. You make the calls. You fix the problem before it gets bigger.
Now it’s 3pm on a Tuesday and you haven’t started the thing you actually need to do. Someone’s waiting on a decision. Someone else wants you to “just have a quick look”. A job you thought was sorted has landed back on your desk.
You want your team to take ownership. They keep waiting for you instead.
So you check in more often. You take the tricky jobs back because it’s quicker to do them yourself. And every so often you wonder whether this is really what leading is meant to feel like.
It isn’t.
Chances are nobody ever showed you how to lead people. You were good at the work, so you were handed a team. And you’ve done what has always worked for you, which is doing it yourself.
It’s not a personality problem. It’s a pattern, and it’s the same pattern that got you promoted. Which means it can change.
What it’s costing you
The work gets done, because you make sure it does. But it’s costing you more than it should.
You’re working harder and longer than you should need to, because you’re carrying things that could sit with your team. And the more you carry, the more they lean on you, so you end up carrying even more.
From the outside it looks like commitment, so nobody tells you to ease off. That’s how capable people wear themselves out. Not in one bad week, but slowly, over months of being the answer to everything.
You didn’t take on a team to run yourself into the ground. Something has to change, and it isn’t working harder.
Picture it 12 weeks from now
It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and you’re working on your own stuff. The strategic work you kept pushing back is getting your full attention.
There are still interruptions, but far fewer. When someone does come to you, they bring their own thinking, not just the problem. You ask what they’d do, and they’ve got an answer.
You’re still firefighting now and then, but a lot less. Most of your time goes on leading.
When you walk out at the end of the day, you feel pleased. Confident, even. Your team is working well together, and you can see it. You’re not watching over them. They’re just getting on with it.
You’ve started building a team and a culture that works, and you’re the one who got it going. That’s a good feeling.
From firefighting to leading
| Right now | After 12 weeks |
|---|---|
| Your team brings you problems | Your team brings you their thinking |
| You make every call | They make the calls they own |
| You take jobs back because it’s quicker | You coach them through it |
| You check in constantly | You have scheduled touchpoints |
| Strategic work waits until after hours | Strategic work gets your best hours |
| You play every position | You coach from the sideline |
Why this works when “just delegate more” doesn’t
Most advice tells you to let go. Delegate more, trust your team. Fair enough, but nobody shows you how. And letting go without a method is how things get dropped and you end up taking them straight back.
The problem isn’t that you care too much. You’re right that you need to know what’s going on. The trouble is you’ve been finding out by being involved in everything. Your job now is to stand on the sideline and coach, not play every position on the park.
Manager2Leader™ is built on the Transfer Framework™, three stages, done in this order:
-
1
Create thinking
You stop thinking for your team and start asking better questions. Instead of handing over the answer, you ask what they’d do, then wait. An answer that’s 80% there gets to stand.
-
2
Stretch
You give people more responsibility, including things they haven’t done before, and coach them through it. Some will run with it. Others will want more guidance, and that’s fine. The real work is knowing your people: what they’re good at, how they operate and how far they can be stretched.
-
3
Step back
You hand ownership back to your people and agree how you’ll check in. Scheduled touchpoints, not constant hovering. They own it, and you hold them to it.
The order matters. You can’t hand over ownership to people who haven’t yet learned to think it through.
What’s inside Manager2Leader™
12 weeks of live group coaching, starting Wednesday 7 October at 3:30pm NZT. Your final session is Wednesday 23 December, so you go into Christmas with the work done.
12 live coaching sessions
Each one runs for 60 minutes. You share what you tried that week and what happened, learn the week’s idea, then get coached on what’s actually coming up in your team. You finish each session with one specific action to take into the week ahead, so you’re changing how you lead, not filling a notebook.
The Transfer Framework™
Three stages, done in order: Create Thinking, Stretch, Step Back. You move from thinking for your team, to stretching them, to handing over ownership, without skipping the step that makes the next one work.
12 weekly tools
Short, practical and reusable, and not homework. Each one helps you notice and practise what you’re learning in the middle of a real working week. By week 12 you have a toolkit you can keep using.
The Transfer Scorecard
You score yourself in weeks 1, 6 and 12, so you can see how your leadership has changed and not just how it feels.
Every session recorded
Recordings are kept in the members’ area, so a missed week isn’t a lost week.
A 1:1 coaching session with Andy
One-on-one time with Andy, at a time that suits you, any time during the 12 weeks. No set agenda, bring whatever’s on your mind, your team, a specific decision, anything you want a second pair of eyes on.
Private Facebook group
A private group just for this cohort, a place to ask a question any time during the week, not just on the coaching call, and to connect with the other managers going through the programme with you.
My commitment to you (a $300 session)
Change comes from doing the work, so here’s my side of the deal. Turn up to the sessions and take each week’s action into your team. If you reach week 6 and you’re not seeing a shift in how your team operates, I’ll give you a one-hour, one-on-one coaching session to work through what’s getting in the way. No extra cost.
Founding intake: limited places. This is the first Manager2Leader™ cohort, and I’m keeping it small on purpose so everyone gets properly coached.
Founding cohort price
or 3 monthly payments of $950 NZD$2,850 in total
That’s about $208 a session, with a 1:1 coaching session and the private Facebook group included.
Founding price. It goes up in January.
“The programme gave me real tools I could use straight away. The biggest shift was seeing my team actually get on board and work toward the same goal.”Tim Gould, Pump Hire
Not sure yet? Book a short call with Andy and talk it through first.
Company paying? Email me for an invoice.
Meet your coach
I’m Andy Rolston. Before I coached managers, I coached rugby teams in New Zealand, Canada and England. The biggest lesson from those years: the coach can’t run on and play the game. You win it at training, by building players who can read the game and make the call themselves.
That’s what I help managers do. After more than twenty years in business, and the last five coaching leaders and teams, I keep seeing the same pattern. Good people get promoted, then end up carrying their whole team because nobody showed them another way. Manager2Leader™ is how I help them change it.
- Maxwell Leadership certified
- Co-host of Live2Lead New Zealand
- Featured in Influence Digest’s Top 15 Auckland Coaches
- Rugby coach in New Zealand, Canada and England
What people say about working with Andy
“My team actually got on board.”
“The programme gave me real tools I could use straight away. The biggest shift was seeing my team actually get on board and work toward the same goal.”
“Relatable and easy to connect with.”
“His coaching style is relatable and easy to connect with, leveraging personal stories and real experience to create valuable learning moments.”
“He has held me accountable for my vision and goals.”
“Andy Rolston has been on a five-year growth journey with me as my coach. His patience, consistent support, and ability to challenge my preconceptions have been key in my personal and professional development and growth. Whether suggesting new tools, offering fresh perspectives, or encouraging me through tough seasons, he has always shown up with wisdom and care.”
Questions you might be asking
“I don’t have the time.”
It’s one 60-minute session a week for 12 weeks. The weekly tools are short and built to use in your normal working week, so there’s no homework piling up on top. And yes, it runs from 7 October to 23 December, which is a busy stretch. If you’re already stretched, an hour a week to change how you lead is a fair trade. Every session is recorded and kept in the members’ area, so a missed week isn’t a lost week.
“What if my team doesn’t respond well?”
In my experience, most teams respond better than people expect. Being trusted feels good, even when it’s unfamiliar at first. And some people will need more coaching from you than others, which is a big part of the Stretch stage. You’re also not doing this alone. Every week we work through exactly what’s happening in your team.
“What if standards slip when I step back?”
Stepping back doesn’t mean walking away. You agree what good looks like up front, you set regular check-ins, and you hold people to it. You’re still across what’s happening, just without needing to be involved in everything. And you don’t hand over ownership until your team has learned to think it through, which is why the stages come in order.
“What if I do the work and it isn’t changing anything?”
Then we fix it together. If you’ve been turning up and taking the weekly actions into your team, and you’re not seeing a shift by week 6, you get a one-hour, one-on-one coaching session with me to work out what’s getting in the way. No extra cost.
“Is it worth $2,497, and who’s paying?”
It’s $2,497 including GST, or three payments of $950 if you’d rather spread it out. That’s about $208 a session. The founding price is only available until the end of the year, and it goes up in January.
If you need your boss or company to back it, this is what you can tell them: it’s a 12-week programme to help you build a team that thinks and decides without depending on you. If your company is paying, email me and I’ll send an invoice. If you’re paying yourself, the payment plan is there for that reason.
“I’ve done leadership training before and it didn’t change anything.”
That’s usually because most leadership training gives you ideas, not practice. This is 12 weeks of trying one specific thing in your real team, every week, with coaching on exactly what happened. And if you’ve never done any training, you’re in good company. Plenty of managers are handed a team with no training at all.
“I don’t want to admit I’m struggling in front of other managers.”
Everyone in the room is in the same position: capable managers who’ve become the bottleneck. Nobody’s there to be marked. You share what you tried and what happened, wins and misses both, in a small group. Nobody needs to be the expert in the room.
Is this for you?
This is for you if:
- You’re managing a team right now, and you were promoted because you were good at the work
- Your team brings you problems instead of solutions
- You know you should be delegating more, but it never quite sticks
- You want to lead more strategically, but most days you’re firefighting
- You’ve read the leadership books or been to a workshop, and you want something that changes your day-to-day
- You’re willing to try one new thing with your real team every week and talk honestly about how it went
This probably isn’t for you if:
- You’re looking for more theory. There are plenty of leadership models already, and this is about practice
- You want to work through it on your own time. The coaching is live, and it’s where the change happens
- You can’t get to most of the sessions
- You’re comfortable being the person who handles everything and don’t want that to change
- You’re not leading a team yet. This first cohort is for people who are
Ready to stop being the bottleneck?
Manager2Leader™ starts Wednesday 7 October at 3:30pm NZT. Places are limited, and every place includes a 1:1 coaching session with Andy and a spot in the private Facebook group.
Founding cohort price
or 3 monthly payments of $950 NZD$2,850 in total
That’s about $208 a session, with a 1:1 coaching session and the private Facebook group included.
Founding price. It goes up in January.
Do the work, and if you’re not seeing a shift by week 6, you get a one-hour, one-on-one session with Andy to work through it. No extra cost.
Not sure yet? Book a short call with Andy and talk it through first.
Company paying? Email me for an invoice.
Your team can probably do more than they’re being asked to do right now. Twelve weeks from now, you could be watching them prove it.