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Manager Capability Development

Better managers can unleash better performance.
And yet 69% of managers feel unprepared to manage the various challenges of their role. Managers desperately need help to do better.

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33k+

Participants in 2023

500+

Programs in 2023

700+

Clients so far
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Leaders are learners

An HBR research on leadership development showed that leaders who are in learning mode developed stronger leadership skills than their peers.

Building on Susan Ashford and Scott DeRue’s mindful engagement experiential learning cycle, leaders who exhibit a growth mindset diligently work through each of the three phases of the experiential learning cycle:

  • I need to learn how to…
  • Deliberately learn & experiment with alternative strategies
  • Review what went well, what did not go so well, and what might work better in future.

This approach works regardless of where you are in your career journey:

  • An aspiring manager
  • A new manager
  • A tenured manager
  • A manager of managers

Each of the modules here are thoughtfully customized to make a tangible difference.

Frequently asked questions

Don’t see an answer to your question?
Drop us an email & we will get back

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On each topic page, you will see icons on the right that clarify this. This is how you decode them:

  • ILT (Instructor led training) - ILT (Instructor led training)
  • VILT (Virtual instructor led training) - VILT (Virtual instructor led training)
  • OBS (Online business simulation) - OBS (Online business simulation)
  • ML (Microlearning) - ML (Microlearning)
  • MC (Masterclass) - MC (Masterclass)
  • SDP (Storified Digital Products asynchronous) - SDP (Storified Digital Products - asynchronous)
  • DIY (Do it yourself) - DIY (Do it yourself)

The simulation addresses generic challenges encountered at the workplace. The customisation to the specific cohort as per their industry / company situation is done by the Facilitator running the session.

You can download a program overview from each of the topic pages. Do note that while this will give you a broad structure of the workshop, our learning designers will still need to talk with you to customize the workshop to your context.

For each workshop, we can help you with a set of 3 different teasers that you can customize and share periodically with participants to build excitement and get traction.

Loved by clients across industries

Thousands of businesses of all sizes, from
startups to large enterprises trust us

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    LEADING FOR SUCCESS" – One other brilliant session. Thanks a ton to CGI for creating a platform to explore. I thoroughly enjoyed the two day session! And I would like to share my experience with all of you who are keen

    Sumeetha.
    CGI Senior Software Engineer
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    FocusU was able to successfully generate high levels of enthusiasm & energy during the training program on Innovative Thinking & Collaboration. This demonstrates their professional approach, ability to correlate industry best practices and expertize in experiential learning programs. The participants could relate the learnings to their functions and take away practically executable action plans.

    Ajay Munjal
    Tata Communications Ltd. Vice President – Business Operations | Global Enterprise Solutions
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    The intervention that FocusU designed was brilliantly relevant for our management offsite. It was flawlessly executed. The exercises got us to smile, laugh, put our thinking caps on, connect but above all reflect constructively about some of our key issues. The facilitators kept the energy and encouragement going but knew where to step back and allow the conversations to move forward unaided.

    Prabir Jha
    Cipla President & Global Chief People Officer
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    We were all super impressed by the team, they were very well prepared and absolutely took charge of everything they did. What a fun bunch, I'm glad we partnered on this and can safely say it all went very well. Huge THANK YOU to you and the team on the ground!

    Farheen Mehdi
    Uber Global Learning & Development Lead
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    I am writing this as an extremely satisfied and delighted customer. Ours is a very young team. Many of our team members joined us directly from campus over the last five years. We also have a multi-disciplinary engineering team. Our challenge was to get the entire team working together as one, demonstrating a high degree of ownership. For this, we needed a program that was highly engaging and fun.

    RamG Vallath
    Zentron Labs Vision Catalyst
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    The item that took this class from a social learning experience to tangible training was the quantitative tools that were presented. These will allow me to focus my decisions in a manner that is justifiable and defensible. Any decision maker that might be called on the carpet needs this training to defend themselves and their decisions in a quantifiable manner.

    Keith L. Perrin
    Intel Corporation, USA SW Engineering Manager
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    Five reasons as to why I would engage with FocusU again: 1. Ability to understand the customer and empathize with them. 2. Willing to walk the pathway with the customer and hence the flexibility comes in as a huge relief in a world of stereotype, fixated trainers. 3. They are passionate and it is contagious! 4. Willing to correct course, when required 5. Very professional approach.

    John J Kannath
    Tata Communications Head HR
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    FocusU has always made learning interesting. Topics are converted into activities and the learning from the activities are then discussed - which makes us relate to it in real time. The best part is there is no PPT and the team is always takes inputs for discussion. A facilitator is definitely more knowledgeable than the people who attend the training. The key is how you hold your intelligence within yourself and get down to the level of attendees.

    Selvam Thamizharassan
    CGI Manager Consulting
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    The Avery Premier League has been such a great experience to be a part of. It's been such a fun and comprehensive adventure, and given the current climate, it's been a great way to engage with others around the world! The games have been so well thought out and provided a space for entertainment and engagement for those of us involved. Overall it's been a fantastic experience!

    Sophie Rayside
    Australia Sales & Mktg Coordinator
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    The MBTI® workshop conducted by FocusU, was an excellent experience for our leadership team; the complete session was a learning platform for everyone and the list of activities extended the perfect opportunity to introspect on self and make way for more team building. Thanks to the FocusU team for creating a wonderful experience and we wish them great success.

    Gautam Aggarwal
    DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals India Pvt Ltd Director - HR & OD, AMEA,
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    Thank you for a memorable team-building program for our management and senior leadership team. We have the arduous yet immensely enjoyable challenge, of consistently out-performing the industry in India; while ensuring organisation and culture building. The activities helped understand change management and went a long way in building a team that works closely together.

    Rajeev Nagi
    Teleflex India Managing Director
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    It's always a difficult task to energetically engage the senior leadership team in team building activities. As most of them have been to many such workshops in past and the first feeling is “Oh! Not again”. My compliments to Focus team on creating such fresh approach and innovative activities. This completely gives a new possibility to Executive Engagement and team building workshops.

    Amit Sharma
    Canara HSBC Life Vice President - Talent Management & Learning (HR)
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    I thoroughly enjoyed the two day MBTI® session! The overall objective was to get insights on introspection - to enable us to handle our team, work culture and environment, according to the situation. It's like reading yourself through the mirror! If applied on a daily basis, we are able to build trust and confidence, to communicate, discover opportunities, and handle constructive conflicts.

    Sumeetha
    CGI Senior Software Engineer
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    Our brief to FocusU was that with the large number of changes in the Regional Leadership Team, we need to get to know each other and build trust. Being a cross-functional team with diverse people – in age, backgrounds, experiences and geographically-dispersed – this was crucial. They understood this and customized a workshop which was fun and met all our objectives.

    Tanvi Shah
    HUL Branch HR Manager – South
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    The activities were truly fun. Particularly enjoyed the quirky challenges which made us get over our inhibitions like performances before colleagues or letting the fun side of our personalities show through photos we'd prefer to keep to ourselves. The time constraint and need for coordination amongst team members really fuelled our creativity both as individuals and as a team.

    Pravin Mahajan
    Shobiz Experiential Communications Pvt Ltd VP Strategic Business Unit
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    We were initially apprehensive on how the team building event would play out, as we had not worked with FocusU earlier. However, FocusU exceeded our expectations; they did a wonderful job in bringing together a diverse group of people. At the end, there were only smiles and laughter. A special mention for “Pixel Challenge” – the painting that we created as a team, is something we proud of!

    Mukesh Soni
    J.P. Morgan Asset Management Vice President
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    Thank you for conducting such a great activity for our team. The activity (random act of kindness) was fun, motivating and engaging. It made us realise how we can contribute in the smallest of ways and bring a smile to others. It truly did lift up spirits of our team. A great digital activity and very well-managed by your team.

    Shital Jhunjhunwalla
    Acme Experiences Manager - Client Servicing
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    Focus U has provided us excellent team building programs which are tailored to the needs of our organisation. They have succeeded in creating learning experiences which are specific and relevant to the particular needs of our organisation. Their facilitators allow attendees to interact, while learning skills and knowledge which can be applied to their individual roles.

    Sandeep Kumar
    HR nThrive Global Solutions Pvt. Ltd. General Manager
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    First of all, thanks to FocusU team for all support and conducting memorable offsite. This is was the best offsite we ever conducted in last 4 years. Employees were really happy and sent appreciation to us. This is was not possible without FocusU team. Few of the employees have already recommended name of your company to their connects in industry which I think gives a feedback about your team.

    Kailas Darade
    HCM | IndoSpace Development Management Pvt. Ltd. Deputy Vice President – HCM
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    Learning by doing” is the most efficient tool to improve the process and give opportunity to think out of box!!!!!!

    Dipak Panchal
    Adani Green Energy Ltd. Manager - Business Development
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    On behalf of Airtel, I would like to extend you a heartfelt THANK YOU!

    Anusha Rahinwal
    Bharti Airtel Ltd. Learning & Development Partner
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    As a People’s company, everyone knows and understands the concept of Growth Mindset & Accountability, however the kind of activities and experiential learning programmed by FocusU added an element of excitement and gave us enough room to think and play around it. Great effort was put into make the overall session very logical coupled with the de-briefs after summing up each activity.

    Divya Chauhan
    TrueBlue India LLP L&D Partner
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    Thanks to the FocusU team for conducting a highly engaging, action-packed workshop. The workshop design was innovative; the activities were creatively planned and meticulously executed. Some of the competencies like strategic thinking, innovation, drive for results & team synergy were effectively elicited through play.

    Tina Suneja
    HomeShop18 Head-Learning & OD
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    It was a fabulous experience and the entire session was conceptualized with deep thought and executed with fine precision. The catalogue of activities planned out for us extended the perfect opportunity to introspect on self and make way for more team building. Professionalism and great dedication are the hallmarks of the team from FocusU, and I wish them all the very best.

    Santosh Panicker
    Sears Holdings India CPO
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    An amazing overall experience, which was like peeling layers of leadership psychology to discover self and understand others in the team. FocusU led us to a journey of unearthing the mindsets through challenging tasks and a right amount of debriefing. The session has resulted in increased collaboration amongst team members and driving the organizational mission with renewed passion.

    Mayur Chaturvedi
    Zimmer India Director, HR & Admin
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    Using people engagement, leadership & team effectiveness to fuel business turnaround and results upped my faith in the power of the ‘more human approach’ that I believe in. The web of deep connections that we established, grew over time, and we saw what a group of united, committed and intelligent individuals can achieve as ‘One Team’. The FocusU team were true catalysts in this journey.

    Aanchal Grover
    HUL North Team HR Business Partner
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    What started as a search for a training vendor on Google has come a long way with several identified FocusU interventions over the years. In each intervention, we have achieved our stated objectives of Learning & Development - like Team building, Collaboration, Decision making in uncertainty, Drive for results, Shared vision etc. among a very diverse group of people.

    Rakesh Kher
    Minda Distribution & Services Ltd President
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    FocusU has always delivered to the objective set out with perfection. They always bring new ideas and exercises to help deliver the message and achieve the objective. Lego Serious Play is an extremely powerful tool which we have used for team visioning sessions. The entire exercise is engaging and helps bring out various aspects of discussion on the table in a non-threatening way.

    Sachin Jain
    PepsiCo India Region Manager Leadership Capability
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    When I first saw your huge clientele that included companies like Adobe, Deustche Bank and E&Y, I wondered - do large companies keep coming back since you're the best at what you do, or have you turned out to be the best at what you do because large companies keep coming back? That list will grow bigger as FocusU has certainly exceeded all expectation at our recent team building event.

    Amit Madan
    Collage Group HR Manager
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    The concepts discussed in the workshop helped our participants to collaborate better with their cross-functional team members. Your openness & promptness in working on feedback shared with you is commendable. The change made in getting the participants to come up with their own case study and getting them to use it during the workshop has been a wonderful value addition.

    Ananta Yadav
    Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory Manager L&D
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    A fantastic experience. The way, it went was amazing and I was able to correlate many things on what I am doing right and also I was able to re-align on what I should be doing to stay in line with 'reality' :). In fact, I have already suggested to many others to make this training as a “must attend” training irrespective of their title group. Whether it was the trainer or the content I am not really sure. But I would say, I thoroughly enjoyed it and liked it - without any second thoughts! Great job done by the FocusU Facilitators – I would be eager to attend few more sessions if done by them on similar or other interesting training topics.

    Shivakumar Sounder Raj
    CGI Senior Executive
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    The Leadership workshop helped all of us to take a step back and analyse ourselves on the kind of leadership traits we have and that we don’t have. How we could all become better leaders and help others grow along with us.

    Anuj Mathur
    Reed Manch Exhibitions Managing Director
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    FocusU was a simple Google search for me. Having said that, there were other training firms whose details also showed up. But right from the time that I established my first contact with them, there has not been an instance where I had to follow up with their team. Extremely proactive, understand their clients needs and the best part - they customize the training requirements really well!

    Antony Titus
    DHL Express India Head - Customer Service Development
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    Thank you for an excellent senior management intervention (AGM – AVP level) using the Leadership Challenge construct. The program aimed to develop leaders embodying our brand. The intervention included conducting a diagnostic and designing the workshop to suit the need of the target audience, which FocusU did impeccably.

    Shikha Verma
    Yamaha Motor India Sr Manager
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    The last gathering of From Spark to Sparkling Reality – was a soul stirring experience for the participants. You truly uplifted the spirit of participants, and they were very energetic, enthusiastic and positively charged with a new perspective while leaving the venue.

    Shrikant Lonikar
    Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd Head HR
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    Thank you FocusU and Smollan L&D team for designing such a wonderful continuous learning program. It acted like small and effective doses to look for what next. Case studies chosen were all relevant for my Global Development Team & I could not ask for more. Let’s plan for some monthly 1 hour on premise confluence sessions.

    Vijay Varshney
    SMOLLAN Head of Technology - MESA
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    FocusU facilitated a 2 day 'Stepping into Coaching ' workshop for a group of senior leaders from CGI. Their session was engaging and gave us insights on improving the effectiveness of our leadership. They ensured that the program was interactive enabling easy flow of thoughts and perspectives through out the program. I would recommend this program to anybody looking at growing as a coach leader.

    Shilpa Subbaiah
    CGI Program Manager – Products
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    The whole process of pre-planning, material delivery, organizing instructions, venue visit etc, was done seamlessly. As observers,it was amazing to see the energy rising with each activity and continued so till closure. The event was very will timed, the debriefs were very specific and applicable to work life, the execution team was very professional, yet engaged with our employees very well.

    Neeta Kwatra
    Genpact Social Impact Fellowship Senior Consultant
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    Thank you for the teambuilding and leadership sessions. We commend your ability and skills in understanding our needs and facilitating learning through fun and experiential activities. The exercises gave us with an opportunity to reflect and assess our performance; and to think about our strengths and weakness in working as an individual and most importantly, as team members towards a common goal.

    Roseleen Gurung
    Tarayana Foundation Program Officer
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    I appreciate that the “Leading for Success” training program was more experiential than theory. The best part is, we were all asked to perform multiple activities and concepts were explained by observing us during the course of the activity. So there was no boring class room kind of lecture and the learning was from your own action. My special thanks to FocusU for an interactive session.

    Selvam
    CGI Associate Consultant
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    I appreciate the time management, level of expertise & knowledge of FocusU's facilitators. Most importantly, which I found was definitely your differentiator - the course design and debriefing. All the identified training needs were met. All three trainers were very professional; the use of technology was also very good. In a batch of 96, they kept everyone together and focused as well.

    Neelam Dhaka
    JCB India Limited Senior Manager – Training
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    My overall experience as a learning consultant was definitely perfect and I would surely recommend FocusU within my network. Content for the two series of workshops on Leadership challenge was apt for our new managers and added a lot of value.

    Upasna Bhatia
    BlackRock Talent Management
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    It forced me to learn and grow in spite of dealing with my busy schedule of juggling between work and a new-born back at home. You helped me understand new concepts in merely 15-30 mins ; and challenged me to think through different issues I should deal with. I should get them sorted mentally in my mind first than in real life. Thank you for helping me grow my knowledge.

    Ketki Desai
    SMOLLAN Area Asst. - West Region
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    I have never received such overwhelmingly positive feedback from participants for any other program! Even the typical critics came proactively to thank me. But the real credit goes to FocusU of course. Unlike typical training filled with slides, theories and handouts, FocusU brings in a different way of learning while enjoying participation. The know how to make learning more effective.

    Taslima Hasnat Jaigirder
    HUL Bangladesh HR Business Partner
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    Working with FocusU allows us to leave our worries to you and your team; with the confidence that you will make it happen! Each time we have partnered with you, it has been a brilliant experience. Each time our ask has been different and you and the team have delivered and exceeded expectations! It’s wonderful to have a learning partner that get your vision and helps translate it brilliantly!

    Namrata Singh
    HSBC Learning Experience and Engagement Lead
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    It’s not about the content or activities. Those can be replicated by others. It’s what the FocusU team does with them which makes the experience so special.

    Tanmaya Vats
    PepsiCo Global Value Innovation Center Vice President & Head
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    Just wanted to let you know that we had a great experience with FocusU. All the activities were well designed and implemented. The team was brilliant.

    Divya Gupta
    Aavishkaar Investment Manager
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    The Learning challenge was very informative and challenging. The thing which I love about this challenge is that it provides videos also that make it easy to understand the concept.

    Vishal More
    Smollan
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    Without a shadow of a doubt, it was one of the finest team building event, I have experienced & same was the reaction from the participants too. Our facilitators were impressed & had high feedback for your team. Thanks to the entire team for giving us such a memorable experience .

    Sunanda Gulati
    NXP Semiconductors Learning and Development Head

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Our purpose is to enable you and your teams be more through meaningful learning.

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