A six-week leadership cohort for the person you just promoted.
You promoted them because they were the best at the work.
They quickly realized being an effective leader requires a different skill set than being a strong individual contributor.
Now, they're navigating the transition from peer to leader, juggling new responsibilities while learning to delegate, have difficult conversations, and give feedback.
That’s what the Emerging Leadership Groop is for:
Six 60-minute virtual group sessions
With up to 9 other emerging leaders
Starting 6 October, Tuesdays 12 to 1pm ET
Led by a Groop Guide with a master’s or doctoral degree in psychology.
For the transition from peer to leader.
Ten seats. One virtual hour a week.
Groops has worked with:
Who It's For
- Someone promoted into a leadership role in the last 12 months with minimal formal management training.
- Someone leading between 2–10 people, now leading the work they used to do.
- Someone still doing parts of their old job, while trying to juggle the new responsibilities of leadership.
- Someone promoted mid-restructure or arrived through acquisition with reporting lines still being drawn.
Who It's Not For
- Experienced leaders sharpening an existing practice. This is pitched below them. The Advanced Leadership Groop starts 13 January for experienced leaders whose impact now runs through other leaders.
- Someone you would have to talk into it. The sessions run on what participants bring. A person who would rather not be in the room takes a seat from someone who wants it.
- Someone whose calendar cannot hold the same hour for six weeks.
The case for leadership training, and your part in it
You just promoted a new manager. Now, how do you retain them?
88% of organizations name retention as a concern, with L&D leaders ranking learning opportunities as their number one retention strategy.
LinkedIn Learning, Workplace Learning Report 2025, 937 L&D professionals.
Fewer than half of the world's managers, 44%, say they have ever received management training.
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025.
"Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units."
Beck & Harter, Gallup, 21 April 2015.
Manager thriving rises up to 50% when manager training is paired with someone at work actively encouraging their development.
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025.
That someone is you.
Nobody forgets their first year leading people.
Every new leader faces these 6 challenges.
Every quote below was written verbatim by someone applying to this program.
How do I stop being busy and start actually leading?
"Stronger leadership skills, better assessment of who I am as a leader and who I want to be."
"Time management."
When do I stop second-guessing every decision?
"Build greater confidence in my leadership abilities and decision-making."
"Presenting ideas with confidence, especially in group settings."
Why does the same feedback land differently depending on who I give it to?
"How to lead different personalities and work styles successfully"
"Coaching in roles that I do not have a lot of experience in"
How do I bring this up after letting it slide for three months?
"Tough conversations!"
"Learn techniques for navigating challenging discussions in a way that is both productive and constructive."
Do they see me as a leader, or the person who sat next to them last year?
"How to best unlock potential and high performance in others"
"Skills on how to manage downwards and upwards."
How do I hand this job over while still ensuring its quality?
"Learning techniques for delegating effectively while maintaining engagement and accountability."
"I care deeply about not overwhelming my team, which often leads me to take on more work myself than I should."
"Overall, I hope to gain new leadership strategies, increase my self-awareness, strengthen my communication skills, and become a more effective and well-rounded leader."
How Emerging Leadership Groop gets them there
Six weeks, one for each problem above. Workshopped with a Groop Guide, a master's or doctoral level expert in psychology, and up to 9 other new leaders.
Week 1 - Your Leadership Why & What You Want:
Names the skills that made them excellent at their old job, and shows which ones now need to change.
Week 2 - Habits of Thinking, Feeling, Doing:
Uncovers the patterns behind how they think, feel, and act under pressure, so the same decision doesn't get made twice.
Week 3 - Communication That Works Under Pressure:
Teaches them to notice their default reaction under pressure, and choose a response that fits the person and the moment.
Week 4 - Feedback & Difficult Conversations:
Gives them a framework for the tough conversations that get harder the longer they wait.
Week 5 - Designing Your Leadership Roadmap for Measurable Growth:
Gives them a plan that makes the shift in their role visible to the people who previously worked next to them.
Week 6 - Coaching Fundamentals for Leaders:
Teaches coaching over advising, so tasks stop bouncing back to their desk.
Here's everything that's included
| Six virtual 1 hour group sessions | 60 minutes, Tuesdays 12 to 1pm ET, starting 6 October |
| Two 1:1 sessions | 30 minutes each, with their Groop Guide |
| Total live expert contact | Seven hours. Six in group, one 1:1 |
| The cohort | A master's or doctoral level Groop Guide and up to 9 other first-year leaders. |
| Before it starts | A pre-program survey that shapes what the six weeks cover |
| Workshopping real problems, not case studies | Frame, reflect, discuss, practice, commit |
| Reflection prompts, action steps, and handout | A program page and email after each Groop with a summary of content, reflection prompts, action steps, plus a 1-page handout |
Here's what comes back to you.
Six things they're working through. Six things that come back to you.
- You stop setting their priorities for them.
- Decisions get made at their level, at their speed.
- They adapt to the person and the pressure, so nobody on the team goes unmanaged.
- Their difficult conversations stop arriving on your desk.
- The team goes to them, not around them.
- The work actually moves off their plate, so your best contributor stops doing two jobs.
Retention of a person you have just invested a promotion in.
Replacing them costs roughly a third of their annual salary before anyone counts the disruption.
Work Institute, 2017 Retention Report.
Why can't this just be a one-day workshop?
Here's why…
The largest meta-analysis of leadership development on record, with 335 samples and 26,573 people, found that leadership training has a large effect on transfer back to the job. (Lacerenza, Reyes, Marlow, Joseph, and Salas 2017, Journal of Applied Psychology)
No surprise there.
What was more surprising (and useful) was that…
Training spread across multiple sessions transfers significantly better than the same material delivered in one massed session.
The meta-analysis names four design features that predict whether training sticks:
- Spacing across sessions
- A needs analysis before the program starts
- Feedback
- Combining information, demonstration and practice rather than lecture alone.
The Emerging Leadership Groop was built around all four.
Six weekly sessions instead of one day. A pre-program survey. A Groop Guide plus peer feedback every week. And a repeating structure that ends in practice.
What our clients are saying…
"I've participated in plenty of corporate leadership programs, but the Applied Leadership Groop really stood apart. Because it's grounded in psychology, it went far beyond tactics or a typical skills-based approach and gave me a much clearer understanding of the patterns I bring to leadership, especially under pressure, and how those patterns shape the way I lead. Even in a mixed cohort, the experience felt surprisingly personal and highly individualized, and the insights have been practical, impactful, and immediately useful in my day-to-day."Lindsey Sands, VP & Associate General Counsel, Vicinity Energy
"With our team spread across the globe, Groops created a safe space for connection, vulnerability, and growth. The sessions sparked powerful conversations and significantly improved how we communicate and empathize with each other… I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Groops to others across GE and beyond."Omar Murywed, Senior Director, Product & Innovation, GE Power
"From our very first meeting with the Groops team, it was clear this was a partnership that would make GeoBlue better…We strongly believe in the Groops program and have made it a key part of our ongoing commitment to leadership development."Sam Kling, Director, People & Cultural Transformation, GeoBlue
About Groops
- Founded and led by Bobbi Wegner, a licensed psychologist and Harvard lecturer.
- Incubated at Harvard Startup Foundry through IQSS.
- Across its work, Groops has worked with 20+ organizations, including Shields Health, Optum, GE, McDonald's, Bayer, Clark Construction, Finastra and GeoBlue.
- Groop Guides hold master's or doctoral degrees in psychology.
Founder
So, how much does it cost?
Here's how it compares.
First-time manager training programs:
~$2,600 to $5,400 a seat
Self-paced online courses from business schools:
~$1,900 to $3,600 a seat
The Emerging Leadership Groop:
$1,500 a seat
One hour a week. No days out of the office. Ten seats.
Three seats here cost roughly as much as one seat on a three-day program.
Six 60-minute virtual group sessions.
Starting October 6 (Tuesdays, 12 to 1pm ET),
Led by a Groop Guide with a master’s or doctoral degree in psychology.
Important Info
Enrollment closes: Friday 2 October
First session: Tuesday 6 October, 12 to 1pm ET
Payment confirms the seat. There is no invoicing or deferred billing for this cohort. Most sponsors put it on a corporate card or a L&D budget.
Sponsors commonly take two or three seats. Choose the quantity at checkout.
Five early-bird bonuses carry a diagnostic for your sponsored leaders. Details below.
Early Bird BONUS ($795 Value)
Confirm a seat by Friday 18 Sept., and the leader you’re sponsoring gets the Groops Leadership Cohesion Diagnostic, a $795 value.
The diagnostic measures how they lead across five dimensions: leadership effectiveness, psychological safety, trust, how they handle conflict, and inclusion. They receive a full Leadership Cohesion Profile, along with a 30-minute walkthrough of the results, directly with Bobbi.
Delivered in the week before the cohort starts, so they arrive already knowing where their strengths and blind spots are.
First five sponsors only.
Six 60-minute virtual group sessions.
Starting October 6 (Tuesdays, 12 to 1pm ET),
Led by a Groop Guide with a master’s or doctoral degree in psychology.
FAQ
Can I get this covered under professional development or L&D?
Most seats are funded that way. An approver needs two things to sign off on, the amount and the dates: $1,500 per seat, six weekly sessions running Tuesday 6 October through 10 November. Email Rosie at rosie.m@joingroops.com and she will send a short forwardable summary carrying both, ready to attach to a budget request or send straight to whoever holds the budget.
Can we be invoiced, or pay on our normal cycle?
No. Payment confirms the seat. There is no invoicing or deferred billing for this cohort. A corporate card is the fastest route through, and most L&D budgets carry one for exactly this kind of purchase. If your approval cycle will not close before enrollment ends on Friday 2 October, tell us and we will hold the person's place for the next Emerging Leadership cohort instead.
What happens after I pay?
A confirmation email goes to you and your nominee. Before the program starts, your nominee completes a short survey that shapes what the six weeks cover. The first group session runs Tuesday 6 October, 12 to 1pm ET.
Can I buy more than one seat?
Yes. Sponsors commonly take two or three for the same cohort.
Select the quantity at checkout and complete it in one transaction, then name a person for each seat before the program begins.
What if the timing turns out to be wrong for the person I have in mind?
Your nominee's seat carries to the next Emerging Leadership cohort. Reply to the email you receive after purchase to arrange it.
Who sees my nominee's individual results?
Session content stays between your nominee and their Groop Guide. You do not receive individual notes, scores, or transcripts for confidentiality reasons.
What if they miss a session?
Sessions are not recorded. Each one runs on what participants bring that week, and there is no reading your way back into a live exchange. What carries over is the email after every session with that week's summary, reflection prompts, action steps, and a one-page handout, plus the program page holding all six weeks of the same material. Their Groop Guide can meet with them separately to go over what they missed.
A six-week commitment is tough in our environment.
The format is built around that limit. One hour a week, the same hour each week, no days out of the office and no travel. Leadership training delivered across multiple sessions transfers back to the job significantly better than the same material delivered in one sitting.
What do I need to do as the sponsor?
Manager thriving rises by up to 50% when training is paired with someone at work who actively encourages their development. Here's how you can help: the Sponsor's Support Brief arrives when the cohort starts, covering what to ask, what to leave alone, and how to tell whether it is landing with questions worth asking along the way.
How is this different from BetterUp or Culture Amp?
Culture Amp tells you which teams scored low. BetterUp gives one person access to a coach when they book one. This is six weeks in a room with a Groop Guide, a master's or doctoral-level expert in psychology, and up to nine other emerging leaders. Plus two 30-minute 1:1 sessions with that same Guide. The 1:1 is where your nominee brings whatever is actually happening that week: the report who has stopped speaking up, the conversation they've avoided, or the work they cannot hand over.
This sounds like wellbeing. We need performance.
The six sessions work on delegation, difficult conversations, managing up and down, and what happens to a team under pressure.
Here's how it works. Elite sports teams employ psychologists, and nobody files that under wellbeing. They are there because performance under pressure is a psychological problem before it is a tactical one, and because the person who changes how a team plays is usually the one leading it.
Groop Guides do that job for team intelligence. They hold master's or doctoral degrees in psychology, and they work on the leader, because that is where a team's performance is decided. Nothing here is clinical work and nobody is diagnosed.
Will this actually change anything?
Our clients are best able to answer this.
"I've participated in plenty of corporate leadership programs, but the Applied Leadership Groop really stood apart. Because it's grounded in psychology, it went far beyond tactics or a typical skills-based approach and gave me a much clearer understanding of the patterns I bring to leadership, especially under pressure, and how those patterns shape the way I lead. Even in a mixed cohort, the experience felt surprisingly personal and highly individualized, and the insights have been practical, impactful, and immediately useful in my day-to-day."
Lindsey Sands, VP & Associate General Counsel, Vicinity EnergyStill deciding, or have a few questions before you commit?
Book a 30-minute call here, we're happy to answer any questions you have.
Here are the next steps
Six weeks, starting Tuesday, 6 October. Ten seats.
Enrollment closes Friday 2 October.
Six 60-minute virtual group sessions.
Starting October 6 (Tuesdays, 12 to 1pm ET),
Led by a Groop Guide with a master’s or doctoral degree in psychology.