When companies decide to build a manager training program for internal delivery, the first question they wonder is: do we have the internal expertise to run these trainings? And that’s exactly where the Train-the-Trainer (TTT) manager program sessions come in. When teams license Leadwith’s new manager training curriculum, the TTT and practice sessions are how we make sure their people can actually deliver it with confidence.

Most assume TTT is just a logistical hand-off, but it’s actually where some of the most meaningful work happens.

Let me explain what I mean.

The myth I’m constantly busting

There’s a persistent assumption that internal training is only possible if you have a robust L&D team, professional facilitators, or people with serious experience building and delivering training content. That if no one on your team has done this before, you should probably just hire it out or skip it entirely.

I couldn’t disagree more.

The real barrier to internal training isn’t expertise, it’s materials. If you’re working off a cobbled-together deck and a loose outline, then yes, you need an experienced facilitator to hold it together. But when the materials are genuinely excellent, meaning structured, expert-built, and ready to run, then facilitation becomes accessible to almost anyone with curiosity about the topic and a genuine desire to help their organization get better. That’s the whole premise behind Leadwith: ready-to-run, modern manager training built by experts, designed for internal delivery. License it once, use it forever. And TTT support is there to help your people actually deliver it well.

Some of the most valuable people in a TTT cohort are the ones who have never facilitated anything in their lives. They come in without ingrained habits to unlearn, they’re often incredibly coachable. Plus, they bring a genuine insider perspective on their organization and understand what will land with their colleagues. The only prerequisites are interest in the material and a willingness to learn (and the bandwidth to be on the facilitation team of course). But that’s it. The rest we build together.

Who shows up

The cohorts I work with are mixed in the best possible way. In a recent TTT, I had the Chief People Officer sitting alongside someone from the engineering team who’d been tapped because they were passionate about management development and had the bandwidth to help. I had HR Business Partners with years of people experience next to someone from marketing who was new to facilitation entirely. They were a team of different levels, different functions, different amounts of comfort with standing up and presenting, all in the same virtual room.

That mix is actually the magic ingredient, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the start.

What the beginning looks like

That particular cohort started on Zoom, and they were especially quiet. When I asked a question, one or two people would come off mute. Otherwise, it was very still, and you could feel the nerves. Even the experienced facilitators had some worries, not necessarily about presenting, but about learning new material, and about whether they’d be unified in tone and message with the rest of their cohort. The newcomers were carrying a different kind of anxiety: can I actually do this?

This is where my job starts. Before anyone delivers a single slide, my goal is to get people genuinely comfortable with each other. Through real discussion, not forced and awkward ice-breakers, we get to a place where we everyone feels we’re all in this together and none of us has to be perfect. And this is critical, because the session only works if people are willing to stumble in front of each other, and they’ll only do that if they trust each other.

The moment that said everything

We got to the Practice and Feedback Sessions where participants deliver pieces of the training themselves and get real-time feedback. One of the more experienced facilitators went first. She stumbled on one of her slides, caught herself, and just… kept going. No big deal. She modeled something important in that moment without even trying to.

Then it was time for someone who had almost no facilitation experience. She started, stumbled, which totally normal, and genuinely the whole point of these sessions, but from there she started to get flustered. You could see her wanting to stop.

Before I could even get a word in, her cohort came off mute.

Not to rescue her in a condescending way. Just encouragement. Quick, genuine, warm. You’ve got this. Keep going. That part was actually great. And she did. She kept going and finished strong.

That’s the moment I always come back to when I think about why I love this work. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t orchestrate it. That cohort did it themselves because by that point, they’d built enough trust that it was just the natural response. They’d become a team.

What actually happens in these sessions

The TTT sessions are content-first. We go deep into the manager training curriculum so that everyone understands not just what they’re presenting, but why it’s structured the way it is and what participants will likely respond to. I want people to ask questions (a lot of them!), but I also know that questions are hard to ask when you’re in a room full of people you don’t know well. So every TTT includes some intentional getting-to-know-you time early on. Not as filler, but as a crucial first step that makes everything else possible.

The practice and feedback sessions are where it really gets interesting. Participants each deliver a real section of the training and then we debrief it together. I give structured feedback on content, tone, and fluidity. But some of the most useful feedback comes from their peers, because their colleagues can speak to things I genuinely can’t: what will land with this company, in this culture, with these managers. I can tell you if your pacing was off. They can tell you if that example is going to resonate in your organization.

One thing I always include is a live question for the presenter to answer, something they haven’t prepared for. There’s no exact script for it, which is exactly the point. That’s where real facilitation practice happens. Delivering slides is one thing. Handling a curveball from the room is another, and it’s the skill that actually matters.

For teams who are tight on time, I also do asynchronous feedback sessions. Participants record themselves delivering a section, then I watch it and give detailed written feedback on content, tone, and how the delivery flows. It’s a different format but the same commitment to making people genuinely better, not just checking a box.

And there’s one thing I tell every single cohort at the start, without exception: stumbling over your words is not a problem. It’s normal. It’s human. Just because you’re presenting doesn’t mean you stop being a person. If you actually said something incorrect, simply correct it and move on. If you just fumbled a sentence, keep going. Nobody is sitting there cataloguing your verbal trips. The second you stop treating a stumble like a crisis, your whole delivery opens up.

What’s different about TTT vs. everything else

Train the Trainer and practice sessions are nothing like the manager training sessions themselves. There’s no script, no set pace, no generic delivery. I’m watching the (virtual) room constantly, who’s leaning in, who’s holding back, where the energy is, where there’s an opening to push a little or pull back. We pivot constantly based on who’s in front of me and what they need in that moment.

By the end of that session, and this is true of most of the cohorts I work with, the mute buttons were basically never on. There was laughter. People were building on each other’s ideas, identifying each other’s strengths, talking about how they’d divide up different sections of the training based on who was best suited for what.

They walked in as a group of individuals who’d been assigned to a task force. They left as a team with a shared identity and a shared purpose.

The thing people underestimate most

TTT isn’t just about skill transfer. Yes, people leave more comfortable with the material and more confident in their facilitation. But the bigger outcome is that an organization suddenly has an internal cohort who know each other, trust each other, and can keep supporting each other long after I’m gone. They can debrief after a hard session, lean on someone whose strength is the part they find harder, and keep getting better together over time.

That’s what good Train the Trainer work actually builds. Not just facilitators. A team.

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Leadwith training programs include everything you need to run high impact manager training at your organization: editable slide decks, complete facilitator scripts, participant worksheets, peer coaching guides, facilitator preparation guides, post assessments, and email templates for every communication touchpoint. The Train-the-Trainer support and Facilitation Practice and Feedback sessions prepare your facilitation team to actually roll it out.

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