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What to include in a communication skills training programme for managers
September 23, 2026FURTHER EXPERTISE
How to identify your team's communication training needs: a practical guide for HR managers
Expert Opinion from Rich Watts published September 23, 2026
There is a particular kind of request that lands on most HR managers' desks at some point, usually in the form of an unannounced email or a manager grabbing you for a ‘quick chat’.
They flag that they think the management team needs to work on how they communicate. Maybe a cluster of similar feedback has emerged from an engagement survey, a 360-degree review cycle, or a difficult period of organisational change. The message is always clear enough though: The team’s communication skills are not where they need to be.
What is usually less clear is what to do next. Where exactly are the gaps? Who needs what? Is this a training issue, a management practice issue, or something embedded more deeply in the culture? And how do we build a training or development solution that works and will produce a genuine, measurable change?
This article walks through how to identify and clarify your team's communication training needs quickly and honestly. We will cover how to prioritise what you find, and how to use that information to decide what kind of training solution is actually going to help.
Why getting the diagnosis right matters more than getting the training started
First up, slow down.
The most common mistake organisations make when they decide to invest in communication skills training is moving too quickly from 'we have a problem' to 'let us book something.'
It is an understandable impulse as there is usually a sense of urgency, a budget to spend, and a feeling that doing something is better than doing nothing. But training that is not anchored to a clear picture of the actual skill gaps tends to produce limited results and a significant amount of frustration.
When Further Communications worked with the Medical Research Foundation to develop a communication skills training pathway for their teams, the process started not with a course catalogue but with a genuine research phase. That meant surveys, structured conversations across the organisation, and an honest mapping of where the real skill gaps sat across different roles and levels of seniority.
What emerged was a training programme designed around the specific challenges those people actually faced, in the order that made most sense for their development. That starting investment in getting the diagnosis right is what made the difference between a training event and a genuine, lasting shift in capability.
Discover more about our Communication Skills Programmes
Signs that your team's communication skills need attention
These are the patterns that most reliably signal that a structured approach to communication skills development is worth investing in. If several of them feel familiar, then the initial signals are there that your team needs communication skills support .
- Feedback keeps circling back to the same themes. When 360 reviews, engagement surveys or exit interviews repeatedly surface concerns about how managers communicate, for example messages that do not land, conversations that leave people unclear or unsettled, leaders who are difficult to read, then that is a reliable signal the issue is systemic rather than individual.
- The same communication breakdowns keep happening. Difficult conversations that get avoided or handled badly. Meetings that end without clear decisions or actions. Change initiatives that stall because people do not understand what is expected of them.
- Managers are technically strong but struggle with the people side of leadership. Organisations that have grown quickly, or that promote people primarily on the basis of technical expertise, often find their management tier is well-equipped for the functional work but under-equipped for the communication demands that come with leading people. This is one of the most common reasons organisations commission communication skills training.
- You are building or formalising an approach to L&D. If communication skills training has previously been ad hoc and consisted of a course here, a workshop there, responding to individual requests as they arrive, and instead you are now looking to build something more structured and evidenced, identifying the actual development needs across the organisation is the essential starting point.
- Something specific has brought the need into focus. A significant change programme. A restructure. A merger or period of rapid growth. A senior departure that has exposed a communication gap nobody had quite articulated before. These events often bring communication skill gaps into sharp relief and create the right conditions to address them properly.
MAKING IT BETTER
How to audit your team's communication training needs: a practical approach
A training needs analysis for communication skills does not need to be a lengthy or heavily resourced exercise to be useful. The following approach can typically be completed within two to three weeks and will give you a clear picture of where the training or learning support needs to come in.
- Start with the business context, not the skills. Before you ask anyone what communication training they need, get clear on what the organisation or team is actually trying to achieve and what communication challenges are getting in the way. What are the strategic priorities for the next twelve months? What leadership or management challenges are most acute right now? Communication training is most effective when it is anchored to real business context rather than a generic checklist of skills.
- Use a short survey to gather baseline data. A well-designed survey of eight to twelve questions, sent to the managers who might be part of any training programme and ideally to their direct reports too, gives you quantitative baseline data that is useful in two ways. First, it tells you where confidence and capability are lowest. Second, it gives you a before measurement that allows you to demonstrate the impact of training after the fact. Keep the questions specific: not 'how good are you at communicating?' but 'how confident are you having a performance conversation with a team member who is not meeting expectations?'
- Have a small number of structured conversations. Surveys tell you what people are comfortable saying in writing. Conversations tell you what is actually going on. Five to ten conversations with a mix of managers, their direct reports and relevant senior stakeholders, will surface the nuances, the specific situations and the cultural factors that a survey will not capture. They also build the kind of buy-in that makes training more effective, because people who have been genuinely consulted tend to engage with it very differently from people who have had it done to them. It may also be valuable to observe some of the behaviours in action (perhaps joining meetings, or viewing recordings), if this is possible.
- Look at the data you already have. Engagement survey results, 360 feedback themes, exit interview patterns, performance review data, customer or client feedback, and the outcomes of any previous training all contain relevant information about where communication skills development is most needed. Before commissioning a formal audit, it is worth mining what you already know.
- Identify the priority gaps rather than trying to address everything at once. A communication skills audit will almost always surface more development needs than can be addressed in a single programme. Don’t panic! The question is not 'what needs improving?' but 'what would make the biggest difference to the organisation right now?' Focusing on two or three high-impact areas is more effective and more credible than trying to cover everything at once.
WHAT NEXT?
What to do with what you find
Once you have a clear picture of the communication skill gaps that matter most, the next question is what kind of training or development solution is actually appropriate for what you have found. This is where many organisations default too quickly to a standard course or off-the-shelf workshop, when a more tailored approach would produce significantly better results.
A single training day is right when the skill gap is specific, relatively contained, and affects a defined group of people. A structured programme that combines two or more training sessions, potentially with coaching, action learning, and follow-up support, is right when the gaps are broader or closely connected to a significant period of organisational challenge or change.
If you are at the point of deciding what shape of solution is right for your organisation, our guide to training sessions, courses, pathways and programmes explains the differences clearly and helps you work out which is the right fit for what you have found.
FURTHER GUIDANCE
Related reading from Further Communications
Once you have identified your team's communication training needs, the natural next step is understanding what a well-designed programme looks like. Our guide to what to include in a communication skills training programme for managers walks through the components that make the biggest difference to outcomes.
You might also find it helpful to read about how to build a business case for communication skills training. This has proven to be really valuable, particularly if you need to present your findings and proposed solution to senior stakeholders for sign-off.
HOW FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS CAN HELP
Getting expert help with your training needs analysis
Further Communications works with HR managers and L&D leads across the UK to design and deliver communication skills training programmes that are built around exactly what the organisation needs. Every programme we develop begins with a proper research and design phase so that what we deliver addresses the actual skill gaps rather than a generic approximation of them.
If you have a sense that communication skills development is needed but are not yet sure where to start or what shape the solution should take, the most useful first step is a conversation with us. We love to have honest and open discussions about what you are seeing and solutions that will help.
If you are ready to have that initial conversation, get in touch directly and we will get back to you within one working day.
