ABP Consulting is a French management-training and coaching firm delivering professional development programmes in Switzerland.https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en-CHhttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/de-collegue-a-manager/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/de-collegue-a-manager/Promoted within their own team, a new manager keeps the same colleagues and loses almost everything else. The most common mistakes, and what helps through the first months.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTOn Friday, Thomas had lunch with his colleagues and discussed the latest reorganisation with them. On Monday, he is their manager. Nobody has changed, and everything has. At lunch, conversations stop when he arrives. A former partner in crime asks him, half laughing, whether he is going to “keep turning a blind eye” to his late arrivals. Thomas has not made a single decision yet. He is already in a new position. ## What changes without being announced The appointment changes three things at once. The manager now has access to information they cannot share. They will have to assess people they were close to. And their own manager expects them to carry decisions they may have been criticising the week before. None of this is said explicitly, and that is precisely the problem: everyone interprets the change in their own way. ## Talking about the transition rather than putting up with it The first useful step is a one-to-one with each team member in the first few weeks. The point is not to announce a programme, but to name what is changing: “I am now your manager, that changes some things between us, and I would rather we talked about it.” These conversations are also a chance to ask each person what works, what should change and what they expect from the new manager. They provide a baseline to refer back to later, when less popular decisions have to be made. ## The three most common mistakes **Carrying on doing the team's work.** It is reassuring, since it is what you know how to do. But every task taken back is a responsibility taken away from someone, and less time for the manager's role. **Pulling people up before clarifying.** Criticising a late arrival or a behaviour that the old way of working tolerated feels unfair. You first need to say what is expected from now on, and only then enforce it. **Trying to stay liked by everyone.** A new manager who avoids every unpopular decision quickly loses the respect they hoped to keep. These situations are part of [The manager-leader toolkit](/en/formations/management/outils-du-manager-leader/). ## Not forgetting your own line manager The transition is not only played out with the team. The new manager also has to understand what their own manager really expects, negotiate room for manoeuvre and know how to escalate difficulties without appearing overwhelmed. It is a learning curve in its own right, which we cover in [The manager-leader toolkit](/en/formations/management/outils-du-manager-leader/). Finally, new managers gain a great deal from exchanging with peers going through the same stage. Professional co-development offers that setting: each person brings a real situation, and the group helps them work through it.managementpremier-postemanagementleadershiptransitionhttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/decider-au-consensus/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/decider-au-consensus/Consensus is what makes Swiss decisions solid, and sometimes slow. What separates a consultation that strengthens a decision from a discussion that postpones it indefinitely.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTA department head wants to rethink how files are shared out among her six team members. She has a precise idea, but she knows that a new organisation announced without discussion will not hold. So she opens the subject in a meeting. Everyone has a view, and the objections are many and relevant. They agree to come back to it. Three meetings later, they are still coming back to it. This is neither ill will nor a lack of authority. It is a consultation that is missing a framework. ## Why consensus matters so much The culture of shared decision-making is not a cliché. Swiss public life rests on concordance and on the consultation procedure, in which a draft is submitted to the cantons, parties and organisations concerned before it is adopted. Many companies work along the same lines: a decision gains legitimacy because those it affects have been able to have their say. That logic has real strength. Objections surface early, the decision is better informed and, above all, it is applied without underground resistance. A manager who bypasses it gains a few weeks and often loses the team's commitment. ## Consensus does not mean unanimity The most common misunderstanding is believing that a consensual decision has to satisfy everyone. It does not. Consensus guarantees that serious objections have been heard and taken into account, not that everyone got what they wanted. As long as that point stays implicit, the discussion cannot stop: every unsatisfied objection restarts the debate. So before opening the consultation, three things need to be said: - **the exact question** being consulted on, and what is not up for discussion; - **the deadline**, after which views are no longer gathered; - **who decides**, and on what criterion. It is this framing that turns an open discussion into a shared decision. It is also part of what we work on when [defining a team vision](/en/formations/management/leviers-de-motivation-non-financiers/): a common direction does not stop one person from deciding. ## Bringing objections out at the right time A consultation that only gathers the views voiced out loud in a meeting is incomplete. In a team with several languages, several levels of hierarchy and different temperaments, the most useful reservations are often the ones nobody expresses in front of everyone. Three practices change the outcome: sending the question in writing a few days before the meeting, having small groups work and report back a shared position, and asking “what could make this solution fail?” rather than “do you agree?”. These are meeting facilitation techniques, but they determine the quality of the consultation itself. ## Closing, then applying Once the deadline has passed, the decision must be made, written down and assigned to someone. Written down, because everyone must be able to check what was decided. Assigned, because a decision that belongs “to the meeting” belongs to nobody, and nobody will defend it when it is challenged. This is especially true during a [reorganisation](/en/formations/management/leviers-de-motivation-non-financiers/), when the team needs to know who to turn to when the new organisation shows its limits. Time spent consulting is not lost. It is recovered at the implementation stage, provided the consultation had a beginning, an end and an owner.swiss-businessconsensusdecisionmanagementleadershiphttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/disc-ou-enneagramme/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/disc-ou-enneagramme/The two tools are often presented as interchangeable. They are not: one describes what you can observe in a meeting, the other what drives each person to act.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAn executive committee decides to invest in self-awareness. One member came across DISC at a previous employer and recommends it. Another attended a course on the Enneagram and found it “far deeper”. The discussion turns into personal preference, and in the end the choice goes to whoever spoke last. Yet the two tools are easy to tell apart, as long as you know what each one measures. ## What DISC describes [DISC](/en/glossaire/#disc) is concerned with behaviour. It describes how a person acts and communicates in a work setting: the pace at which they decide, their relationship to detail, their need to connect before getting down to business, how they react to pressure. These preferences group into four broad tendencies. Its main strength is that it is observable. You can recognise a colleague's preferences in a meeting and adjust how you present an idea to them. That is why DISC is quick to learn and can be used the next day, as in our course [DISC and Driving Forces](/en/formations/communication/disc-et-moteurs-motivationnels/). ## What the Enneagram describes The Enneagram is concerned with motivation. It describes nine types, each organised around a core need and a fear, which explain why a person acts the way they do. Two colleagues can behave in exactly the same way — decisive, impatient with detail — for opposite reasons: one wants to succeed, the other wants to avoid being controlled. They look alike in a meeting and respond to management in completely different ways. That is what the Enneagram makes visible, and what DISC does not show. ## Choosing according to the problem The right question is not “which is the best tool?” but “what is the team's problem?”. **If the problem is friction** — laborious meetings, repeated misunderstandings, colleagues who “don't get each other” — start with DISC. Most friction comes down to different communication styles. **If the problem runs deeper** — persistent tensions despite good intentions, unexplained loss of motivation, recurring conflicts — the Enneagram offers an insight that behaviour alone does not provide. It requires more time and trust, as in [Know yourself to communicate and assert yourself better](/en/formations/communication/connaissance-de-soi-et-affirmation/). ## The mistake to avoid The main risk is not choosing the wrong tool. It is turning a profile into a label: “that's normal, he's a red”, “she's a type 6, she doubts everything”. At that point, the tool no longer helps people understand; it serves to excuse or to pigeonhole. A profile is a starting point for a conversation, never a conclusion. That is the thread running through [Know yourself to communicate and assert yourself better](/en/formations/communication/connaissance-de-soi-et-affirmation/), where the work focuses on the team's real situations rather than on the typologies themselves.communicationdiscenneagrammeconnaissance-de-soicommunicationhttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/encadrer-les-apprentis/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/encadrer-les-apprentis/Apprenticeship holds a central place in Switzerland, and it is often experienced employees, not trainers, who support apprentices day to day. What makes the difference.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTSofia, an experienced technician, learns in June that she will be supervising an apprentice from the start of the school year. She knows her job inside out. She has never had to explain it. By October, she notices with frustration that her apprentice “copies without understanding”, and wonders whether the problem lies with him or with her. It lies mainly with a role she was given without the means to carry it out. ## A pillar of the Swiss system Dual vocational training is one of the main education pathways in Switzerland. The apprentice divides their time between vocational school and the company, where they learn the trade in real situations. An essential part of their training therefore depends on the quality of the support they receive day to day. That support rarely comes from professional trainers. It comes from employees in post, chosen for their competence and reliability, who add the role to their usual work. ## Knowing how is not knowing how to teach An expert carries out a task fluently, without breaking down the steps they absorbed long ago. That is exactly what makes passing it on difficult: they no longer see what a beginner does not understand. Three habits make a profound difference to the quality of supervision: - **explaining why**, not just how: an apprentice who understands the reason for a step will be able to adapt it to a new situation; - **observing before correcting**: letting them do it, watching, then going back over what was done; - **giving precise and frequent feedback**, rather than an occasional review. Giving precise feedback and following someone's progress day to day are also at the heart of our course [The manager-leader toolkit](/en/formations/management/outils-du-manager-leader/). ## What does not replace the official qualification Training apprentices in a company requires an official trainer qualification, recognised within the vocational training system. No work on attitude replaces it: such work focuses on everyday supervision practice, which the official qualification necessarily covers in more general terms. ## A generation gap to get used to Finally, supervising an apprentice often brings together two generations with different attitudes to work, authority and communication. What seems obvious to one — punctuality, how to ask a question, how quickly to answer a message — is not necessarily obvious to the other. Naming these expectations from the start keeps them from turning into reproaches. It is one of the situations we work on in [Non-financial motivation levers and team coaching](/en/formations/management/leviers-de-motivation-non-financiers/).managementapprentissagetutorattransmissiongenerationshttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/feedback-franchise-et-retenue/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/feedback-franchise-et-retenue/The same comment can be received as harsh criticism by one person and as a vague compliment by another. The problem is not the dose of candour, it is the lack of facts.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTA project manager tells two team members, a week apart: “your report wasn't up to standard”. The first shrugs, asks what was missing and fixes it. The second is upset for several days and considers asking to change teams. The project manager concludes that the second is too sensitive. He has the diagnosis wrong. His sentence contained no facts, and each of them filled it with what they feared hearing. ## Two cultures of feedback Within the same team there are people for whom direct feedback is a mark of respect, and others for whom negative feedback is delivered with care, even in private and in stages. These differences come from upbringing, previous employers, working language and temperament, far more than from geographical origin. The manager who looks for the “right average tone” almost always fails: too direct for some, too wrapped up for others. ## Facts rather than tone The way out of this dilemma is to shift feedback from judgement to observation. Effective feedback has three elements: - **the fact**: what was said, done or produced, in a verifiable way; - **the effect**: the concrete consequence for the work, the client or the team; - **the expectation**: what is asked for next time. “The report didn't include the third-quarter figures, and the client had to ask for them again; for the next one, I'd like you to check the list before sending it” is understood the same way by a direct person and a reserved one. There is nothing to interpret. That is the method we work on in [Self-awareness and positive communication](/en/formations/communication/connaissance-de-soi-et-communication-positive/). ## Not softening everything The opposite temptation is to water the message down until it bothers no one. Negative feedback wrapped in two compliments and a conditional phrase is often not perceived as feedback at all. The person leaves reassured, and the problem comes back. Being respectful does not mean being vague. It means talking about the work and not the person, in private, and at a time when the feedback is still useful. ## When feedback turns sour Sometimes feedback, even well phrased, sets off an open conflict. That is often the sign of an older tension that the feedback has merely brought to the surface. In that case, insisting on the original fact is no longer enough: the relationship itself has to be addressed, which is a matter of conflict management. Some profiles make the exercise especially delicate, whether they contest everything or shut down at the slightest comment. We address these situations in [Self-awareness and positive communication](/en/formations/communication/connaissance-de-soi-et-communication-positive/).communicationfeedbackcommunicationmanagementconflitshttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/frontaliers-et-residents/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/frontaliers-et-residents/In a team that mixes cross-border commuters and residents, tensions rarely concern salaries. They concern hours, remote work and what each person believes the other gets.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTOne Monday morning, a team leader receives two almost identical messages. The first comes from a team member who lives in Geneva: he finds it unfair that his cross-border colleagues “always leave earlier”. The second comes from a colleague who lives on the other side of the border: she finds it unfair that residents “get more remote work”. Both are partly right, and both are wrong about the essential point: neither really knows what the other gets, or why. ## Genuinely different constraints A cross-border commuter and a resident do not live the same working day. Commuting, queues at border crossings, public transport timetables and family constraints on either side of the border all weigh on how work is organised. Remote work in particular does not have the same consequences: for a cross-border commuter, it is governed by tax and social security rules between Switzerland and the country of residence, and those rules change regularly. The manager does not need to master this law. They do, however, need to know it exists, and never to promise an arrangement without having checked with HR what is possible. ## What creates a sense of unfairness Experience shows that tensions rarely arise from real inequality. They arise from three situations: - **individual arrangements** granted as things come up, without being explained to the rest of the team; - **rules known only to some**, which the others discover through the grapevine; - **meetings scheduled without regard to commuting**, which always force the same people to rush or apologise. Each of these situations produces the same thing: a comparison, made on the basis of incomplete information. ## Making the rules visible The answer is not to create two regimes, one for residents and another for cross-border commuters. It is to define common criteria — the needs of the role, the presence the team requires, legal constraints — and to make them public. When a difference in treatment remains, it must be explainable in one sentence. “Your colleague can't work remotely more often because of the rules that apply to his situation as a cross-border commuter” is understood. “It's an arrangement between us” fuels suspicion for months. The same principles apply to a team that works partly remotely. ## Organising for everyone Finally, a large part of the problem is solved in the calendar. Team meetings held in the middle of the day, group moments that do not require staying late, and important information given in writing rather than at the coffee machine mechanically reduce the feeling of being left out. A mixed team does not need its differences erased. It needs to know that the same criteria apply to everyone, and that recognition does not depend on where you sleep at night. This last point ties in with [non-financial motivation levers](/en/formations/management/leviers-de-motivation-non-financiers/), which often count for more than the benefits themselves.swiss-businessfrontaliersequitemanagementteletravailhttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/langue-de-formation-en-suisse/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/langue-de-formation-en-suisse/The reflex is to choose the language everyone understands. The right criterion is different: a course works when participants can argue, not just follow.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTA company in the canton of Vaud wants to train its twelve team leaders. Eight are French speakers, two German speakers, and two work mainly in English. HR proposes what seems the fairest solution: a session in English, which everyone understands. After half a day, the verdict is clear. Everyone is following. Almost nobody is debating. ## Understanding is not enough A management course is not about listening to a presentation. The essential part happens in the role-plays: conducting a corrective conversation, answering an objection, restating a disagreement without making it worse. These exercises require speaking quickly, with nuance, while others watch. In a language you understand well but speak less, those moments become costly. Participants simplify what they wanted to say, avoid the exposed exercises, or leave the floor to those who are at ease. The course takes place, but not for everyone. ## The right criterion: being able to disagree To choose the language of a session, the useful question is not “which language does everyone understand?” but “in which language could each person contradict the trainer?”. If the answer differs between participants, it needs to be taken into account rather than aiming for the average. In practice, there are three cases: - **a homogeneous group**: the language is self-evident; - **a mixed group where English really is the working language**: a session in English works well; - **a mixed group with no common working language**: two sessions are better than one. ## What we offer, and what we do not ABP Consulting delivers its courses in **French, English and Spanish**. This site is also published in German so that German-speaking teams can understand what we offer, but we do not deliver sessions in German, and we would rather say so here than let it be discovered when you get in touch. For a German-speaking team used to working in English, a session in English is a real option. For a team that only uses it occasionally, we will say so frankly at our first conversation. ## Adapting the format to the language Language also influences the choice of programme. Courses that centre heavily on spoken practice and role-plays require real ease in the language of the session. [The manager-leader toolkit](/en/formations/management/outils-du-manager-leader/) copes better with a group of mixed language levels, because part of the work is done in writing and in small groups. Finally, [Team coaching](/en/formations/coaching/coaching-d-equipe/) can deliberately bring together colleagues who speak different languages: in that case, the question of a common language becomes a subject of the work in its own right.swiss-businessformationmultilinguismelangueshttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/motiver-quand-le-salaire-ne-suffit-plus/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/motiver-quand-le-salaire-ne-suffit-plus/In a market where salaries are already high, money retains people poorly and motivates only briefly. People leave for other reasons, and most depend directly on the manager.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAn experienced engineer hands in her notice. Her manager, taken by surprise, gets management to agree a generous counter-offer. She politely turns it down. Her new employer hardly pays more; it is simply giving her the project she had been asking for for two years. The scene is commonplace, and it sums up the problem well: money cannot make up for what was missing for years. ## When salary no longer separates employers In a market where salaries are high and skilled people are in demand, a competitor can almost always offer as much, or a little more. Pay remains essential — nobody stays long at a company that pays well below the market — but it is no longer enough to set one employer apart from another. A pay rise also has a short-lived effect. After a few months it becomes the new baseline, and the question of motivation arises again. ## Why people really leave When you ask those who leave a company, the reasons they give come up with regularity: their relationship with their manager, a lack of prospects, the feeling that their work goes unnoticed, too little autonomy. Almost none of them is a matter of budget. That is good news for the manager: they control most of these levers. It is also a responsibility, because departures can no longer be put down to salary competition alone. ## Four levers within the manager's reach **Autonomy.** Letting someone choose how to reach an objective is one of the most powerful drivers, provided the objective, the limits and the milestones are clear. Autonomy without a framework feels like being abandoned. **Recognition.** It works when it is precise and prompt: naming what was done well, shortly after noticing it, is worth more than a general thank-you at the end of the year. **Prospects.** People need to be able to picture what comes next: new responsibilities, projects, skills to acquire. That is the natural purpose of [annual reviews](/en/formations/management/outils-du-manager-leader/), provided they are not reduced to an appraisal. **The quality of the relationship.** Regular one-to-one conversations, in which the manager listens as much as they talk, do more for retention than any benefits programme. These levers are at the heart of our course [Non-financial motivation levers](/en/formations/management/leviers-de-motivation-non-financiers/). ## Knowing where you stand One difficulty remains: a manager rarely has a reliable picture of how their team perceives their management. People seldom say, especially when everything seems to be going well. 360-degree feedback gathers that perception in a structured way, before it is expressed in the form of a resignation letter.managementmotivationfidelisationmanagementreconnaissancehttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/romands-et-alemaniques/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/romands-et-alemaniques/Between Romands and Swiss Germans, the first obstacle is not each side's supposed character, but the language the meeting is held in, and what it takes from those less fluent in it.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTA project meeting brings together four people from Lausanne and three from Zurich. It is held in French, out of courtesy to the French speakers and because the project manager is from Geneva. The Zurich colleagues follow, answer when asked, and the next day send a long email in German that calls half the decisions into question. The French speakers see it as a lack of candour. The German speakers simply waited until they could express themselves in a language in which they felt precise. ## Language before mentality This kind of scene is readily explained by differences in character between the regions. That is rarely the right track. The first difference is linguistic, and it is subtler than it looks. In German-speaking Switzerland, the everyday spoken language is Swiss German, in its regional variants, while writing is done in Standard German. Many French speakers learned Standard German at school; very few understand the dialect easily. Conversely, the French a German speaker has learned is often enough to follow a meeting, much less so to counter a well-built argument. So the language of a meeting does not only decide who understands. It decides who can object. ## Choosing the language consciously No solution is perfect, but three options work, provided they are chosen rather than drifted into: - **one language per channel**: spoken exchanges in one language, writing in the other, which gives everyone a moment in which they are at ease; - **alternating**, by meeting or by topic, announced in advance; - **English as neutral ground**, which only works if nobody finds themselves in their third language facing colleagues in their first. In every case, short written minutes sent the same day recover most of what was lost in the spoken exchange. Meeting facilitation techniques take on particular importance here. ## Beware of regional grids Generalisations — Swiss Germans more direct and more formal, French speakers more diplomatic — contain some observation. They become harmful as soon as they are applied to a person. An engineer from Basel can be far more indirect than a saleswoman from Vaud. It is better to work on each person's actual preferences. [DISC](/en/glossaire/#disc) provides a shared vocabulary for this, which we use in [DISC and Driving Forces](/en/formations/communication/disc-et-moteurs-motivationnels/). ## Coordinating without shared authority These teams are often cross-functional: members report to different managers, at different sites. The language difficulty then adds to the lack of a reporting line, and every misunderstanding costs more to put right. That is the territory of cross-functional management, where you learn to secure commitment without being able to impose it. A bilingual team is not a problem team. It is a team whose working rules cannot stay implicit.swiss-businessmultilinguismereunionscommunicationequipes-multisiteshttps://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/vendre-en-suisse/https://www.abp-consulting.ch/en/blog/vendre-en-suisse/A buyer who has not said no has not yet said yes. In B2B, decisions are often made collectively, on the basis of evidence, and pushy follow-ups cost more than they bring in.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTAfter a promising first meeting, a salesperson sends his offer to an industrial SME. The technical director was enthusiastic. Two weeks go by without a reply. He follows up. Then follows up again, offering a discount “valid until the end of the month”. The client eventually replies, politely: the proposal is being reviewed, and the sudden discount has mainly raised questions about the original price. ## A decision that is rarely individual In many companies, a significant purchase is not decided by the person you met at the first meeting. It goes through a technical manager, a finance manager, sometimes senior management, and each examines the offer against their own criteria. This process takes time, and that time is not a sign of lack of interest. It is how long several people need to reach a common position. Trying to short-circuit it often means losing the trust of the person who was championing the project internally. ## Mapping who decides The first question to ask is not “how do I convince the person in front of me?” but “who else needs to be convinced, and of what?”. The technical director wants a reliable solution. The finance manager wants a controlled, predictable cost. Senior management wants to limit risk. A single pitch does not answer these different expectations. You need to help your contact defend the project to those you will never meet, for example with a clear, costed summary that is easy to pass on. That is the whole principle of [consultative selling](/en/formations/commercial/vente-conseil/): starting from the client's real need rather than from your own product. ## Reliability as an argument In a long cycle, every exchange is evidence. A quote sent on the promised date, accurate figures and a precise answer to a technical question build credibility more than a brilliant presentation does. Conversely, an approximation or a broken commitment weighs heavily, because the buyer reads it as a clue to what the relationship will be like after signing. This expectation is especially strong in high-end client relationships, where the client is also paying for consistency of service. ## Defending your margin Then comes the negotiation. The last-minute discount is the most common mistake: it does not shorten the decision and it weakens the perceived value of the offer. A concession should never be free; it is traded for a commitment. That still requires the value to have been established before price is discussed. It is the subject of our course [The keys to selling and commercial negotiation](/en/formations/commercial/vente-conseil/).commercialventeb2bnegociationrelation-client