Leadership Expert Sean McPheat Launches UNLED®

The founder and CEO of MTD Training and Skillshub releases the UNLED® book, online courses and workshops, built on 25 years of developing managers in more than 9,000 organisations worldwide.

Sean McPheat, leadership authority, author and founder and CEO of MTD Training and Skillshub, today announced the launch of UNLED®, a leadership framework created to help managers build teams that can think, decide and deliver without depending on them for everything.

UNLED® is built on a simple idea that runs against most traditional leadership advice: a manager’s job is not to be needed more, but to build a team that needs them less. McPheat calls this his leadership philosophy, and UNLED® is the practical system that makes it work day to day.

The problem UNLED® solves

Most managers are stretched thin because everything runs through them. Decisions wait for their approval, work gets checked and redone, and their own priorities get pushed to evenings and weekends. Left unchecked, that pattern slows the whole team down, burns the manager out and stops good people from growing, until the best of them leave.

Sean McPheat, the creator of the UNLED® framework says “Layers of management have been stripped out and the managers who are left are running bigger teams with less support. You can’t give twelve people the same hand holding you used to give four. Something has to give, and usually it’s the manager’s own health and the team’s development. Building a team that doesn’t need you for everything isn’t a nice to have any more, it’s the only way the job is doable. “

The six parts of the UNLED® framework

UNLED® gives managers a structured, step by step way to reduce their team’s reliance on them. It has six parts:

1. Direction: making sure the team knows what matters most and what good looks like, so they’re not guessing or coming back for answers.
2. Capability: building the judgement and confidence people need to handle problems on their own.
3. Decision Ownership: making sure decisions get made by the right people at the right level, so work keeps moving.
4. Systems and Rituals: putting the structure and working rhythms in place that keep everything running without chasing, reminding or supervising.
5. Removal: the point where the manager can step back because the team no longer needs them in the middle of everything.
6. The 10% Leadership Rule: a model created by McPheat in which managers protect roughly 10% of their week, around four hours, for the leadership work that makes the team less reliant on them.
   

The framework works as a single system. The 10% Leadership Rule sits at the base, providing the protected time. Direction, Capability, Decision Ownership, and Systems and Rituals form the core work. Removal sits at the top as the result of getting the foundations right, not as a first step.

“I was the person everything waited on at MTD Training,” McPheat added. “Every big opportunity came through me, and the business could only move as fast as I could. UNLED® came out of fixing that in my own companies.”

What’s launching

The UNLED® product suite includes:

• UNLED®, the book: a practical guide to the full framework, with exercises, reflection questions and real stories from McPheat’s own businesses and other industries. Available on Amazon.
• Online courses for managers who want to work through the framework at their own pace.
• Live virtual workshops led by the MTD Training team.
• In-house cohort training for organisations that want to roll UNLED® out across their management population.
• A YouTube series covering each part of the framework in depth.
  

Full details are available at https://www.unled.co.uk.

Written by Sean McPheat

CEO of MTD Training and Amazon bestselling author. Sean writes about leadership, business, and personal growth, drawing on 20+ years of experience helping over 9,000 companies improve performance.

| |