At the CIPD Annual Conference, Matthew Maynell from the UK Cabinet Office shared the story of how the Civil Service built a learning and development (L&D) strategy and professional standards for line management. His presentation offered both a case study and a broader reflection on one of the most persistent challenges in organisational life: how to engage line managers and equip them to succeed.

The Persistent Problem: Promoting Without Preparing

Across sectors, the same pattern repeats itself. Individuals who perform well in technical or specialist roles are promoted into management — often without any formal preparation or training. Mayo began by asking the audience how many had become line managers without prior training; most hands went up.

The consequences are familiar. Line managers find themselves improvising leadership, teams experience inconsistency, and organisations lose coherence between their strategic intent and day-to-day practice. The Civil Service, with more than 100,000 line managers across a workforce of half a million, faced this problem at scale.

The Commission: Building Consistency Across a System

In 2022, the Civil Service Chief Operating Officer, the Chief People Officer and the Minister for the Cabinet Office commissioned a programme to improve line management across government. The goal was not to design another training course but to create systemic consistency: a shared understanding of what good line management looks like and how it is supported, developed, and rewarded.

The starting point was evidence. Drawing on research from academia, the Chartered Management Institute, the CIPD, and multiple public and private sector organisations, the team identified five core capabilities that define effective line management:

  1. Translating vision into action and purpose within teams.
  2. Managing change effectively and guiding teams through uncertainty.
  3. Building trust between employees and the organisation.
  4. Supporting wellbeing and role-modelling self-care.
  5. Developing others — and themselves — through continuous learning.

Each of these capabilities was validated through interviews with more than 300 high-performing line managers and consultation with staff, unions, and departmental HR leaders. The resulting standards were co-developed with KPMG, the CMI, and Coventry University and tested with over 1,500 civil servants before adoption.

Designing a Whole-System Approach

What makes this initiative noteworthy is its systemic scope. Matthew Maynell described a “whole-system approach” that embeds the standards into every part of the employment cycle: recruitment, promotion, performance management, and development.

Line management is no longer treated as a side activity but as a core competence linked to progression and recognition. Leaders are expected to role-model great management, hierarchies are being reviewed to ensure more effective spans of control, and communication campaigns reinforce the value of line management as a profession in its own right — achieving what Mayo called “parity of esteem” with leadership.

This holistic view matters. As Maynell noted, research consistently shows that good line management improves not only productivity but also wellbeing and organisational resilience. Poor line management, by contrast, undermines engagement and accelerates attrition. In his words, “You leave a manager, not an organisation.”

From Ad Hoc Learning to Strategy

A second strand of the initiative focused on L&D. Historically, the Civil Service offered more than a thousand separate management and leadership courses, making it difficult to navigate and measure impact. The new approach builds coherence through a skills taxonomy that links all learning to the defined line management standards.

Learning is now organised across four levels — awareness, working, practitioner, and expert — and mapped to twelve distinct management skills. The curriculum combines existing high-quality learning from across departments with new, evidence-based content to fill identified gaps. Evaluation is built into the design, using both qualitative (interviews, surveys, observation) and quantitative (pre- and post-assessment) methods.

The Civil Service is also tackling one of the most entrenched issues in management development: progression without preparation. A new programme, Achieving Your Potential, targets aspiring line managers, helping them understand the realities of the role before stepping into it. Further along the path, line managers can complete accredited development programmes at foundation, practitioner, and senior levels, culminating in an expert pathway for deputy directors accredited by the CMI.

Key Reflections and Lessons

Several insights from the session have wider resonance for any organisation seeking to professionalise line management:

  • Line management is not an HR function. It is part of every manager’s job, and expectations must be set accordingly. Standards, performance assessment, and development opportunities must reinforce this.
  • Culture matters as much as competence. A culture that values good management — where leaders recognise and reward it — is essential for sustainability.
  • Clarity precedes capability. Before designing learning, define what “good” looks like. Standards provide the foundation for coherence.
  • Evidence over fashion. Mayo’s insistence on grounding the work in research and testing it with thousands of employees contrasts sharply with the trend toward quick fixes in management development.
  • Line management is universal. As one participant noted during the discussion, “Line management is all the same — the issues are just driven by different engines.” The skills are transferable; what changes is the context.

Embedding the Change

When asked how to deal with managers who don’t role-model good behaviour, Maynell’s answer was pragmatic: set expectations and create space. “Line management is part of your job,” he said. “It’s not the add-on to your job.”

That deceptively simple statement captures the essence of the Civil Service approach: treating management not as an optional extra but as a craft, to be learned, practised, and refined — much like leadership itself.