Better managers, one hour at a time.
Develop your managers’ skills while helping young people explore careers. Shape turns each microplacement transcript into personalised feedback and a clear development focus.
Real practice. Feedback from their own words.
Give managers a practical way to work on coaching and communication, while helping a young person explore their future.
| A training course | Shape | |
|---|---|---|
| What they work on | Whatever the course covers | One skill they pick, like listening or asking better questions |
| How they practise | Exercises and role-play | A real conversation with a young person |
| Spaced repetition | Normally one off | Revisit their focus across three microplacements |
| What they take away | Notes from the day | One thing to try next time with expert resources |
| Time out of work | Often a day or more | One hour at a time |
| Who else gains | No one | A young person gets a real career conversation |
Courses vary. Shape works alongside the training you already run.
The hour is the practice. Shape is the coach.
They choose what to work on
Hosts pick the skills they want to improve from nine proven behaviours.
The young person leads the hour
A one-to-one microplacement. Your host listens, answers and guides. We set it up. No prep.
We look at the shape of the hour
Who spoke, what was asked, how feedback landed, how it ended.
They get their coaching
What went well on their chosen skills and one thing to try next time.
They practise it next hour
Each hour builds on the last. Your managers get better at the conversations that matter.
We see what happened, minute by minute.
Hosts see who was talking, minute by minute, and every moment they used the skill they chose.
The shape of your hour
Who was talking, minute by minute
Look at your hour through
Listen. Ask. Give.
Listen
Giving them room, and showing you heard.
Speaking dynamics
How long you talk before they get a turn.
Sounds like stopping after a minute or so to check it’s landing.
Pauses of three seconds or more led to better outcomes in negotiations, but only when the senior person held the silence. In your hour, that’s you.
Source: MIT Sloan
Empathy
Noticing how they feel, and saying it.
Sounds like “I’m guessing that knocked your confidence a bit.”
Naming what someone seems to feel is in every major coaching and counselling standard. It makes it safe for them to keep talking honestly.
Source: ICF Core Competencies (2021)
Affirmations
Telling them exactly what they did well.
Sounds like “Sharp question. Most people only ask about salary.”
Across 607 feedback results, general praise barely moved performance. Recognition works when it’s specific to what they actually did.
Source: Kluger & DeNisi (1996)
Ask
Questions that get them thinking.
Open questioning
Questions they can’t answer with yes or no.
Sounds like “What did you enjoy about it?” not “Did you enjoy it?”
Open questions are one of the four core skills in motivational interviewing, a method tested in hundreds of trials. They get the young person thinking out loud.
Source: Moyers et al., MITI 4.2.1
Autonomy support
Letting them find their own answer.
Sounds like “What would you try first?”
People stay more motivated when the choice feels like theirs. It’s one of the best-established ideas in motivation research, across schools, workplaces and clinics.
Source: Deci & Ryan, self-determination theory (1985; 2017)
Give
Something they couldn’t get alone.
Self-disclosure
Sharing your wrong turns, not just the highlights.
Sounds like “I failed my first accountancy exam.”
Across 53 studies, sharing your own experience usually helped. It helped most when it showed you’d been somewhere similar and it hadn’t gone perfectly.
Career translation
Linking what they enjoy to jobs they’ve never heard of.
Sounds like “You fix your mates’ phones? That’s what our IT team does.”
In a UK study of 13,070 children, 61% didn’t know anyone who did the job they wanted. You might be the first person they’ve met who does yours.
Constructive specificity
Feedback they can act on.
Sounds like “You lit up talking about your Saturday job. Lead with that.”
In 607 feedback results from 131 studies, over 38% made performance worse. Feedback that pointed to the fix nearly doubled the effect.
Source: Kluger & DeNisi (1996)
Future framing
Helping them choose one thing to do next.
Sounds like “Out of everything today, what’s the one thing you’ll do this week?”
Across 94 studies, people who planned when, where and how they’d act reached their goals far more often. It works best when they make the plan, not you.
Source: Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006)
Better hosts. Better hours.
“It looks as though I did a lot of the talking, which I feel that I did and wanted to reflect on, and that's something I will strive to improve next time.”
Senior lecturer“I really like the constructive feedback it gave me, for example the 'One thing for next time' has given me good food for thought and I will definitely adopt this going forward.”
Finance manager“…there is huge value for myself and other hosts to practice and improve our mentoring skills and get personal feedback in the process…”
Design leader“Love this insight. Very helpful”
Founder and CEODevelopment needs room to be honest.
Keep the feedback close to the person and the evidence close to the conversation.
Private to the host.
Individual feedback is for reflection. It is not a ranking of your employees or a league table for managers.
About the conversation.
Shape describes what happened in that microplacement. It does not assign a personality score or claim to measure someone’s overall leadership ability.
One thing, not a list.
Each report ends with one thing to try next time. Hosts leave with a next step, not a stack of criticism.
Before you make room in the diary.
Do we need to have hosted microplacements before?
No. Shape is open to employers taking part for the first time. Agree who will participate, the three-microplacement package and the delivery arrangements with Not Impossible. Your people get a clear introduction to the format before their first microplacement.
Is this mentoring?
A microplacement is a bounded, one-hour conversation. There is no expectation of an ongoing mentoring relationship. Shape helps the host reflect on that hour.
Do hosts receive scores?
No. Shape gives specific feedback and one thing to try next time. It describes the conversation, not the human.
Does an employer see each person’s feedback?
No. Individual Shape feedback stays private to the host. Any employer summary uses aggregated participation and development information, with small groups protected.
What happens to the transcript?
Shape uses the microplacement transcript to prepare the feedback. Not Impossible does not keep its own raw transcript archive for Shape. The purpose, access arrangements and data handling are made clear to participants before they take part.
Can we start with a small team?
Yes. Start with a small team and grow from there. Dates, matching capacity and the number of cycles are agreed with us.
Want to see a Shape report?
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