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Defining great people management in elite sport

We partnered with a Premier League football club to create a shared standard for people leadership and future manager development.

Premier League Football Club: People Manager Capability​
Client Premier League Football Club
Region UK
Sector Sports
Offering Organisation Development & Culture
Themes
High-performance culture Leadership development Manager capability
Testimonial

The Challenge

A period of significant growth and transformation prompted the club to take a fresh look at the role of people managers in supporting future success. While examples of excellent people management existed across the organisation, approaches varied between teams, functions and sites, making it difficult to establish a consistent standard and employee experience.

Recognising manager capability as a critical enabler of performance and culture, the club wanted to define what great people management looks like and create a shared foundation for leadership development. Q5 was engaged to develop a values-led capability framework and a practical roadmap for embedding it across the organisation, helping to strengthen management capability and support the club’s long-term ambitions.

Our Approach

  • Reviewed key organisational documents, the organisational values and existing manager feedback data to help identify the capabilities most critical to supporting the club’s future ambitions. ​
  • Conducted executive stakeholder interviews and people manager focus groups across football, academy, and corporate functions to understand what effective people management looks like today and what will be required in the future. ​
  • Synthesised findings into a People Manager Capability Framework anchored in the organisational values, defining what great management looks like across the club.​
  • Translated the framework into practical capability descriptors, behavioural indicators and observable expectations, creating a consistent standard that managers can demonstrate and be assessed against.​
  • Developed a strategic roadmap outlining the future people manager capability journey, how this could be sequenced, and practical recommendations for embedding the framework across the club. This provided the incoming CPO with a clear blueprint for strengthening manager capability over time.

Key Outcomes

  • Established a club-wide People Manager Capability Framework aligned to the values.
  • Defined 10 core capability areas mapped to the pillars of the code, highlighting what great people management looks like in practice.
  • Translated the capabilities into observable day-to-day behaviours, creating a consistent standard for how managers show up across the club.
  • Produced a strategic roadmap for future capability assessment, manager development. and long-term framework embedding across key people processes.
  • Provided the incoming Chief People Officer with a clear blueprint for strengthening manager capability and supporting the club’s high-performance culture agenda.

What our clients say about us

One of the biggest things this work has given us is clarity. We've always known strong people management exists across the club, but Q5 have helped us define what good looks like consistently and how we can continue building capability from a common baseline moving forward.​

People & Talent, Head of Learning
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