Two years on, still growing: how one induction session became an ongoing people development partnership
Sector: Commercial Real Estate Services delivered: Delegate like a Productivity Ninja · The Way of the Productivity Ninja · Struggle · The Manager Role Partnership since: July 2023
At a glance
| Participant feedback | Results |
|---|---|
| 98% | rated The Manager Role sessions 4 or 5 out of 5 |
| 100% | recommended CBRE’s 2024 workshop programme |
| 8+ | sessions delivered across 4 programmes since 2023 |
Why CBRE came to us
CBRE didn’t come to Think Productive with a single problem to solve. The relationship started through Joanna Coben-Scott, Head of Learning & Talent, who we’d worked with extensively at Clyde & Co, and who moved to CBRE and knew first-hand what our work could do. She wanted to bring that same impact to her new organisation.
It started small: one session, Delegate like a Productivity Ninja, for a new cohort of Executive Directors in July 2023.
It landed well. But what happened next is the real story.
Staying the course, even when the timing wasn’t guaranteed
As 2024 approached, training budgets across the industry were under pressure, and further investment was far from guaranteed. Plenty of organisations would have shelved the conversation.
Joanna didn’t. She kept the conversation alive, kept us in the 2024 budget planning, and by January had secured commitment to four The Way of the Productivity Ninja keynotes across the year.
Building momentum
That commitment became the foundation for something much bigger.
Across 2024, CBRE ran four The Way of the Productivity Ninja sessions, then added two Struggle keynotes in September and October, bringing Grace Marshall’s work on resilience and adversity into the room alongside productivity.
The results were consistent across every session delivered that year:
- 100% of participants would recommend the workshops
- 100% found the facilitator engaging and informative
- 100% felt the content was directly relevant to their career development
It also showed up in what people were willing to say out loud. In the Struggle keynotes, we asked participants to share their struggles anonymously. The responses, overwork, work-life balance, health, finances, weren’t abstract concepts from a slide. They were real, and people trusted the room enough to name them.
“This is the best training I’ve ever received. There is so much psychological background on how we work and what’s obstructing our productivity and potential, and it’s so often underrated. The knowledge I’ve gained will definitely change my work style and my approach to work and life.”
CBRE kept building on this through 2025, running two more The Way of the Productivity Ninja sessions and two more Struggle keynotes between February and June.
From company-wide keynotes to targeted manager development
From there, the relationship evolved again, moving from company-wide keynotes into The Manager Role, a more targeted programme for people leading teams day to day.
Since September 2025, CBRE has run The Manager Role across multiple cohorts. From the feedback we’ve collected, 98% of participants rated the session 4 or 5 out of 5.
Participants consistently point to the same shifts: moving from avoiding difficult conversations to having them “not nice but kind,” becoming proactive instead of reactive under pressure, and building the trust to genuinely delegate rather than just hand off tasks.
“Learning and implementing the coaching style, and having more informal feedback sessions to build trust to delegate.” — Olivia Newport, CBRE
“I’m able to be proactive in planning how to manage a situation before it happens, rather than reacting when I’m already in the middle of it.” — Murray Scott, CBRE
Where the partnership stands now
What started as one induction session in July 2023 is now, two years on, a sustained programme spanning keynotes, resilience training and manager development, still growing.
It’s a genuine example of what happens when an organisation treats training as an ongoing investment in how people work, not a one-off event.
What this means for you
CBRE’s story isn’t really about one team’s manager training. It’s about what happens when an organisation stops treating people development as a single event and starts treating it as an ongoing investment, one that compounds over time.
If your own training feels like a series of one-off sessions rather than a connected programme, that’s usually a sign there’s a much bigger opportunity sitting untapped.
Want to talk about what an ongoing partnership could look like for your team? Get in touch.