The founder and CEO of MTD Training and Skillshub launches a six-part leadership system, supported by a new book, online courses and workshops, drawing on 25 years of experience developing managers across more than 9,000 organisations worldwide.
COVENTRY, UK. September 30th, 2026: Sean McPheat, leadership expert, author and founder and CEO of MTD Training and Skillshub, has announced the launch of UNLED®, a new leadership framework designed to help managers develop teams that can think independently, make decisions and deliver results without relying on their manager at every stage.
UNLED® is based on a straightforward principle that challenges conventional approaches to management: the goal of a manager should not be to become increasingly indispensable, but to create a team that can operate effectively with less day-to-day intervention. McPheat describes this as his leadership philosophy, with UNLED® providing a practical structure for putting it into practice.
Sean McPheat, the creator of the UNLED® framework said: “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.
“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 anymore, it’s the only way the job is doable.”
UNLED® provides managers with a structured, step-by-step approach to reducing their team’s dependence on them. The framework consists of six parts: Direction, Capability, Decision Ownership, Systems and Rituals, Removal, and the 10% Leadership Role.
The six elements are designed to work together as one system. The 10% Leadership Rule provides the foundation by creating protected time for leadership. Direction, Capability, Decision Ownership, and Systems and Rituals make up the core of the framework. Removal then becomes the outcome of putting those foundations in place, rather than something managers attempt at the outset.
“I was the person everything waited on at MTD Training,” Sean 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.”
The UNLED® product suite includes UNLED® the book, online courses, live virtual workshops led by the MTD Training team, in-house cohort training, and a YouTube series covering each part of the framework in depth.
Full details are available at www.unled.co.uk.
