There’s really not a lot that’s innate about achieving business outcomes through other people. Based on working globally with thousands of managers and leaders for decades, I’m convinced that achieving work outcomes through humans is a craft that can be mastered. Evidence has been piling up in favor of continuous upskilling of managers, from first-time team leads to organization-wide leaders.
And yet, a 2024 study of 3,000 managers and 3,000 employees found that 84% of managers received no formal training in leading others since becoming a manager. Almost half (47%) said they felt this lack of training contributed to lost productivity.
Curiously, my organization recently found that a quarter of managers don’t seem to want to learn anything at all, based on a study of 1,200 managers enrolled in manager training programs worldwide over the past three years.
What’s going on?
Winging It Overnight
I don’t think we should blame managers at all. It’s the system around them. Here are my six reasons for why what I call "Overnight Leader Syndrome" persists:
1. Skills Undervalued
In my experience, the single biggest issue is that we signal that team leadership is an immaterial shift by promoting people without any training or skills assessment. We imply it can be done overnight and that skills aren’t required. And all too often, any training that exists is postponed when there are budget pressures, implying it isn’t a critical performance-related investment. Firms everywhere are choosing to rob themselves of productivity.
New managers themselves say they need specific help. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) published a white paper in 2014 listing the top three challenges reported by first-time managers as:
• Adjustment to people management/displaying authority
• Developing managerial and personal effectiveness
• Leading team achievement
CCL noted that many first-time managers feel “hopeless, overwhelmed, and unsupported from the start." Additionally, "No wonder 50% of managers are ineffective in organizations.”
2. Negative Role Models
There is often an abundance of negative role models. I've found experienced managers are even less likely to have had any training when they transitioned from individual contributor (IC) to manager, so they are more likely to think the shift is nothing to worry about. They might even roll their eyes at newbies asking for help.
3. Low Team Expectations
It’s hardly surprising that teams don’t know what great looks like. They know what bad looks like, but the gap between bad and great is vast. They therefore unwittingly conspire with unskilled managers by demanding too little and appreciating their modest efforts too much. They make unskilled managers feel like they have indeed “got this.”
4. Flawed Appraisals
Leadership effectiveness is not properly measured or, if it is, it’s not taken seriously as part of manager appraisals. Let’s be honest, it can’t be taken that seriously all the time because a lot of senior managers would be found wanting, so everyone gets a free pass. Instead, the logic used to promote someone from IC to manager tends to persist at every turn: It’s not about what you’re going to do, but what you have done.
5. Equating Leadership With Success
Despite many firms’ best efforts, leading others still seems to be the way to get more status and pay. I’ve coached hundreds of CEOs and senior leaders for a decade, and I know the vast majority in small to mid-sized businesses have had no leadership training. This is a huge problem given that two-thirds of employees are in small and medium-sized companies, according OECD data.
6. Ineffective Training
In my previous article, I elaborated on this point. In many cases, training programs are a waste of scarce resources, and this can put managers off the idea of engaging in their development via training.
When that really effective training does come along, managers are cynical based on prior bad experience.
The Way Forward
We know managers can massively affect employees’ health. We know they obviously affect careers. We know they can impact confidence and self-esteem. And yet, we let them muddle through overnight, wreaking havoc.
Here are five concrete ways to cure Overnight Leader Syndrome:
Deploy a leadership capacity assessment so aspiring managers can judge their fit and either step up or step away. For example, we measure the 6Cs: care, curiosity, connectivity, candor, coachability and change enablement. Ensure you have a solid alternate path for individual contributors.
Convince senior managers that they can be positive role models for upskilling, rather than negative ones. This is easy to say, but it requires courage and creativity. The finance function is often a place that’s receptive to ways in which scarce resources can generate a better return on investment. I’d start there.
Start telling team members what to demand and expect from their managers, so that managers are held accountable by direct reports as well as their leaders. Ahead of any learning and development initiative, brief the teams of participants on how they can leverage the investment in their leaders.
Measure what great leadership is in practice, for example, quality of goals and measures; goal achievement rates; quality of one-on-ones; levels of trust and psychological safety; and volume and ratio of praise to constructive feedback. Once you have your data set, link the data to leadership appraisals.
Create a mandatory "rite of passage" for managers, whereby they’re properly qualified at each stage of leadership. If leadership is a skill that boosts team performance, why would it be optional? Imagine a system of upskilling that combines self-learning, energizing peer-to-peer conversations, realistic simulations to facilitate practice, mentorship, authentic C-suite sponsorship and live classes when participants are ready to take full advantage.
This last step can create a virtuous performance-enhancing cycle. Training is great and a queue forms; the investment leads to proper measurement and appraisal of best practice; team members’ expectations are raised; senior managers see the results and become authentic proponents of training; and the supply of excellent leaders increases because a better path has been laid.
