What are the biggest gaps you see in how companies develop first-time managers today?
In today’s world, one needs to understand that any promotion to a manager cadre is more than a reward for high performance; it is a shift in a career. The new managers either keep doing the work themselves, become bottlenecks, or go overboard and get into a command-and-control mode and eventually become the same individual contributors after wrecking a few young careers in their wake.
What are the one or two leadership capabilities that managers most often need to unlearn or relearn?
The first capability is communication. Many new managers must move from telling and solving to listening, asking better questions, making expectations explicit, and holding people accountable without damaging trust. The second capability managers need to unlearn is that their personal output alone matters. They need to multiply the contributions from others and not believe that they need to know all the answers!
How can organisations move beyond generic leadership programmes and create development experiences that actually change how managers lead?
The biggest gap in organisations is that there is more training than development. Training is easy. Development is not well understood. It is built around the actual moments managers face: a one-to-one with a disengaged employee, a coaching conversation, a ‘why a promotion did not happen’ conversation, or a team member who needs a stretch. The most effective experiences combine short learning inputs, practice, feedback, reflection, and manager-of-manager support.
If you had to redesign the way companies develop managers today, what is one thing you would stop doing and one thing you would start?
If I were redesigning manager development, I would begin a first-time manager training programme before anyone got promoted. I would start building a deliberate transition journey before, during, and after their move into management.
Organisations need enlightened leaders who nurture leadership along the way. Management is an art. Lastly, manager programmes must be led by leaders within the organisation. They can use facilitators, but they need to lead the conversations.
