Successfully leading a team can be challenging. There’s a delicate balance between keeping employees engaged and balancing company expectations while meeting targets. Add remote or hybrid employees to the mix and suddenly managing a high-performing team can feel daunting. This is especially true for those new to leadership without years of knowledge and experience to fall back on.
As industries evolve, so do the expectations placed on leaders. Leapsome’s 2024 Workforce Trends report shows that around 60% of managers feel overwhelmed at work. This is partly because they often don’t have the tools and resources they need to grow into a successful leader.
A Lack of Effective Training
To get ahead of these challenges, companies have begun prioritizing proper leadership training. Organizations that prioritize effective leadership training can experience:
- Enhanced productivity
- Clearer communication among team members
- Improved employee retention
- Better decision making
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Enhanced company culture
- More consistent project execution
- Heightened confidence in both the team and leader
- Improved financial performance
Even with this more intentional focus, there’s still a knowledge and experience gap. While many organizations are willing to invest in leadership training for higher-ups, front-line managers often need that training most.
That means the people who directly oversee the majority of the workforce are typically the most inexperienced managers in the organization. As the ones managing employees day-to-day, their performance and success has the potential to make a significant impact on their organization. Adequate training can give these managers the tools they need to succeed.
With some training in place, most companies still fail to properly train the leaders—both old and new—in their organization. In their “Better Managers” report conducted in 2023, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) discovered that 82% of new managers do not receive proper training. Even senior managers reported that they lacked formal leadership training.
Instead, leaders are often left to develop skills for themselves through trial and error. When doing so, the team is left with an unpredictable timeline for success, if they succeed at all. Managers left to their own devices have the potential to build bad habits that are hard to break later.
Poor Leadership’s Negative Impact
While employees can be excited by the prospect of advancing their career, most people don’t innately possess the skills to lead effectively. Unfortunately, the technical skills that made an employee good at their pre-management role don’t always transfer to a leadership position. Often, leading a team requires an entirely different set of skills.
The first two years of a new leader’s experience are crucial to their success. CEB Global discovered that up to 60% of new managers will fail within those two years, and their failure doesn’t just impact them. Their struggles can cascade through their organization, heavily affecting other employees and the organization’s overall culture.
Without experienced, knowledgeable, well-trained leaders, there are several areas where teams feel the strain:
- Low Morale
Employees who don’t receive enough support from their managers often feel less motivated to strive for excellence. In 2022, Gallup discovered that 70% of team engagement is directly linked to the support they receive from their manager. If they don’t feel that their work is meaningful or appreciated, they’ll likely feel more disengaged. - High Turnover
A LinkedIn workforce survey found that almost 70% of employees agreed they would leave their jobs if they had a bad manager. When managers fail to build strong connections with their teams, employees are more likely to seek out opportunities elsewhere. Whether they’re seeking acknowledgement or a sense of fulfillment, they won’t stick around if they feel their manager is a poor leader. - Missed Targets
Without an effective manager to help motivate them, support them, and keep them on-track, team members are more likely to miss targets. They need a leader who communicates clearly and stays engaged with their work without being overbearing or micromanaging. - Excuses & Shifting Blame
If employees are afraid of getting in trouble, they may find excuses for subpar work, sometimes even pinning the blame on their teammates. In some cases, poor leaders may even shift the blame away from themselves and onto their team, which severely undermines team cohesion. - Unresolved Team Conflict
In any work environment, conflict is natural. Turns out, 69% of managers are terrified to communicate with their employees in general. If leaders don’t have the tools to handle interpersonal conflicts head-on, team disagreements may fester, leading to an erosion of trust within the team and with the manager.
Unfortunately for both teams and leaders, this list of issues is not exhaustive. Teams lacking effective leadership can also deal with inconsistent application of company policy, lack of alignment with company objectives and values, lost revenue, and more.
What Makes Leadership Training Effective
Not all leadership programs are created equal. Unfortunately, one of the most difficult challenges is determining which programs are worth pursuing, and choosing one can feel like a leap of faith. Here are a few things to look for when considering a leadership training course.
Flexible Lessons
Every person carries their own unique set of skills, whether inherent or gained through experience. It’s possible—even likely—to have two managers at the same level in the same organization with completely different skillsets. It’s even more likely to have managers at different levels with varying experience and formal leadership training.
Truly effective leadership courses take key topics and meet managers where they are. They allow attendees to apply the lessons to their own leadership journey and experience, even if those journeys and experiences are very different. At its core, the pillars of effective leadership are the same.
Managers at all levels can benefit from ongoing training to hone their skills. The workforce and business environment are constantly changing, and old methods and practices aren’t always the most effective. Managers and leaders need new tools to rise to meet these challenges, requiring the best leaders to continue their growth and development.
Teaching With Intention
It’s possible that leaders have attended some type of training before, listened to a podcast, or maybe read a book on leadership. But jumping from one source to another to another is a common mistake that generally leads to greater confusion and frustration. Without coordinated efforts and complementary topics, many are left with a disjointed hodgepodge of generic leadership theories that don’t mesh well.
When training managers, it’s important to target specific skills to help them grow confidence in themselves and their leadership role. General advice like, “Communicate regularly with your team,” isn’t helpful to most leaders. What might be more helpful? A course about improving team-manager communications covering how to provide constructive feedback, establish a regular cadence of check-in meetings, and actively listen. Programs should cover specific, intentional, concrete topics to actually help leaders grow.
Actionable Learnings
As they say, practice makes progress. It’s one thing for a leader to read a book about time management and an entirely different beast to actually change how they manage their time and stick with it. It’s why we incorporate so many real-world applications into the Find Your Lead program. Offering participants the chance to practice their newly-learned skills will make it easier to apply their learnings in-the-moment.
Starts With the Self
A major fault of many leadership programs is they solely focus on the mechanics of how to manage a team. They tend to treat personal reflection as an afterthought; it’s something you spend five minutes doing after reading a chapter, versus making it the place we need to start. While that information is beneficial, it’s important to keep in mind that leaders set the precedent for team culture.
By focusing on how to master their communication, manage themselves, lead their team and truly embrace their role as a leader, they’ll have a strong foundation to build their leadership upon. Plus, humans tend to be somewhat “monkey see, monkey do.” If a team sees their leader prioritizing their growth and making positive changes, they may be more likely to follow suit.
Training Never Truly Ends
Just like any other skill, leadership training is an ongoing process. The best leaders never stop learning and striving to improve, both for themselves and for their teams. With so many different programs helping leaders develop different skills, finding the right program can make all the difference in an organization’s long-term health and success.
Overwhelmed and not sure where to start? Check out Find Your Lead, our program designed to help managers grow their own confidence as they find their leadership stride.
