You were great at your job, hitting targets and solving problems quickly. You knew the work better than anyone else.
As often happens, your skills and track record were recognized: You were promoted to management and handed a team.
But were you ever shown how to develop leadership in management?
Then suddenly, once you became a manager, everything that made you successful up to this point stopped being enough.
You're not alone. That's a gap in many organizations.
According to research by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), 82 percent of managers in the UK are “accidental managers” who had technical proficiency but little experience leading folks. Of these, 25 percent were promoted into senior leadership roles.
This is backed by research done by Gartner, which found 85 percent of new managers step into the role with no formal training in leadership. That’s not just a gap; it’s a systemic failure that explains why 60 percent of new managers struggle or fail within their first two years.
Poor management skills are linked to low workplace morale, lower productivity and toxic work cultures. Unsurprisingly, poor management makes it hard to retain top talent.
Years ago, Gallup estimated the cost of poor management in the US at between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion annually.
Why is it so hard to move from proficiency at the job to leading the people who do that work? Well, the role of manager has changed, but most managers haven’t been given leadership tools. The role you’ve stepped into isn’t about managing tasks; it’s about managing people.
Why the Manager’s Job Has Changed
Over the past two decades, the manager’s role has been reshaped by four waves of change.
First, we saw globalization expand teams across geographies and cultures. Then, digitization accelerated work speed and complexity around 2010. The agile movement of the mid-2010s flattened hierarchies and emphasized autonomy over control. Finally, the pandemic that started in 2020 normalized remote and hybrid work, proving that working onsite in close proximity isn’t always crucial for teams to be productive.
With the cumulative effect of these waves of change, leaders have had to move beyond the traditional model of management to remain effective.
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) outlines three fundamental shifts that redefine effective leadership in management and they really resonate with us at Padraig: a power shift, a skills shift and a structural shift.
Managers who fail to make these shifts don’t just fall behind—they struggle to retain, engage and develop their team members.
Shift 1: From “Me” to “We”
The first shift is a mindset shift.
Old belief: My team’s role is to make me successful.
New belief: My role is to make my team successful.
This might not sound like a big shift, but it’s quite significant when we’re exploring how to develop leadership in management.
Under the old belief system, managers were valued for controlling others. They were the decision-makers, the problem-solvers and the experts. Success was personal. Value was measured by how indispensable the manager was.
Now, under the new belief system, managers are valued for helping their team members perform well as they grow in confidence and gain new skills. Success is collective. You measure your value as a manager by how successful your team becomes without you in the room.
This shift in mindset changes everything:
- How you recognize effort: You recognize team contributions, not just outcomes.
- How you offer opportunities: You delegate assignments instead of hoarding them, making sure that you identify folks who will benefit from more responsibility.
- How you develop talent: You think about long-term capability and succession planning, not just short-term output.
This is where emotional intelligence becomes non-negotiable for managers. Self-awareness helps you understand when your ego might be getting in the way or how your personality might differ from the personalities of your team members. Empathy allows you to understand what different team members need to be successful. Social awareness helps you read team dynamics. You’re able to build psychological safety.
Pro tip: It’s possible to develop and expand emotional intelligence (also called EQ-i).
Shift 2: From Task Overseer to Performance Coach
This is the skills shift, which is where most managers struggle.
Old role: Assign tasks, oversee the work and evaluate performance.
New role: Provide clarity, context and support to team members, coach for potential and track outcomes.
Instead of being the person with all the answers, you’re the one who helps others find them.
This is where using a COACH Approach to leadership is helpful.
C—Clarify the goal.
O—Observe what’s happening.
A—Ask powerful questions.
C—Challenge thinking.
H—Help them move forward.
When you use a COACH Approach to leadership, you create space for your team members to think, learn and grow.
Pro tip: If you’re giving answers more than you’re asking questions, you’re still putting more work into managing tasks than leading people.
Using coaching techniques with employees builds independence, strengthens decision-making and increases accountability. This is where real leadership lives.
We also know that companies that have a coaching culture win big—bigger than those with directive management styles.
Shift 3: From Static to Fluid
The final shift is a structural shift.
Old environment: Stable teams with fixed roles, physical offices and annual reviews.
New environment: Fluid teams with evolving roles, distributed work/hybrid flexibility and continuous feedback.
Work is no longer tethered to rigidly defined roles and confined to brick-and-mortar office space.
Your team members might shift from project to project. Roles evolve, no longer bound by job descriptions. Feedback has to be timely in an ever-changing market—and interactions happen virtually as well as in person.
The new challenge for managers is to learn how to lead effectively even when you don’t see the work happening.
These strategies can be helpful:
- Create intentional connection points with the folks on your team. One-to-one meetings are vital because without them, alignment and trust erode rapidly.
- Adopt a coaching mindset for career development. Think beyond the traditional corporate ladder style career path. Watch for evolving opportunities for folks to grow and develop skills.
- Focus on outcomes, not activity. Time spent in the office is no longer the metric for success. There are different ways to evaluate whether you have a high-performing team.
- Move from annual reviews to ongoing conversations. Strive to provide continuous, informal and forward-looking feedback.
This isn’t an easy shift because it requires more intention, communication and trust. But when you move from static to fluid, you create space for more innovation and much higher performance.
Make the Shifts Strategically
To be clear, you don’t need to master all three shifts at once. When considering how to develop leadership in management, remember that it’s a process that takes time.
Start where it matters most for you right now:
- Are you still carrying too much of the workload?
Start with the mindset shift. - Does your team rely on you for all (or most!) of the answers?
Focus on the skills shift. - Is your work environment chaotic or disconnected?
Address the structural shift.
Remember that leadership development follows a progression: Leading Self → Leading Others → Leading Organizations. You’re in the leading others stage when you’re managing a team—and that requires a different set of skills than what got you promoted.
The good news is that you can learn these leadership skills. You can build them through deliberate practice and structured leadership development like one-to-one coaching or live leadership training courses. Effective leaders continually add new skills to their toolkits.
In the end, leadership isn’t about managing tasks more efficiently. It’s about creating the conditions where your team members can succeed.
COACH'S QUESTIONS
If your primary measure of success is your team’s growth and not your own output, how will that change your day-to-day decisions? Are there times when you give answers that you could ask questions to help your team members think for themselves? How can you create connection and clarity in a work environment where you can’t rely on proximity?
