accidental managers — Organizer The Edge

How many leaders at your company really drive results? Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning recently posed this question in a survey of L&D/HR professionals and functional leaders. Their answers were dismaying. Only 53% of respondents said their organization’s leaders are very effective.

That’s a clarion call to reimagine leadership development. And I agree with the Harvard report about what the starting point should be: Leadership today means more than having the right skills. It requires new and deeper capacities. This, in turn, means a big shift in how we think about development.

Let’s explore why this shift is so crucial and how leadership development programs must evolve.

The Rising Pressure On Today’s Leaders

If you’ve been in the professional world for at least a decade, you’ve experienced seismic changes in what organizations expect from leaders. DDI’s "Global Leadership Forecast 2025" sums up the situation well: "Leaders must be agile—able to navigate rapid change, pivot strategies, and guide their teams through it—plus foster growth, drive innovation, and build genuine human connection. And they must do this while delivering business results."

That’s a lot of pressure. We can see the effects of this pressure in how leaders are doing (as the Harvard survey proves), and in how they’re feeling, with stress and burnout on the rise.

In my own work, I’ve found that organizations are aware of this leadership crisis and know that they must address it. But the ways leadership development must change are much bigger than you might realize.

If this resonates with what you’re seeing inside your organization, grab 30 minutes with us to talk through solutions.

Why Many Leaders Are Unprepared

Many leaders didn’t start their careers seeking the roles they now hold. Instead, they’re what I call "accidental managers." They became leaders based on the organization’s needs, not based on their own training or ambitions. But even professionals who did intend to move into leadership now find that they’re ill-equipped for today’s demands.

Right now, you might be thinking something like this: "Ah, so we should offer more leadership development!" But more training alone won’t solve this problem.

Yes, some organizations do need more development. But almost all organizations need a different approach to leadership development that addresses what the role of a leader really looks like today.

Development For A Complex Profession

So just how different are we talking? The Harvard report makes the case that we must now think about leadership as a profession, with all the complexity of fields like law and medicine. If that’s true (and I believe it is), effective leadership requires more than the occasional workshop about giving feedback or resolving conflict.

Instead, the report argues that leaders "need to build capacities as well as skills." Think of it this way. The skills a leader uses change over time. For example, six years ago, we didn’t know how important it would be for leaders to know how to manage hybrid teams. But the capacities—things like navigating complexity or pivoting based on new information—that underlie skills are more consistent.

The Harvard report effectively explains the difference between skills by using an example from sports. Soccer great Lionel Messi has skills like passing and free-kicking. His capacities—endurance, balance, agility—allow him to execute those skills.

Putting It All Into Practice

How can you develop your own "Lionel Messis"? Here’s what I’ve learned from implementing my company’s tech-based approach to building capacities at our client organizations.

• Focus on key capacities. Keeping pace with rapid technology changes is on everyone’s mind right now. But don’t let those concerns take over your development programs. Yes, your leaders need AI skills. But they also need the capacities that will help your organization optimize AI—things like big-picture thinking and the ability to coach others to succeed with AI.

• Emphasize learning in the flow of work. Capacity building happens when leaders put themselves to the test through real experiences. I’m not saying cancel all your offsites or conference trips. Just make sure that there are also ways your leaders can learn something new and then immediately see what happens when they put it into practice. In the Harvard survey, 45% of respondents said they plan to use more on-the-job learning through projects this year.

• Follow action with reflection. This works hand in hand with learning in the flow of work. After your leaders try something new, their learning will deepen when they discuss how it went with someone they trust, whether that’s their manager, a mentor, a coach or their cohort in a peer learning program.

Moving Forward

No matter what field your company is in, the demands you face will keep evolving. And your approach to leadership development must evolve right alongside them. We don’t know what’s next, but we do know what capacities allow us to weather any challenge. Organizations that invest in these capacities will be best positioned for whatever the future brings.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Forbes.

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A question for you, managers: Do you want to do this job? Or are you an accidental manager?

In a recent survey, Gartner found that one in five managers “would prefer not being people managers, given a choice.”

Since I’m an executive coach and learning platform creator, you might expect me to declare that these unhappy managers just need more training and leadership development.

However, it’s not that simple.

Yes, additional development can help managers who don’t really want to be in that role. Some might even come to embrace being a manager. But others simply should not be managers.

So how did we get so many accidental managers? And what can your organization do to ensure that employees who move into management actually want to make the leap and are prepared for it?

Rise of the Accidental Manager

You might wonder how 20% of managers have ended up in roles they don’t want. Based on my work with companies across a variety of industries, I believe many of them are accidental managers: They were promoted based on organizational needs, not because of their own desire or readiness for management.

Other unhappy managers seek these roles but quickly realize they aren’t prepared. Then, once faced with the often overwhelming demands of the job, they find themselves treading water with no time to catch up on their development. Is it any surprise that people want to escape jobs like this?

Opting Out Is a Win, Too

As I thought about Gartner’s findings, I realized we already have a solution: opening up leadership development to more employees earlier in their careers. I’m already a big proponent of this strategy. But Gartner has given us more evidence that it’s an idea whose time has come.

Expanding access to development fills leadership pipelines and, over time, can even diversify your senior leadership. However, leadership development training can also help employees realize they don’t want to be managers before they end up leading a team. If an employee decides they don’t want to move “up the ladder,” that’s just as much of a win as an overlooked employee realizing they have leadership potential.

My thinking is in line with Gartner’s. They recommend that companies “encourage aspiring managers to self-discover if management is right for them by exposing them to the toughest parts of the role early.” When managers have the space to self-discover their fit for the role, they’re more than twice as likely to feel up to the demands of their job, Gartner reports.

Training Doesn’t Go to Waste

Some would argue that it’s useless to provide leadership development training to employees who don’t eventually become managers. But this investment does not go to waste.

That’s because power and influence are not necessarily tied to job title. I bet you can quickly name the “informal leaders” in your team or organization. They’re not officially managers, but they hold great credibility because they’ve been at your company a long time, or they’re phenomenally good at their jobs, or they seem to know everyone. Even if they didn’t want a managerial title, they’re still doing a lot of leading—whether they realize it or not. Investing in these employees can pay off just as much as investing in your managers with titles.

Also, consider the human and financial toll of an ineffective manager. When a manager is disengaged, so is their team. Retention suffers because employees feel less committed to the company. A bad boss can even affect employees’ mental health. If worse comes to worse and you need to replace the manager, that could cost your company from 1.25 to 4 times the manager’s salary.

Companies flourish when all employees are empowered to contribute to their full potential, whether that means being a manager or not. By offering leadership development opportunities earlier and more broadly, you can create a culture of self-awareness and intentional career growth throughout your organization.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

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Beyond Skill-Building: Leadership Development Must Focus On Capacities

20% of managers want out. This is how to handle the rise of the accidental manager.