People Manager Training: What Leaders See and What They Miss

Managing people has always required judgment. Today, that judgment is being tested in more situations, with more visibility and less room for inconsistency.

People managers are expected to deliver business results, engage employees, interpret company policies, support development and respond to individual needs. They must create flexibility without losing accountability and show empathy without avoiding difficult decisions.

The expectations have expanded faster than many organizations’ investment in people manager training.

At a recent Chief Learning Officer conference, we asked learning leaders how they viewed the state of people management inside their companies. Almost every participant described managing people as either more challenging than ever or a continuous learning curve their organization could not stay ahead of.

That response confirmed what we have observed through coaching: people managers are under pressure, but many have not been given the communication tools, decision frameworks or organizational clarity needed to manage that pressure well.

Our interest in people leaders and managers continues. As does our interest in people manager training.

So much so that it was our introductory topic for a recent Chief Learning Officer conference in Boston. As we opened the discussion, we wanted to know if the top learning leaders had the same observations inside their companies as we’ve had as coaches all year.

We asked them to choose the statement below that best represented their companies:

Managing people has never been a more challenging role in our company.
Managing people is one of the strongest skills we have in our company.
Managing people has become a continuous learning curve that we can’t stay ahead of in our company.

Only one attendee felt the second statement fit their company. Everyone else felt statement one or three applied. So, we went a little further.

We asked them to choose the statement below that best represented their people leaders:

Our people leaders are set in their ways and frustrated by a broader set of expectations from us and our employees.
Our people leaders are inexperienced and haven’t developed the skills needed to manage how employees want to work and what they need to feel valued.
Our people leaders are exhausted by trying to stay aligned to demands in our business and expectations of our employees.

The start of our discussion on people manager training confirmed what we’ve observed for the last few years. People leaders are under pressure and don’t have the right tools or skills to manage all the expectations coming their way.

And while we expected the responses to the opening questions, the discussion on people manager training surprised us.

Even for those it’s a top pain point, supporting people leaders is not a top priority. Many of these leaders talked about it as an employee problem more than a manager’s challenge. And it validated our biggest observation which is that people leaders are begging for support, and no one has an easy answer. In fact, the pressure on people managers is getting worse.

Gallup measured the changes that people managers said they navigated last year:

64% said they were given additional job responsibilities, not promotions.
51% said they were restructuring teams.
42% said they were managing “budget cuts,” which often has a resource implication.

And the HR teams, for the first time ever, have the highest turnover of any functional area within a company. Which is what makes people manager training so important.

Why is this such a gap?

Because companies reset a work model, and a rigor, without a manual. Senior leaders are pushing harder for results, and they don’t have a view of how that gets translated or implemented three levels below.

Remote work has done a lot of good things from reducing costs to expanding talent pools. But it takes more effort in coordination, teamwork and culture. Managers bear much of the responsibility of overcoming those challenges. We didn’t see it in a strong labor market because people just left if they didn’t like their manager. But job hopping has slowed down, and disgruntled employees are staying. Soon, we’ll all feel the frustration inside companies.

Why is it so hard to manage?

Because we introduced so much flexibility during the pandemic that managers don’t have guardrails to put any sort of team expectation back in place. Companies thought flexibility was temporary; employees thought it was permanent. And there continues to be friction to find balance.

Employees say their needs are unmet. They aren’t getting opportunities for development, and managers aren’t delivering on their expectations. And many employees have big expectations. Some are not realistic, but they still create challenging conversations. And companies have a limited view of how their managers handle them.

And why aren’t people managers catching on?

That’s the hardest part. Most people managers would say they are sitting in the middle of a perfect storm…increased demand from the company and higher expectations from employees. They’re trying! They’ve asked us for help handling conversations about:

Limitless vacation and employees who’ve taken advantage of it.
Requests for a sabbatical in the second year of employment.
Employees who don’t like traffic, don’t like mornings, need fitness breaks, quiet rooms, and space away from a difficult colleague.
Employees who go around managers if they don’t get the approval they want.
Employees who don’t fly, who don’t turn on virtual cameras, who don’t answer cell phones, who don’t always seem to be working.

It’s harder than it’s ever been when it comes to people manager training. Not because employees don’t have needs and expectations. But because the rules have shifted, and the interpretation of those new rules sits squarely with the people managers.

As our conversations continued at the conference, we heard more about gaps within companies and different situations managers were dealing with.

It’s handling conversations, demands and feedback. It’s knowing when to be firm and when to be lenient. And it’s being confident enough to pause and think before you respond.

It put us into coaching overdrive sharing ideas to:

Reset teams to working as a team, not just as individuals
Coach a manager to feel confident and stay settled in a challenging conversation
Communicate a difference in a promotion and a development opportunity
See, listen, and understand before you solve
Set the difference in a general expectation and a specific request
Adopt a conversation model to uncover the WHY underneath a skill or behavior gap
Define parameters so exceptions don’t evolve into patterns

And while the spontaneous conversations were lively, we can do more than sketch an idea on a napkin! We’ve embraced this challenge, and we’ve developed workshops focused on people manager communication training to help them evolve, expand and reinvent their skills. We meet them right in the middle of their experiences and responsibilities, and we coach a new way of communicating options and decisions. And I hope we’ve built confidence to help managers move through the perfect storm.

If your people managers could use a little support, we’d like to learn more about their challenges when it comes to people manager training. And as we continue to talk to companies about building a better manager toolkit, we’re considering different formats which may include an open enrollment program that brings managers from different companies together. Let us know your interest by joining us on a call to explore the topic further.

People Manager Training: Why People Management Has Become More Complex

People managers sit at the point where business priorities become employee experiences, which is what makes people manager training so important.

Senior leaders may establish a new performance expectation, workplace policy or organizational structure. But managers are often responsible for explaining what it means, answering questions and applying it to individual situations when it comes to people manager training.

That work becomes difficult when the policy is broad but the employee’s circumstances are specific.

A manager may need to respond to a request for greater flexibility while maintaining coverage for the team. They may have to explain why an employee is not ready for promotion while preserving motivation and trust. They may need to address performance concerns with someone who believes the expectations were never clear.

These are not simply policy questions. They are communication challenges that require judgment, confidence and awareness of how the message will be received.

People Manager Training: People Managers Are Translating Competing Expectations

Most people managers are balancing expectations from two directions.

The organization wants accountability, productivity and consistent performance. Employees want flexibility, development, recognition and a work experience that reflects their individual needs.

Neither side is inherently unreasonable. The challenge comes when expectations conflict or have not been clearly defined.

Managers are left to interpret where flexibility ends, when an exception is appropriate and how one decision may influence expectations across the team. If senior leadership has not provided clear guardrails, different managers may make very different decisions.

That inconsistency can create confusion and perceptions of unfairness.

Strong people manager training helps managers work within organizational expectations while communicating decisions in a way that employees can understand. It does not eliminate every disagreement, but it makes the process clearer and more credible.

People Manager Training: What Organizations Often Miss About Manager Development

Organizations frequently promote people based on functional expertise. A strong analyst becomes an analytics manager. A successful engineer begins leading engineers. A top-performing salesperson becomes responsible for a sales team.

Technical credibility may earn the opportunity, but it does not automatically prepare someone to manage people.

New managers need to learn how to:

Set expectations that employees can apply
Give feedback before a problem becomes more serious
Distinguish coaching from directing
Communicate decisions they did not personally make
Address requests that cannot be approved
Recognize when an exception may create a broader precedent
Adapt their approach without becoming inconsistent
Listen to understand rather than listening only to respond

Without these skills, managers often rely on instinct, imitate a former manager or avoid the conversation until the issue becomes harder to resolve.

People Manager Training: The Communication Skills Every People Manager Needs

Setting Clear Expectations

Employees need to understand what success looks like, how it will be measured and which priorities matter most. A manager may believe expectations are clear because they were mentioned once. Employees may hear them as suggestions unless the manager explains the required outcome.

Giving Useful Feedback

Effective feedback connects a specific behavior to its impact. It helps the employee understand what should continue or change without turning the conversation into a judgment about personality.

Leading Difficult Conversations

A difficult conversation becomes harder when a manager enters it defensively or delays it too long. Preparation helps managers organize the central message, anticipate the employee’s response and remain steady without becoming rigid.

Listening Before Solving

Managers often move quickly into solutions. But an employee may be raising a different concern than the one the manager assumes. Listening creates the context needed to respond appropriately.

Explaining Decisions and Boundaries

A manager cannot approve every request. But a clear explanation can help an employee understand the decision, the factors involved and what options may still be available.

People Manager Training: Why Policies Alone Do Not Prepare Managers

Policies establish organizational boundaries. They do not script every conversation.

A policy may explain eligibility for remote work, vacation or promotion. The manager still has to discuss the policy with an employee whose expectations may differ from the decision.

That is where communication skill becomes essential.

Managers need enough confidence to be clear and enough curiosity to understand the employee’s perspective. They must distinguish between listening to a request and agreeing to it. They should be able to acknowledge disappointment without reversing a sound decision simply to reduce discomfort.

People manager training should give leaders a way to think through these conversations, not just a list of preferred phrases.

People Manager Training: What Effective People Manager Training Should Include

The strongest manager development connects directly to the situations managers face.

Instead of relying only on general leadership concepts, people manager training should allow managers to practice:

Setting expectations for individuals and teams
Giving positive and corrective feedback
Responding to requests for exceptions
Discussing performance and development
Communicating promotion decisions
Managing conflict between employees
Leading through organizational change
Balancing empathy with accountability
Adjusting communication for different employee needs
Following through after a difficult conversation

Practice matters because people manager training will build confidence by using the skills, receiving feedback and trying the conversation again.

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