Roughly 44% of new managers receive any kind of leadership training.
That means over half are handed authority without instruction, expectations without clarity, and accountability without tools. You get promoted, shake some hands, and start winging it. No manual. No prep. Just a calendar full of meetings and a vague sense that you're supposed to “drive results” and “manage people.”
It would be one thing if this were a temporary gap, a moment between getting the role and getting the support. But for many, that moment never ends. The first week as a manager blends into the first quarter, and then the first year, and by then the learning curve has calcified into habits. Some are useful. Some not.
We don’t talk enough about what this does to people. Not just the managers who feel like they’re failing in private but the teams under them, who have to interpret inconsistent expectations, navigate reactive priorities, and pretend everyone is fine. Eventually the problem becomes cultural. Teams start bracing for churn. Work gets political. Middle management becomes the punchline.
It’s easy to blame the individual. “Well, they should speak up. Ask for support. Read a book.” But that assumes the system was built to listen. It wasn’t.
Most organizations don’t even notice a new manager’s struggle until something breaks. A project, a resignation, a pulse survey dipped one point too far. Then someone revives the idea of a mentorship program or suggests a one-off workshop. Then forgets.
The irony is: most new managers want to do a good job. They know they don’t know everything. They feel the gaps. But they’re also trying to save face, meet deadlines, keep the team stable, and decode whether every passive-aggressive message is actually a problem or just their anxiety acting up.
Meanwhile, leadership development gets treated like a reward for tenure instead of a requirement for effectiveness. A luxury, not a necessity. By the time someone finally gets formal support, it’s often a couple years too late, and after bad habits have formed, relationships have frayed, and trust (up or down) has eroded.
So the cycle continues. Promote, neglect, blame, repeat.
It’s not a training issue. It’s a design flaw.
And everyone pays for it.