From Star Performer to Struggling Manager: Rethinking Leadership Development

I first encountered the concept of The Peter Principle during a Sales Management course at a US Business School. It suggests that individuals get promoted based on their performance in their current role, rather than a likelihood to excel in their new one. It’s particularly true in management. The star individual contributor (IC) who excels at delivering results gets rewarded with a promotion to manage people. But being a great doer and a great leader require fundamentally different skill sets. This disconnect is where many well-meaning promotions start to go off course.

Despite the obvious mismatch, organisations continue to promote top ICs into management roles then leave them to get on with it. Why? Because it’s what we know. If management is viewed primarily as a retention tool; a way to reward loyalty, experience, or top performance; then once the manager is in their seat, the job is done. 

But promoting someone into a role that requires them to empower others, when they aren’t motivated or supported to do so, is a costly oversight. The damage reverberates across the organisation and through time. The good news is that changing this doesn’t mean getting rid of all current managers and starting over with a new brief. Most managers want to do a good job and can absolutely develop the skills that will allow them to do so if they’re given the right support. 

A recent study by Lattice and YouGov found that almost three quarters of managers feel they are not being supported in their role by leadership and HR. They’re overwhelmed. They want more data, clearer policies and much more help to develop their ‘core management skills.’ 

The Cost of Misplaced Managers

Gartner research, and let’s be honest, most of our own lived experience, confirms that when managers fail, the impact is catastrophic. Poor management affects everything from employee engagement and retention to productivity, creativity and goal achievement. Teams led by unmotivated and overwhelmed managers will eventually disengage. How could they not? 

Your immediate manager is your primary connection with the strategic direction of the business. It’s their perception of you that matters when it comes to job security and promotion prospects. It’s your manager whose support you want to be certain you have if you’re going to try anything new or share feedback. And it’s the quality of the interactions you have with your manager, above all else, that determines whether you see a future in this business.

And then there’s the toll on the individual manager themselves. Almost no one is a poor manager on purpose. Managers sit in the middle of their organisations. That means they are inevitably pulled in multiple directions. Torn between trying to do what’s right for their boss, their teams, internal and external stakeholders and themselves. Without support or space to address the challenges, it’s easy to plummet from overwhelmed to disillusioned to burnt out. 

No More Training

Training programmes, as Gartner highlights, often miss the mark by failing to address the underlying behavioural habits that lead to burnout and underperformance. More training is not the answer, in fact it could well be part of the overwhelm problem. We need to start thinking about how to develop managers from the ground up, focusing on coaching as a behavioural intervention, rather than piling on more technical courses. 

Managers represent the voice of the company to their direct reports and the voice of employees to senior leadership. They are the link between strategy and execution. If we have growth targets or any kind of ambition, we simply can’t afford a weak link here. 

What skills do we really need our managers to be developing?

• The ability to ask great questions and listen actively?

• The ability to step back, zoom out and think strategically?

• The ability to surface all voices and receive feedback without judgement?

• The ability to delegate with confidence and empower their teams to experiment?

• The ability to amplify individual strengths and channel them towards a shared vision?

This is certainly not exhaustive, but all of these can be developed through coaching programmes. Coaching creates valuable space, a necessary break from back-to-back meetings, to experience new ways of thinking in a safe, objective and non-judgemental environment. When managers experience being generously listened to by someone who truly believes they have the capacity to solve their own toughest challenges, it's hard not to bring that mindset back to their teams. They begin to take pleasure in delegating and empowering their team, making space to reflect regularly on how they engage, and embracing feedback in all directions. 

The Case for Coach-Like Managers

With coaching, together with an organisation that supports it, most people can grow into great managers, learning to lead effectively and adopt a coach-like mindset for their teams in the process. Research shows that coach-like managers drive the best organisational outcomes across the board. 

The best managers were often solid ICs, but they don’t have to have been superstars. They understand that their role isn’t to outshine their team but to bring out the best in them. They shift their focus from individual success to collective achievement, zooming out when necessary and zooming in when needed. 

Critically, effective managers understand that there’s no static playbook for leadership today. Things are changing. Fast. What worked before won’t necessarily guide us forward and we all need to develop critical thinking, self-reflection and adaptability to confidently face the challenges ahead. 

Reflection: A Call to Action

The data is compelling, but data alone doesn’t lead to change. Reflection, new thinking and supported action do. 

Some questions to consider:

For Managers:

• How am I feeling right now in my role as a manager?

• How much of my time do I spend on the ‘management and leadership’ part of my role versus the technical ‘doing’? How much would I like it to be?

• Am I clear on what’s expected of me as a manager? From my manager? From my team?

• Am I recognised and rewarded based on how engaged my team are as well as how we perform? Do I have access to the right data to measure this?

• How can I connect my approach to people management with goal achievement in the short, medium, and long term?
  

For Senior Leaders, HR and Talent Leaders:

• Do we actively hire managers based on their aptitude for leadership rather than their past technical performance?

• Do we measure and reward our managers for both their leadership capabilities and their team’s objective attainment?

• Have we critically evaluated how we view and value the role of the people manager in our organisation?

• Do we have both quantitative and qualitative data to understand the impact of our people managers?

• Do we know why people leave our business? Do we know why they stay? How do these answers connect to our approach to management?

• How might we leverage our people managers to improve overall business performance?

• What are employees saying about our management and leadership? What are they not saying?