In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the challenge of developing effective managers has never been more critical. LEAP Leadership’s recent webinar, “How to Develop High-Performing Managers,” brought together industry experts to address this pressing need. The session, hosted by John Raftery and featuring insights from Tricia Cunningham (LEAP’s founding partner), Coleman Collins (founder of Collins & McNicholas), and Julie Carroll (Learning and Development Manager at Supermacs), explored practical solutions for organizations struggling with management effectiveness.

The webinar opened with a sobering statistic that frames the entire discussion: poor management costs organizations globally approximately $8.8 trillion annually in lost productivity. As Tricia Cunningham noted, “Surely with everything that’s going on and the instability, there are ways that we can find within our organizations that we can take a look at what are the controllables and what are we doing to support that controllable.”

John Raftery highlighted an emerging framework for management competency, introducing “the five Cs” that modern managers need: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and cultural awareness. These skills become even more crucial in an era where artificial intelligence threatens to disrupt traditional knowledge work, making human management capabilities more valuable than ever.

The discussion began by identifying seven key indicators of poor management performance:

Significantly, Cunningham pointed out that “all of those seven signs that we’re looking at… all of those are things that an individual can actually address.” However, she emphasized that while individuals bear responsibility for improvement, “there really is a responsibility in the organization as well to support the individual.”

The webinar identified four critical ways organizations contribute to poor management performance:

Organizations often implement recruitment processes that become outdated and fail to adapt to changing role requirements. As the accompanying eBook notes, “The hardest worker doesn’t necessarily make the best manager. Too often, organisations promote technical stars into management without assessing their potential to lead others effectively.”

Cunningham shared a common refrain heard in training sessions: “I was basically just landed in the role and basically you’re flying it. You know what you’re doing… a lot of effort goes into maybe the selection. But we don’t really think about what happens when they join.”

Organizations may have developed counterproductive norms, such as reluctance to give feedback or avoiding difficult conversations. These implicit behaviors, while not explicitly stated, can significantly hinder management effectiveness.

Many organizations fail to clearly define what good management looks like within their specific context, leaving managers without clear performance expectations.

The panel outlined a comprehensive approach to developing high-performing managers:

The solution begins with better hiring practices. Organizations need to move beyond traditional CV reviews and incorporate tools like psychometric assessments to create comprehensive profiles of ideal candidates. This involves defining 4-5 key accountability statements that clearly outline what managers are responsible for, including priorities and time allocation.

New managers require systematic onboarding and ongoing development. This includes protected time for management activities, regular feedback, and professional development opportunities focused specifically on management skills rather than just technical expertise.

Organizations must examine and address cultural barriers to effective management. This involves making values explicit and actionable rather than leaving them as wall decorations. As Cunningham explained, “Organizations sometimes make the mistakes of the values and they come up with 10 or 12 statements and they look fantastic… But if they’re eight or 10, how many of them am I going to remember?”

Coleman Collins emphasized HR’s strategic importance: “If the performance management system is not working well, I think it’s incumbent on HR to step up and ensure that it does… this comes back to the whole issue of stepping up and being a member of the senior team.”

He stressed that HR must move beyond viewing performance management as a once-yearly exercise: “Performance management is something that happens every day of the working week.” HR professionals must champion the process, model difficult conversations, and ensure managers understand the importance of ongoing performance discussions.

Collins also highlighted HR’s role in organizational values, particularly in challenging times: “We have a very good perspective lately on how HR is seen in big corporations… organisations will struggle to attract people and retain people if they sell out on their value so easily.”

Julie Carroll from Supermacs identified people skills as the most critical capability for future managers: “People skills and the ability to talk to each other is probably at the top of our agenda… there isn’t anything that’s ever in our view at least going to replace that ability to talk to your customer like they’re your the same as your employee like they’re your family member.”

This emphasis on human connection becomes even more crucial in hybrid working environments. As Collins noted, “The whole people management skills is even more important now because in this working from home model, our hybrid model that we have, you don’t you probably don’t have these. Water cooler moments… So the ability to have meaningful conversations whenever people are in the office becomes even more important.”

Carroll shared Supermacs’ approach to manager development: “We try and keep sessions as short as we can without being too short. So that managers aren’t trying to organize their time away from the store for a long period… it’s really up to the learning and development team and the area managers to work together with the store managers to ensure that we are keeping the focus.”

The organization leverages online learning platforms for baseline knowledge while supplementing with targeted in-person sessions and utilizing area managers as development partners.

The accompanying eBook emphasizes using the 70-20-10 learning model for management development:

This approach recognizes that “management skills develop primarily through application and reflection, not just formal training.”

Cunningham emphasized the importance of quantifying the cost of poor management: “What’s the cost of not investing in managers? HR’s responsibility as well to quantify that, giving really good hard facts and numbers around the cost of not doing so, whether that’s about turnover, whether that’s about lost productivity, whether that’s about morale within the organisation.”

Organizations should track metrics including team engagement, turnover rates, and productivity measures to demonstrate the ROI of management development investments.

The webinar concluded with Cunningham’s powerful analogy about prioritizing development even when busy. Referencing Mahatma Gandhi’s advice about meditation, she noted: “When we’re in the midst of it, it’s exactly the time that we need to be invested because we can’t see a way out of it unless we step back, unless we give them the tools to help us move.”

The key takeaway is that developing high-performing managers requires systematic effort across selection, support, and culture. As the panel demonstrated, organizations that invest in comprehensive management development see tangible results in engagement, retention, and performance. The challenge isn’t knowing what to do—it’s committing to consistent action and maintaining focus even when operational pressures mount.

Success in management development comes from recognizing that great managers aren’t born—they’re systematically developed through objective selection, structured support, and cultures that enable excellence to flourish.