Most organisations promote their best individual contributors into management and then leave them to figure it out alone.
You were brilliant at your job, so now you’re responsible for other people doing theirs. Congratulations, here’s your new title and a team who’s watching to see if you can actually lead them. Good luck.
Is it any wonder that 60% of new managers fail in their first two years?
The problem isn’t that people lack potential. It’s that we’ve created an impossible situation. We expect managers to magically acquire skills they’ve never been taught, navigate complex interpersonal dynamics they’ve never encountered, and do it all whilst still delivering their own work.
If you’re an HR leader watching your managers burn out, make avoidable mistakes, or lose good people because they don’t know how to lead effectively, you’re not alone. And more importantly, there’s a better way forward.
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In this article:
- The promotion that changes everything
- What 'manager struggle' actually looks like
- Why traditional training isn’t working
- What managers actually need
- A different approach: always-on leadership support
- The economics that actually work
- What leadership support looks like in practice
- Where to start your leadership support strategy
The promotion that changes everything
The transition from individual contributor to manager is one of the most significant career shifts anyone makes. Yet it’s also one of the least supported.
As an individual contributor, your success depends on your own skills and output. You control your results. You manage your time. You’re accountable primarily to yourself.
As a manager, everything changes. Your success depends on other people’s performance. You’re responsible for motivating, developing and supporting humans with their own priorities, problems and personalities. You have to give feedback, navigate conflicts, and somehow keep everyone engaged and productive.
These are completely different skill sets. Yet most organisations promote someone on Friday and expect them to be an effective manager by Monday. No transition period. No ongoing support. Just a LinkedIn title update and the assumption they’ll work it out.
They don’t always work out. Not without help.
What 'manager struggle' actually looks like
Manager burnout doesn’t announce itself with drama. It builds gradually until suddenly you’re facing a resignation or a formal complaint that could have been prevented months earlier.
Here’s what struggling managers look like in practice:
They avoid difficult conversations
Rather than addressing performance issues early, they hope problems will resolve themselves. Instead, small issues become expensive, time-consuming HR cases.
They default to their old role
When stressed, they retreat to doing the technical work themselves rather than leading the team. Their people don’t develop, they themselves stay overwhelmed, and nothing improves.
They lead by instinct, not insight
Without understanding their own leadership style or their team members’ personalities, they treat everyone the same way. What motivates one person frustrates another.
They wing critical moments
Performance reviews, difficult feedback, conflict resolution — these high-stakes situations get minimal preparation because there’s no time and no guidance.
They suffer in silence
They don’t want to admit they’re struggling because that feels like failure. So they carry the stress alone until either they burn out or their team does.
The cost to your business? According to Gallup, managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. When managers struggle, their entire team’s performance suffers. Productivity drops. Good people leave. Culture erodes.
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Why traditional training isn’t working
Most organisations recognise the problem and try to solve it with training. A two-day leadership course. A management fundamentals workshop.
These interventions aren’t bad. They’re just insufficient.
Here’s why traditional training fails:
It’s too generic
The content applies to “managers in general” rather than addressing your specific challenges with your actual team. You learn theoretical frameworks but struggle to apply them to real people.
It’s disconnected from reality
You attend the course, feel inspired, return to work and immediately face the same problems with no ongoing support. Within weeks, you’ve reverted to your old behaviours.
It’s a one-time event
Leadership isn’t a skill you acquire in a workshop and then possess forever. It’s an ongoing practice that requires continuous learning.
It doesn’t scale economically
Quality training is expensive. Training 200 managers becomes prohibitively expensive, so you either compromise on quality or only train senior leaders.
It can’t be there in the moment
You attend a feedback training session in March. In July, you’re preparing for a difficult conversation and can’t remember what you learned. The training materials are somewhere on the shared drive.
The result? Training becomes something you tick off on a development plan rather than something that genuinely transforms capability.
What managers actually need
If you ask struggling managers what would help, they say things like:
“I wish I could talk through this situation with someone who understands my team before I make it worse.”
“I need help preparing for this difficult conversation happening tomorrow, not next month when the training course runs.”
“I want to understand why this person reacts so differently from everyone else when I give them feedback.”
What managers need is support that’s:
Personalised
Based on their leadership style and their actual team members’ personalities, not generic best practices.
Immediate
Available when they’re preparing for tomorrow’s meeting, not when a course happens to be scheduled.
Ongoing
Present throughout their leadership journey, not just at promotion or annual training events.
Practical
Focused on specific situations they’re facing right now, not theoretical frameworks.
Private
A safe space to admit uncertainty and think through challenges without judgement.
Scalable
Accessible to every manager regardless of seniority or budget constraints.
Traditional solutions can’t deliver this combination. But AI-powered coaching can.
A different approach: always-on leadership support
Imagine if every manager in your organisation had access to expert coaching whenever they needed it. Not scheduled sessions weeks away. Not generic training content. But personalised, psychology-backed guidance available 24/7.
This is what AI-powered coaching platforms like MyTeamBuilder provide.
Every team member completes a short personality assessment that creates a detailed psychological profile. This reveals their communication preferences, motivations, working style and strengths. The AI coach understands not just the manager, but every person on their team.
When a manager faces a challenge, a difficult conversation, a performance review, a team conflict, they can immediately get tailored guidance based on the specific personalities involved.
Preparing for a performance review with someone who’s highly sensitive to criticism? The coach suggests specific approaches based on both your communication style and theirs.
Navigating conflict between two team members with different working styles? The coach explains what’s really happening beneath the surface and provides strategies for resolution.
Trying to motivate someone who seems disengaged? The coach draws on their personality profile to suggest what actually drives them.
The support is there at 9pm when you’re preparing for tomorrow’s difficult conversation. It’s there during your commute when you’re processing what happened in today’s meeting. It’s there whenever doubt creeps in.
The economics that actually work
Traditional coaching has always faced a fundamental constraint: human coaches can only work with so many people. Even with unlimited budget, you couldn’t provide one-to-one coaching to every manager.
AI coaching changes the economics completely.
The cost of providing expert coaching to five managers versus 500 managers is essentially the same. What was once reserved for senior executives becomes accessible to first-time team leaders.
Consider the numbers:
Traditional coaching might cost £150-300 per hour. If you provide just one session per month to 50 managers, that’s £90,000-180,000 annually. And those managers still don’t have support for the other 29 days.
AI-powered coaching provides unlimited support to unlimited managers at a fraction of that cost.
More importantly, the return on investment is compelling:
Reduced attrition
When managers feel supported, they create better environments. Their people stay longer. Given that replacing an employee costs 50-200% of salary, retaining even a handful of people pays for the investment many times over.
Faster development
Managers don’t spend years making avoidable mistakes. They develop competence more quickly.
Decreased HR escalations
Managers who can navigate difficult conversations early prevent situations from becoming formal HR cases.
Improved team performance
Research shows engaged teams are up to 20% more productive.
Protected wellbeing
Supported managers experience less stress and burnout.
What leadership support looks like in practice
Meet Sarah, a newly promoted team leader at a mid-sized tech company.
Six months ago, Sarah was the top-performing developer. Her manager left, and Sarah was promoted. Within three months, she was drowning. One team member seemed to interpret everything she said as criticism. Another ignored her requests. Team meetings felt unproductive. She was working evenings and weekends, exhausted and questioning whether she was cut out for management.
Her company had provided a two-day management course, which was helpful in principle but left her unsure how to apply the concepts to her actual team’s challenges.
Then HR introduced MyTeamBuilder.
Sarah’s team completed personality assessments. Suddenly, the behaviours that had confused her made sense. The team member she thought was being difficult? Highly analytical, needing more context before accepting decisions. The one who seemed to ignore her? Processing internally before responding.
With her AI coach, Sarah started preparing for one-to-ones differently. Before each conversation, she’d ask for guidance on how to approach that specific person.
Six months later, Sarah’s team engagement scores had improved by 30%. Productivity was up. She’d had zero attrition, whereas the previous year the team had lost three people. And crucially, Sarah felt confident rather than overwhelmed.
That’s what accessible, ongoing, personalised support actually delivers.
Where to start your leadership support strategy
You don’t need to transform your entire leadership development strategy overnight. Start with a cohort of managers who need support most.
New managers in their first year. They’re facing the steepest learning curve and will benefit most from immediate, ongoing guidance.
Managers of remote or hybrid teams. They face unique communication challenges.
Managers with struggling teams. High conflict, low engagement, or performance issues signal that the manager needs support.
Provide them with AI-powered coaching for six months. Track engagement, team performance, attrition and manager confidence. The data will make the business case for scaling.
The reality is simple: your managers are carrying responsibility they weren’t prepared for, navigating complexity they weren’t trained for, and doing it without the support they desperately need.
You can change that. Not with expensive programmes that don’t scale or one-off training that doesn’t stick. But with always-on, personalised support that meets managers where they are and helps them become the leaders their teams deserve.
Great managers aren’t born. They’re built, with insight, guidance and ongoing support. That’s exactly what MyTeamBuilder provides.
Ready to support your managers, properly?
Book a demo of MyTeamBuilder and discover how AI-powered coaching can transform your managers from struggling to confident, from overwhelmed to effective.