Businesses need to invest in supporting managers as they are asked to do more than ever: Liz Howard

Surely, that should make us pause.

If managers have such a significant influence on engagement, performance, wellbeing and retention, can businesses really afford to leave leadership capability to chance?

For Yorkshire businesses navigating skills shortages, productivity pressures and recruitment and retention challenges, managers are being asked to do far more than manage performance. They are supporting wellbeing, navigating change, managing hybrid teams, having difficult conversations, developing talent and keeping people engaged.

And too often, we expect them to learn how to do all of that by simply cracking on and doing it.

I see it regularly in my work, people being promoted because they are excellent at their technical or professional role and then suddenly expected to become effective managers through experience alone.

The outstanding engineer becomes a team leader. The high-performing salesperson becomes a sales manager. The experienced employee is promoted to manage former peers.

But, being brilliant at the job is not the same as being brilliant at leading the people who do it.

The transition from expert to leader is not simply a promotion. It is a career change. The skills that make someone a high performer are often individual ones; technical expertise, problem-solving, personal accountability and getting things done.

Leadership requires a different toolkit; influencing, emotional intelligence, delegation, coaching, managing conflict and creating the conditions in which other people can perform at their best.

This is where the promotion paradox appears. We assume that because someone knows their job inside out, they will naturally know how to lead someone else doing it. But, good leadership is not about being the cleverest person in the room or having all the answers. It is about enabling other people to succeed.

For a new manager, that can be a significant psychological shift. Before promotion, their value may feel closely connected to what they personally know and deliver.

Afterwards, their impact increasingly comes from how well they enable others.

Delegation can feel like losing control. Giving feedback can feel uncomfortable, particularly with former peers. Allowing someone else to make a mistake can feel harder than fixing it yourself.

When the role feels unfamiliar, it is easy to interpret that discomfort as evidence that you are not good enough. It isn’t. Feeling uncertain after promotion can simply mean you are learning a completely new role.

And added to that, leadership can feel lonely too, as relationships change when you become responsible for performance, difficult decisions and other people’s careers.

Former peers may see you differently, while the expectation to appear confident can make it harder to admit when you are struggling.

For businesses, particularly those built around specialist expertise, manufacturing, engineering, professional services and growing family businesses, we cannot assume leadership capability will somehow appear once the job title changes.

That means preparing people for leadership before they take on their first management role and continuing to support them throughout their leadership journey. Managers need practical tools for difficult conversations, coaching, delegation and decision-making, alongside the psychological understanding to recognise what is happening for themselves and their teams.

They also need a support network. Trusted peers, mentors, professional networks, supervisors or coaches can offer something a training course cannot - perspective, challenge and a safe space to talk through the things they cannot always discuss with their own team.

If we expect people managers to shape engagement, performance, wellbeing and retention, surely we have to give them more than a job title and the expectation to simply crack on.

Liz Howard is a chartered psychologist and founder of Up2Eleven, a leadership and talent consultancy based in Leeds.