How to Train Your Managers to be Better Leaders

It’s easy to assume that managers naturally have strong leadership skills. But many managers struggle with this, with more than two-thirds saying they’re often uncomfortable with the very basic leadership task of communicating with employees. They may be great at organizing and task management—but struggle when it comes to leading effectively.

For each team (and your company as a whole) to meet its goals, you need to train managers to be leaders. Here’s how you can go about that.

First, Understand the Difference Between Managers and Leaders

“Manager” and “leader” aren’t synonymous. Employees who see themselves as “managers” alone may not understand that they can play a more significant role.

Managers focus on the “how” of getting things done. They might be great at organizing resources, allocating tasks, and improving processes, but they won’t necessarily help their team see the bigger picture.

Leaders focus on the “why” and the “what” rather than the “how”. They inspire others with a clear vision and build strong relationships with them. They don’t micro-manage but instead trust and empower team members to deliver.

This ability to foster a shared vision is vital. Grant Aldrich, Founder of Online Degree explains, “Our company has a bold vision: world-class education that’s 100% tuition-free. We need every member of staff to be fully on board with that vision—-which means making sure our managers have the leadership skills to inspire and motivate their team.”

You’ll want to train your managers in leadership skills like communication, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, empowering others, and adaptability. 

While all individuals will have their own innate leadership style, these skills can be taught. So how do you go about that?

Step 1: Assess Current Leadership Skills and Preferences

A great place to start is by assessing your current managers’ leadership skills and preferences. You want to know what strengths they have that you can build on—and what weaknesses you may need to address.

You can assess leadership skills through:

• Self-assessments: you might invite managers to take a leadership styles assessment, or a personality assessment, to help get a sense of what type of leadership style they have.
• 360 degree feedback: getting feedback from peers, subordinates, supervisors, and even customers or clients can help uncover your manager’s current leadership skills.
• Performance reviews: annual performance reviews may also highlight strengths and weaknesses in a manager’s leadership.

Max Tang, CMO at GEEKOM explains, “Our team leaders take users’ feedback on board to help with the development and design process. We want every manager to pursue excellent quality and design, and this feedback is an important part of making sure we’re on track.”

Once you’ve assessed your managers’ current leadership skills, you may find they’re struggling with some of these common areas of leadership:

• Confidence in making decisions.
• Building strong relationships with their team—a key aspect of emotional intelligence.
• Adaptability in communicating with different employees and stakeholders.
• Willingness to pivot (e.g. due to a market shift).

Step 2: Create a Structured Leadership Training Program

Some companies offer leadership training in an unstructured, ad hoc way through mentoring relationships. 

Ideally, you want to develop a structured leadership training program to make sure that all managers are getting consistent training. Edstellar found that organizations with strong leadership development programs are 2.5 times more likely to have a significant improvement in their financial performance.

This could also include optional sections to address specific leadership skills that some managers may already have, and others may struggle with.

You’ll want to consider how best to provide the training program, e.g. through a self-paced online course, as an in-person workshop alongside other managers, or through an intensive leadership retreat. 

Adrian Iorga, Founder & President at Stairhopper Movers explains that, “There’s no one right way to deliver training. Some people like to be shown exactly what to do, some want to be talked through a task, and others prefer a checklist of written instructions. Any of those approaches could be right, depending on your company’s needs and your managers’ preferences.”

Some of the topics you’ll want to cover include:

• Communication and active listening: this is the basis for managers building strong, trusting relationships with their team members.
• Conflict resolution and decision-making: giving your managers the skills to mediate between different people before coming up with a confident decision.
• Mentorship and team motivation: your managers need to be able to inspire people and get genuine “buy-in” … rather than just having employees going through the motions.

Step 3: Foster a Feedback-Driven Culture

For managers to grow their skills and become better leaders, they need regular, honest feedback. No one can improve in a vacuum.

As Maryanne Fiedler, Director of Marketing at Psychic Source puts it, “We want every manager to be committed to growth. Our goal as a company is to keep getting better and better—and strong leaders are essential for that.”

Your managers need feedback from:

• Their own managers—not just through annual reviews, but through “in the moment” coaching and support. This might be through weekly one-on-ones or another regular check-in.
• Their subordinates—what a manager believes is helpful or good leadership may come across very differently to team members! Depending on how things are going, the manager may need coaching in adjusting their leadership style or communication style to better connect with their team.

Also read: How to Give Constructive Feedback Within Teams?

Step 4: Provide Hands-On Leadership Opportunities

Your managers could read every leadership book out there and attend dozens of courses—without adjusting their behavior in any way.

For managers to truly become better leaders, you need to give them opportunities for hands-on experience.

You might assign them a stretch project or invite them to take up a different leadership role from before, giving them the opportunity to practice and strengthen key leadership skills.

Murtaza Oklu, Owner of OMO Transfer, explains, “It can be daunting to give someone a larger role or higher-level project than they’ve handled before. But this gives your managers the chance to shine—and can provide a huge boost to their confidence, too.”

Another great way to support managers in becoming better leaders is to encourage cross-departmental leadership experiences, where managers work together with others at the same level in different departments. This lets people share best practices and new ways of working, helping these spread across your company.

You could also implement a mentorship program—both for managers to be mentored to become better leaders, but also for managers to get hands-on experience of mentoring more junior employees.

Step 5: Measure Progress and Success

Becoming a “better leader” is fairly subjective—and it’s important that you define exactly what this means within your organization, so that you can evaluate the success of your training.

Some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) you could use to measure leadership development include:

• Team engagement: you might measure this through surveys, net promoter scores, or even absenteeism.
• Employee retention: if employees are staying for longer, that suggests a manager’s leadership is stronger.
• Project outcomes: you could look at whether individual projects are achieving their goals within the planned time frame, suggesting that team members are working more effectively together.

You may also have specific measures of progress and success that relate to your industry. For instance, if you’re in healthcare, patient outcomes and satisfaction will come into play. As Dr. Mo Ziaei, Cornea & Vision Correction Specialist at Re:Vision says, “One of our measures of success for leaders is that we exceed patients’ expectations, always seeking improvements rather than being satisfied with the status quo.”

What if you’re not seeing the results that you’d like? You may need to re-evaluate and refine your training programs, looking at ways to boost managers’ leadership skills in specific areas that are proving problematic company-wide.

Step 6: Align Leadership Development with Company Goals

When you train your managers to be better leaders, you don’t want to only help them develop general leadership skills that could be applied anywhere. 

You also want them to develop as leaders within the context of your company—so that their leadership development is fully part of your company’s growth.

This could mean, for instance, that you focus on how your managers can contribute to your culture, mission, and values. You’ll want leaders to pave the way for their team, inspiring others to follow their example.

Within his firm, Jonathan Feniak, General Counsel at LLC Attorney, is looking for “leaders to focus on our core values, like transparency. We want leaders to always give clear, honest advice to team members and clients alike—integrity is everything to us.”

Step 7: Work to Improve Organizational Transparency

For your managers to thrive as strong leaders, organizational transparency is a must. That means making sure they know what’s expected of them—and of their team. 

At Talkspirit, we offer a whole set of tools to improve transparency and clarity at all levels of your organization. You’ll want to take a look at these features in particular:

• Organizational chart: This lets you clarify people’s roles and responsibilities, clearly showing hierarchies and letting everyone know how they fit into your organization as a whole.
• OKR framework: Set clear goals using Objectives and Key Results, so that managers know exactly what their team should be aiming for.
• Projects: Keep projects centralized in one place, so that managers can stay on top of everything, leading proactively.
• Knowledge management library: Empower managers to build and improve collective intelligence with our integrated library tools.

Interested in learning more about our tools? Schedule a demo with our team 👇

Train Your Managers to be Better Leaders—And Watch Your Company Grow

All the tips above will help you turn your managers into great leaders—but to go further, you need to know exactly what leadership skills matter in 2025 and beyond. 

The time and resources you invest in training your managers to become better leaders will be repaid many times over. 

If you’ve ever had a bad manager—or a great one—then you’ll know what a huge difference managers make to their team. It’s no surprise that employees who work for engaged managers are 59% more likely to be engaged themselves.

By fostering a culture of excellent leadership, you’ll see the benefits throughout every level of your business.

Want to know more about the leadership styles you can adopt, and what makes a great manager? Download our ebook on next generation leadership 👇

Access the White Paper

In our white paper “New Forms of Leadership for the New Generation”, you will discover: the skills that every great leader should possess, the different possible management styles, as well as methods and best practices for implementing them within your organization.