Leadership Development: Key Skills for New People Managers
The number one priority for HR leaders in 2025 is leader and manager development and yet, only 36% of organizations with leadership development programs think they work. Organizations are spending money and prioritizing leadership development but they aren't seeing the results.
So what’s missing?
New manager expert, Eric Girard is joining me on this episode to share two essential skills your people managers need, but probably don’t have.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
04:27 Eric’s journey to new manager development
07:48 The challenge new managers face
10:37 Leading with empathy
13:16 How to invest in your people managers
15:25 If you can only develop two skills, focus on these
17:37 The value of coaching
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Leadership Development: Key Skills for New People Managers
According to a Gartner study, the number one priority for HR leaders in 2025 is leader and manager development.
This is not surprising but let's look at the data more deeply.
How many organizations with leadership development programs think they work and actually help prepare their leaders for the future?
Only 36%.
How many HR leaders are confident in their emerging future leaders?
Only 23%.
So organizations are spending money and prioritizing leadership development but they aren't seeing the results.
In fact, 71% of HR leaders said they don't think their organization is effective at developing their mid-level leaders.
This is a huge problem!
When we spend money and invest in leadership development, we want it to work. We want people to be confident and capable in their roles. And it seems like we just aren't seeing those results.
So what's missing?
What should we really be focused on?
I've asked new manager expert, Eric Girard to help me answer these questions.
Eric helps new managers transform from high-performing individual contributors (the ones we always promote) to great people managers.
“New managers are an underserved population and the benefit of investing in that group of folks is huge.“ - Eric Girard
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
Eric is a highly accomplished management development professional, author, and podcast host. As the CEO of Girard Training Solutions, he has more than 30 years of experience helping improve the performance of managers and employees where he's become known for his high energy, engaging facilitation style.
1) The Challenge New People Managers Face
People get promoted because they're good at their job, not necessarily because they're ready to be a people manager.
Eric explains that he has been on the receiving end of untrained managers.
“They become the leader of the group. And without any training, they created train wrecks.” - Eric Girard
And then, when Eric was promoted, he also didn’t receive any training and made the same mistakes.
“I didn't set goals. I didn't delegate. I didn't provide coaching. I did provide feedback, but it was so nitpicky and granular and cringy that it makes me shudder to think of it now.” - Eric Girard
The mental transition into the new job is what Eric sees new people managers struggle with the most.
“On Monday, you were an individual contributor. You were a podcast host and you were happy doing that. Then on Tuesday, you get promoted and now you're leading a team of podcast hosts. And it's no longer about you being a good podcast host. It's about you setting direction for that team, setting strategy, taking care of analytics and data, and so on. But because you weren't trained, you fall back into what you know, which is being a great podcast host.” - Eric Girard
Eric explains that this happens in all career paths.
“They fall backward into what they know and then they go back to their comfort zone, which means that the team often gets ignored and the team does not achieve business results.” - Eric Girard
Eric emphasizes that a manager acting like a superstar employee rather than a leader of the team can cause real problems in an organization.
With any behavior change, as soon as it feels different, uncomfortable, or hard, it's easy to slide back into what you did before.
It makes sense that the same thing would happen when you're going into a new role that's using a completely different skill set.
2) Key Skills for New People Managers
Eric shared a few key skills for new people managers:
1. Empathy
Eric explains that we don't all need to become the most empathetic human being but rather, we can improve our empathy skills by 10%.
“When I'm talking with you about a performance problem, or when you come to me with a problem, can I listen deeply? Can I really understand where you're at? And then can I help out to the best of my ability?” - Eric Girard
Eric shares that empathy is the number one thing that all new managers need to build.
2. Making the Mental Transition from Top Performer to Leader
New people managers need to make the mental transition from their past job to a manager.
“You must transition from being the superstar employee to being an outstanding people manager.” - Eric Girard
3. Delegation
As a new manager, Eric did not delegate and it led to him getting overwhelmed and buried beneath tasks even though his team was offering to help him.
4. Coaching
Eric explains that everybody deserves great coaching.
“I would really encourage every new manager to study coaching. [...] Study coaching, practice coaching, learn how to be a great coach, and that will help you a lot in your journey.” - Eric Girard
He recommends reading the book The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier which outlines seven questions that you can ask during a coaching situation to draw out the other person so that they come to the solution themselves rather than you giving the advice.
Other skills include learning how to set goals, how to provide feedback, how to manage change, and how to reward and recognize.
“These are all things that managers need to learn how to do that are not intuitive. It's all easily learned, but if I just throw a new manager in the deep end, they're not going to intuitively grok that and understand that. So they do need to be taught.” - Eric Girard
If you only have time to develop two skills, Eric recommends focusing on the mental transition from a top performer to a leader and delegation.
3) How to Invest in Your People Managers
When organizations are investing in people managers, they often direct their managers to something like LinkedIn Learning.
And while LinkedIn Learning is a great resource, it’s often not contextualized which makes it hard to complete and implement.
To learn about contextualizing off-the-shelf training, take a look at this episode:
Episode 109: How to Develop Your People Managers with Off-the-Shelf Courses & Customized Conversations
Here’s what Eric recommends if an organization is looking at investing in their people managers:
1. Books
Books are low-hanging fruit that you can offer to your managers.
For example, you can offer Eric’s book, Lead Like a Pro: The Essential Guide for New Managers, to your managers.
2. In-person Programs
Eric explains that running in-person programs where your managers get a chance to learn these concepts and then try them out in a lab is a good place to start.
“Being in the room with a cohort of 30 people or less and actually trying these skills out in a lab environment is a fantastic way to embed those behaviors so that then you can go do them on the job.” - Eric Girard
And while Eric explains that this is possible virtually, the impact is a little bit less.
“Set up labs, bring your managers together, get them together in groups of 30 or less, and run them through the key skills.” - Eric Girard
To hear the full conversation I had with Eric Girard on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 112.
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