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The Leadership Skills Most Managers Never Learn: And Why Your Team Keeps Stuffing Up
Look, I've been training managers for over fifteen years now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that most leadership courses are teaching the wrong bloody things. While everyone's obsessing over "authentic leadership" and "servant leadership" and whatever other buzzword McKinsey's flogging this quarter, the real skills that separate decent managers from disasters are sitting there ignored like a tradie's safety manual.
Here's what no one wants to admit: most managers fail because they never learned how to have a difficult conversation without making it weird, delegate without micromanaging, or give feedback that doesn't sound like they're reading from a script. These aren't sexy skills. They don't make for compelling LinkedIn posts. But they're the difference between a team that performs and one that's constantly looking for the exit.
The Conversation Problem
I was working with a Brisbane-based tech company last month - won't name them, but they're doing brilliant work in fintech - and their biggest issue wasn't strategy or market positioning. It was that their managers were avoiding conversations. Real ones. The kind where you actually tell someone their work isn't up to scratch or that their attitude is affecting the team.
Instead, they were doing what 73% of Australian managers do: hoping problems resolve themselves. Spoiler alert: they don't.
The skill nobody teaches is how to be direct without being a dickhead about it. It's possible, by the way. I've seen it done. But it requires you to care more about the person's success than your own comfort level. Most managers have that backwards.
Related Training Resources:
Delegation: The Art of Letting Go (Properly)
Here's where I'll probably lose some of you: delegation isn't about finding someone else to do your work. It's about developing your people by giving them work that stretches them. Big difference.
I see managers every day who think delegation means dumping their least favourite tasks on junior staff. Then they wonder why engagement scores are in the toilet and their best people are jumping ship to competitors.
Real delegation - the kind that actually develops people - requires you to give away work you enjoy doing. Work that matters. Work that, frankly, you're probably better at than the person you're giving it to.
That last bit is the kicker. You have to be comfortable with someone doing your work differently than you would. Not worse, necessarily. Just different.
I learned this the hard way about eight years ago when I was running a consulting practice in Melbourne. Had this brilliant analyst on my team - let's call her Sarah - and I kept giving her all the data entry and admin tasks because I "trusted her to get them right." What I was really doing was keeping all the interesting client-facing work for myself.
Sarah left for a competitor within six months. Now she's running her own practice and probably earning more than I am. Good for her. Terrible for me at the time.
The Feedback Phantom
Most managers think they're giving feedback when they're actually just sharing observations. "Your presentation could have been clearer" isn't feedback. It's commentary. Useless commentary, at that.
Feedback has three parts: what happened, what the impact was, and what needs to happen differently next time. That's it. Not complicated, but somehow we've managed to turn it into this massive psychological event that requires thirty minutes of small talk and a feelings check-in.
Here's a radical thought: adults can handle direct feedback about their work performance. In fact, they prefer it. What they can't handle is the weird dance most managers do around it.
The best feedback I ever received was from a client in Perth who told me straight up that my training workshops were too theoretical and not practical enough. Stung a bit at the time, but it completely changed how I structure sessions now. That client - a mining company doing incredible work in safety training - helped me become better at what I do by being honest about what wasn't working.
Compare that to the manager who spent twenty minutes telling me how "passionate" and "knowledgeable" I was before quietly suggesting that maybe I could "explore more interactive elements." I had no idea what that meant and couldn't act on it even if I did.
The Performance Management Paradox
This is where most managers completely lose the plot. They think performance management is about annual reviews and improvement plans and documentation for HR. Wrong. It's about having regular conversations about how someone's going and what support they need to be more effective.
The annual review is dead. Has been for years. Smart companies figured this out ages ago. But we're still pretending that sitting down once a year to rehash twelve months of work is somehow useful for anyone involved.
I worked with one Adelaide-based manufacturing firm that completely scrapped their annual review process and replaced it with monthly check-ins. Nothing formal, just a conversation about what's working, what isn't, and what needs to change. Their staff engagement scores went through the roof.
But here's the thing most HR departments won't tell you: those monthly conversations only work if managers actually know how to have them. Which brings us back to the skills nobody teaches.
The Real Skills Gap
Want to know what the real skills gap is in Australian business? It's not digital literacy or technical capabilities. It's basic human interaction skills applied in a work context.
How to disagree with someone without making them defensive. How to give someone hard news without destroying their confidence. How to hold people accountable without being a micromanaging nightmare. How to support someone who's struggling without lowering standards for everyone else.
These are skills, by the way. They can be learned. But they require practice and honest feedback about how you're going. Most managers never get either.
I've seen brilliant technical people promoted to management roles with zero preparation for dealing with people issues. Then we act surprised when teams underperform or good people leave.
What Actually Works
After fifteen years of watching managers succeed and fail, here's what I know works:
Be direct about performance issues early. Don't wait for the annual review or until things get desperate. Address problems when they're still small enough to fix easily.
Give people work that challenges them, even if they might not nail it the first time. Better to stretch people than bore them.
Have regular conversations about how things are going. Not formal performance reviews, just conversations. Weekly if someone's new or struggling, monthly if they're performing well.
Admit when you don't know something or when you've made a mistake. Your team already knows you're not perfect. Pretending otherwise just makes you look delusional.
Actually listen when people tell you things aren't working. Don't get defensive. Don't explain why things are the way they are. Just listen and figure out how to make it better.
The Bottom Line (Because We Need One)
Most leadership development is backwards. We teach theory when people need practice. We focus on big-picture vision when teams are struggling with basic communication. We talk about transformation when people just want their manager to tell them if they're doing a good job or not.
The managers who actually develop people and get results aren't the ones with the most certifications or the best buzzword vocabulary. They're the ones who learned how to have real conversations about work and performance.
Everything else is just noise.
If you're a manager reading this and thinking "but my team is different" or "our culture doesn't work that way," you're probably part of the problem. Good management isn't culture-specific. It's about treating people like adults who want to do good work and giving them what they need to be successful.
Start there. The rest is just details.
Further Reading: