Manager training vs manager support: What 20 years of coaching managers has taught me

I’ve spent more than 20 years coaching managers and one thing has become increasingly clear to me: many managers don’t struggle because they haven’t been taught how to manage. They struggle because managing people is complicated, situations are rarely straightforward and knowing what to do in theory is very different from handling it in practice.

Interestingly, the questions managers bring to coaching are rarely about theory. They don’t tend to ask how to give structured feedback or frame a difficult conversation. They’re much more likely to ask whether they should raise something at all, whether they’re overreacting, how someone might respond, or whether it’s really their responsibility to deal with it.

They’re questions about judgement, confidence and having someone to think things through with. Yet when I talk to organisations about how they support their managers, the conversation often hinges on training. They’ll talk through their management development programmes, learning platforms and the resources available through HR. All valuable things, of course, but they don’t tell us whether managers feel supported when they’re actually doing the job.

I think that’s where we need to start looking more closely.

What’s the difference between manager training and manager support?

Manager training and manager support are closely connected, but they’re not the same thing.

Manager training builds knowledge and skills. Manager support helps managers apply what they’ve learned to the reality of managing people.

I sometimes think of it like learning to drive. You can study the Highway Code, understand the rules of the road and know what you’re supposed to do in different situations. But that doesn’t mean you’ll know how to respond when you’re driving in heavy traffic, it’s pouring with rain and another driver does something completely unexpected.

That’s when you discover that knowing what to do in theory and dealing with what’s happening around you are two very different things.

Management is much the same. Training might teach you how to give feedback, manage performance or structure a difficult conversation. But it can’t anticipate the particular person you’re dealing with, the history of your relationship, the pressures you’re under or how confident you feel about handling the situation.

And that’s the disparity I see time and again in coaching. Managers are unsure how to apply what they know to the messy, unpredictable reality of their working day.

This isn’t a criticism of management training. We absolutely need it. But training is usually designed around management principles, common challenges and situations that might happen. Manager support starts with what’s actually happening to that manager, right now.

Why manager training alone isn’t enough

There’s some interesting work by Robert Brinkerhoff on learning transfer that I return to frequently. In a CIPD podcast, Robert suggests that if you put 100 people through training, perhaps only 20 will go on to use some of what they’ve learned. His point isn’t that the other 80 are unwilling or incapable. It’s that something in their working environment gets in the way.

A manager might attend a really good programme on structuring difficult conversations, but when they return to work, their own manager is too busy for a proper catch-up, they’re not entirely sure how much authority they have and they don’t have anyone they feel comfortable testing their thinking with.

I also think organisations can unintentionally make manager support more complicated than it needs to be. We tend to organise it around departments and responsibilities. L&D looks after development, HR provides policy and specialist advice, and line managers are responsible for day-to-day support.

That makes sense organisationally, but it isn’t an honest reflection of how managers experience their working day. They’re not sitting there thinking, “Is this an HR issue, a coaching issue or a learning and development issue?” They’re thinking, “I’ve got a situation with someone in my team, I’m not sure how best to handle it and I could really do with talking it through.”

Newsflash: Managers are already turning to AI for support

If we needed more evidence that managers want help with the realities of managing people, recent survey results over the past 48 months make for fascinating and slightly troubling reading.

• 72% of managers said public AI tools were useful for preparing for difficult people-related conversations. The Predictive Index, 2026 (399 managers and 208 business leaders)
• 43% had entered employee names, performance details or personal information into public AI tools. The Predictive Index, 2026
• 45% of executives surveyed said their organisation had a formal written policy covering managers’ use of AI in people matters. The Predictive Index, 2026
• Around six in 10 managers relied on AI to help make decisions about their direct reports. Resume Builder, 2025 (1,342 US managers)
• 97% of surveyed workers said they had sought workplace advice from ChatGPT rather than their boss. Resume Now, 2025 (968 US workers)

The Predictive Index’s 2026 AI and People Leadership Survey, involving 399 managers and 208 business leaders, found that 72% of managers considered public AI tools useful for preparing for difficult people-related conversations. Within that same survey, 43% said they’d entered employee names, performance details or personal information into those tools, while only 45% of executives surveyed said their organisation had a formal written policy covering managers’ use of AI in people matters.

What I find interesting is what managers said they were struggling with. Their biggest challenges included delivering criticism constructively, anticipating how someone might react and staying objective. Which tells me that they want help working out what to say, how to say it and how to handle the person and circumstances in front of them.

A separate 2025 Resume Builder study surveyed 1,342 US managers and found that around six in 10 relied on AI to help make decisions about their direct reports. Among managers using AI for people management, 78% reported using it to help determine pay rises, 77% promotions, 66% redundancies and 64% terminations. More than one in five said they allowed AI to make final decisions without human input often or always.

There is a considerable difference between using AI to think through how to approach a difficult conversation and allowing it to make decisions that could fundamentally affect someone’s career or livelihood.

But we also need to ask why managers are turning to these tools in the first place. Managers have questions, concerns and decisions to make, often in the middle of a busy working day. And now there’s something available that will respond immediately, without judgement or the need to book time in someone’s diary.

A separate 2025 Resume Now survey of 968 US workers found that 97% of respondents had sought workplace advice from ChatGPT rather than their boss, with 63% doing so regularly. Among those surveyed, 57% cited fear of retaliation, while 70% felt ChatGPT understood their work challenges better than their manager. While these are self-reported findings they do raise important questions about where people feel comfortable going for help at work.

For me, the findings suggest a real demand for accessible, timely help in the flow of work, and managers are finding their own ways to get it.

The challenge for organisations and the most important need, is to make sure the support managers turn to is also relevant to their circumstances, grounded in good management practice and used within appropriate boundaries, particularly when sensitive employee information or important people decisions are involved.

The ART of manager support: Accessible, Relevant and Timely

After more than 20 years of coaching, I’ve come to think about effective manager support in terms of three simple qualities. I call it the ART of manager support: Accessible, Relevant and Timely (in case you haven’t already picked up on the acronym).

It’s less a complicated model and more a way of looking at support from the manager’s perspective.

Accessible: Can managers get the help they need?

There’s a difference between support being available and support being accessible.

Accessibility is about making it easy for managers to get the right help without having to navigate the organisation, wait for permission or worry about how asking for support might be perceived. We shouldn’t underestimate that last point. Managers can feel considerable pressure to appear capable and in control, particularly when they’re new to the role. Sometimes, the people who would benefit most from support are the least comfortable asking for it.

Relevant: Does the support understand the manager?

This is the one I feel particularly strongly about (no surprise, given I’m a coach) and I think it’s where manager support falls short. Two managers can face what looks like exactly the same challenge and need quite different support.

Imagine two managers who need to address an underperforming team member. One is experienced, confident with difficult conversations and has managed the person for several years. The other is three months into their first management role, finds confrontation uncomfortable and was working alongside the employee as a peer until recently.

The management principles might be the same, but the conversations those managers need to have, and the support that will help them prepare, could be very different. Relevant manager support needs to understand the manager as well as the management problem.

That means taking account of their experience, capability, strengths and development areas, alongside what motivates them and the context they’re working in. It also means understanding what they’ve already tried and what they’re finding difficult.

This is something good coaches do instinctively. They don’t assume that, because they’ve heard a similar problem before, they already know the answer. They get curious about the person and the situation first which is a useful standard for any kind of manager support, whether it comes from another person, a programme or a digital tool.

Timely: Is the support there when it's needed?

Management challenges don't arrive neatly packaged with a bow. A team member becomes upset in a meeting. Someone raises a concern about a colleague. A manager notices a change in someone’s behaviour but isn’t sure whether to say anything.

These situations happen in the middle of busy working days when the manager already has too much else to think about. There can be a relatively short window between recognising that something needs attention and deciding what to do.

If support is available in that window, it can influence how the manager responds. If it arrives a week later, it may still be useful for reflection, but the moment to act has passed. This is why I think we need to pay much more attention to supporting managers in the flow of work.

Why the ART of manager support is important

The interesting thing about Accessible, Relevant and Timely support is that it’s difficult to get all three right.

A trusted senior colleague might offer relevant advice, but they may not be available when you need them. A policy or guidance page might be accessible at any time, but it probably won’t help you work through the nuances of a particular relationship. A training programme might be excellent, but the next session could be months away.

Digital manager support has the potential to bring all three together: it can be available when a challenge arises, fit into the tools managers already use and, if designed well, take account of the manager and the situation in front of them. That’s where I think the real opportunity lies.

What good manager support looks like

Manager training will always have its place. But if we want managers to turn what they learn into confident, considered action, the support around them needs to be Accessible, Relevant and Timely.

The best place to start when assessing whether the support you provide is up to 'ART' standard is by understanding what happens when a manager faces a difficult situation. Do they know where to turn? Can they get help when they need it? And does that help take account of who they are and the circumstances they're dealing with?

These are questions to ask before investing in another training programme or LMS.

How effective is your manager support?

Our free Manager Capability & Support Effectiveness Checklist helps you assess how well you understand your managers' capabilities, evaluate your existing support against the ART framework and identify where improvements are needed.

In 20 minutes, you'll have a clearer picture of how well you understand your managers' capabilities, whether the support you provide is working and where to focus your efforts next.