Management development describes all activities that help managers enhance their skills, competencies, and knowledge. Effective management is widely recognised as critical to organisations’ success and even to national economic wellbeing. Developing managers is therefore a crucial part of an organisational learning strategy. Surprisingly, however, the CIPD Resourcing and Talent Planning survey reports that only 40% of employers had initiatives to improve managers’ people skills.

Managing people involves supporting their development, planning and implementing strategies, tasks and policies relating to people, resources, information, operations and finance. Management development activities can therefore cover any or all these areas, depending on the level and nature of the management role.

What are the main challenges in management development?

The broad nature and characteristics of ‘management’ means that identifying and providing effective learning opportunities for managers can be challenging. The term ‘manager’ covers a huge range of roles, from senior management teams to middle and specialist managers, line managers, and with individuals who occasionally take on project management roles, all with different development needs.

Senior managers often need individually tailored solutions, as this is a small group even in large organisations. Some very senior people, such as those at board level, may feel that others in the organisation fail to understand the pressures they face. However, they might reject the idea that they need to learn due to their senior status.

There are differences too depending on the size or nature of organisations. Small firms have they have different priorities and needs than bigger ones: their senior management development needs may relate to functional skills that are usually provided by specialists in large organisations.

Large global firms, meanwhile, often need to consider the issues involved in international management development; for example, dealing with diverse approaches to negotiating styles or marketing techniques, as well as cultural awareness and language skills. They can often have added pressures of dispersed family or relocation or dispersed teams working in different time zones.

Managers at all levels need to be able to support their team members’ development and wellbeing. It shouldn’t be assumed that well-qualified professionals promoted into managerial positions will also have the required skills to manage people. This is particularly critical in the case of technical experts promoted into people management roles and such promotions need to be supported by L&D and HR teams.

Some organisations have succession plans to ensure that the skills, experience and knowledge required to take up managerial roles at all levels is secured for the future. These plans help inform management development programmes.

Our report Attitudes to employability and talent and talent explores individuals’ and employers' attitudes and insights into responsibilities for career development in the UK. Our factsheet looks at the changing context of talent management and effective strategies.

Linking management development to business strategy

Any management development approach needs to reflect the organisation’s strategy and culture. Read our factsheet on L&D strategy for more on how business strategy can drive L&D planning. Our learning cultures research shows the impact managers have on creating positive learning environments in organisations, which is vital for sustained success.

Management development needs arise both from day-to-day activities and from the need to change and shape the organisation’s direction as the business environment changes. Read our factsheets on change management and organisation development.

As with other employee groups, planning management development means first understanding the performance required and then identifying skills needs at organisational, group and individual level.

Management competences

Larger organisations may use a competence framework to identify the requirements for effective management. These include:

• Managing and developing others.
• Applying management techniques and developing strategy.
• Interpersonal skills such as communicating effectively, emotional intelligence, influencing and negotiating.
• Supporting health and wellbeing.
• Boosting inclusion and diversity in the team and workplace.

However, there’s some criticism of competency frameworks in that they can sometimes stifle creativity and diversity of thought.

Whether or not formalised in a competency framework, managerial skills need to be complemented by behavioural traits. CIPD research has identified five behaviours that managers need:

• open, fair and consistent.
• handling conflicts and problems.
• knowledge, clarity and guidance.
• building and sustaining relationships.
• supporting development.

You can read more about supporting management development and its importance in the report ‘Soft skills in hard times: why good people management matters more than ever’.

Performance management and development reviews

Regular performance reviews allow managers to discuss work achievements and identify development opportunities. Traditionally carried out annually, organisations are moving to more frequent performance conversations, sometimes scrapping the formal review process altogether. Our performance management factsheet explores this further.

Development centres

The purpose of specialist management development or assessment centres is to focus on opportunities for personal development, as well as to gauge potential and help make selections for promotion to senior managerial posts. These centres often include work-related activities and group work, as well as coaching and psychometric assessments. However, when using any form of assessment process, L&D professional need to be clear about its credibility, purpose, and outcomes.

L&D management development needs

Our Profession Map is the framework to explore the knowledge and behaviours required for people practitioners and it can be used as a benchmark. Nine areas from the Map showed development opportunities for L&D practitioners according to our Professionalising Learning and Development report. The range of development areas required for L&D practitioners are highlighted in our Learning and skills at work research.

Given the varied nature of managerial roles, it’s important to consider a variety of approaches to development that can be tailored according to individual needs. An array of formal and informal learning methods may be useful;  depending on specific circumstances you might consider some of the following suggestions.

Work-based methods

As well as the methods outlined below, our Learning in the flow of work factsheet has other examples of informal approaches to learning.

Coaching and mentoring

Coaching and mentoring by other managers, peers, or professional coaches. These are also skills that managers need to master themselves to be effective in leading their teams.

Shadowing

This involves pairing two managers who each spend a set period shadowing the other, followed by a de-brief to identify learning points and actions.

Secondments

Taking another role via a secondment can help managers broadening skills, knowledge and experience. Secondment is the temporary movement or ‘loan’ of an employee to another part of the organisation, or another organisation. As flatter management structures become more common, traditional opportunities for promotion can be limited. Secondments offer career development opportunities and are increasingly used as part of talent management programmes. They also provide organisations with the chance to develop their skills base and share knowledge within the business.

Sharing knowledge

Increasingly popular ways to expand manager’s learning is to have them teach others. Facilitated by the L&D team, having an open question and answer session with a senior manager can encourage learning both ways.

Communities of practice

Members with common interests can meet regularly to share practice, experience, information, and ideas. Whilst this can be in a physical setting, increasingly technology provides the opportunity to engage in virtual development conversations both within and beyond one’s organisation.

Formal learning

Many formal management development courses and qualifications are available, with options including:

• Undergraduate, postgraduate (most notably the MBA) or other higher education qualifications in business/management 
• Courses and qualifications from management membership organisations.
• Specialist courses, including those delivered by professional bodies. 
• Management apprenticeships in different areas such as purchasing and supply management.
• In-house management or leadership development programmes delivered by internal L&D teams.

Formal educational options are useful ways of acquiring knowledge about the techniques of management, though the costs can be high.

Management and leadership programmes have been criticised for containing too many models and theories (that may or may not be relevant), with little time to explore the challenges that managers face or offer practical ways of engaging and developing teams.

In order to effectively assess the impact of any development programme on performance, L&D professionals need identify the performance need that the programme is addressing and then compare the costs with the value of expected and actual outcomes. If the latter are specific tasks, then they may be relatively quantifiable, although effectively developing the overall capacity to manage is less tangible.

For more on our work on assessing the effectiveness of learning generally, see our factsheet on evaluating learning and development.

Despite a massive estimated global spend on management development programmes, it can remain difficult to identify specific links with organisational effectiveness and success. This is partly because of difficulties in identifying which changes are caused by such activities and which may be attributed to other factors. Anecdotal evidence from employee engagement surveys can support evaluation findings. Productivity increase can also be measured. A large-scale study published in 2012 put forward evidence of the positive impact that management development has on organisational performance.

Books and reports

BEEVERS, K. REA, A and HAYDEN, D. (2019) Learning and development practice in the workplace. 4th ed. London: CIPD and Kogan Page.

GOLD, J. and ANDERSON, L. (2017) Developing leadership and management skills (Ebook). CIPD and Kogan Page.

GOLD, J., THORPE, R. and MUMFORD, A. (2010) Leadership and management development. 5th ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

LANCASTER, A (2019) Driving performance through learning: develop employees through effective workplace learning. London: Kogan Page.

Visit the CIPD and Kogan Page Bookshop to see all our priced publications currently in print.

Journal articles

DEAN, M. and PERRETT, R. (2020) Overcoming barriers to women’s workplace leadership: insights from the interaction of formal and informal support mechanisms in trade unions. Industrial Relations Journal. Vol 51, No 3, May. pp169-184.

FOX, A. (2013) Help managers shine. HR Magazine. Vol 58, No 2, February. pp43-44,46,48.

GRANT, R (2018) Five steps to delivering effective management apprenticeships. People Management (online).15 March.

HAMORI, M., KOYUNCU, B. and CAO, J. (2015) What high-potential young managers want. MIT Sloan Management Review. Vol 57, No 1, Fall. pp61-68.

HOWLETT, E. (2020) The new face of leadership development. People Management (online). 20 August.

MOLDOVEANU, M and NARAYANDAS, D. (2019) The future of leadership development. Harvard Business Review. Vol 97, No 2, March-April. pp.40-48.

MUKHERJEE, A. (2020) 5 musts for next-gen leaders. MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol 61, No 4, Summer. pp62-65.

MURPHY, W.M. (2012) Reverse mentoring at work: fostering cross-generational learning and developing millennial leaders. Human Resource Management. Vol 51, No 4, July/August. pp549-574.

ROSS, S. (2019) Why some talented leaders succeed while others derail. Human Resources (online). 2 April.

CIPD members can use our online journals to find articles from over 300 journal titles relevant to HR.

Members and People Management subscribers can see articles on the People Management website.