Succession planning and high-potential development go hand in hand. There’s no better way to motivate your top people today and strengthen your organization for tomorrow. At the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm leadership candidates during either the run-up to promotion or once they are in charge. So how do you stress-test your best while leaving them ready for the rest? L&D, once again, is the key.
Manager Burnout – It’s Already Here
Many HR departments are laser-focused on supporting employee engagement. And a major part of this effort relies on managers, who are a natural resource given that they are “in the trenches” and know their teams well.
But maybe it’s the managers who need the attention. According to Gartner, the global economy lost $438 billion during 2024, with the primary cause being a drop in manager engagement, which is now at a rate of 27%. Managers under 35 years of age showed a 5% reduction in engagement rates over just one year.
Along with this trend go some additionally alarming figures. Bloomberg reports that middle managers accounted for one-third of all layoffs in 2023. In fact, Fast Company predicted a “manager crash” in 2025, and it looks like they were right.
Why Are Leaders Under So Much Stress?
Lower-level managers have always faced the problem of burnout, considering that they are put in a stressful role and often with minimal training. There are countless factors contributing to this challenge, including:
- Post-pandemic issues related to remote work, retirement, turnover, and job flexibility
- Shrinking budgets and leaner teams
- Increased customer and employee expectations
- Artificial intelligence and digitization
- Politics in the office
That’s a lot to deal with. But, for creative HR teams, therein lies the solution.
The Secret of Defeating Workplace Burnout
There are so many causes behind burnout that one thing is clear — you can’t deal with each one individually. Many are beyond your control.
But approximately 25% of managers are engaged, so somebody’s doing something right. Dig a bit and you’ll find that learning and development courses for high-potentials and leaders are at the core of managerial coping. Forbes cites that long-term goals such as rates related to productivity and efficiency increase by 36% and 42% respectively when L&D is properly applied. These courses build skills that benefit the entire leadership pipeline, no matter what issues your organization is facing.
Skills That Stress-Proof Leaders
The skills highlighted below give leaders the tools to function in tough environments and for long periods of time. They are interrelated as they form a series of measures for leaders to take, which together ensure resilience while still maintaining their leadership role. For example, there’s not much use to being great at planning if you can’t then organize your team to carry out those plans.
- Self-Awareness
This is a self-management skill that is often listed among the top leadership abilities promoted by industry experts. Self-management can be defined as “the ability to see ourselves clearly”. For leaders, it also means using authority in a positive way.
Self-awareness is strongly connected to avoiding burnout. Somebody who has honed this ability knows themselves thoroughly, including their strengths and weaknesses. They are able to admit mistakes and ask for help (i.e., delegate – see below).
To develop self-awareness, you need to look at yourself and your actions from a neutral point of view. Over time, you’ll develop a knack for doing this preemptively so that you can avoid poor decisions and self-delusions that otherwise result in failure and stress. The basis of self-awareness is a set of strong personal values and a good organizational culture.
- Time Management
Planning, prioritizing, and scheduling are just a few of the skill elements that follow from good time management. Leaders in particular can find that making the most of their day is a major challenge. If you have trouble getting all of your tasks done on time, it follows that getting those on your team to submit jobs according to schedule is almost impossible.
Good time management is about more than beating the clock. Building this skill means less stress at work, more time at home (if that’s important to you), and developing opportunities to move up the ladder. You can also think of time management as an exercise in optimizing your energy, which is a finite resource. With this skill, you’ll also have more time to devote to existing tasks, making your output of higher quality.
- Delegation and Mentoring
If you’ve planned correctly, then you’ve likely realized that you can’t get everything done by yourself. In addition, with self-awareness, you can now admit that there are other people on your team who can handle certain jobs better than you can. Your task now is to decide what to do on your own, and what to parcel out to those on your team.
The next step is mentoring. But how is this related to delegation? Don’t forget, you are (or are going to be) leading others. Good leaders nurture the people on their team by mentoring them. In the spirit of “teaching someone to fish”, the effort you put into mentoring serves various purposes:
- It arms employees with your knowledge so that they internalize important skills
- Over time, leaders spend less time managing as employees become independent
- It provides an opportunity for leaders to see who has dedication and skill, and who can be relied upon for more responsibilities
- Communication
Improving communication skills is important for all of us, but particularly so for struggling leaders. The delegation process mentioned above is one area where making your ideas clear is crucial.
Leaders can begin improving their communication skills by taking a serious look at how they deliver instructions. Too much information, or not enough? Getting feedback from others on your communication skills is a good starting point. If you realize that you have a weak area in any essential part of communication, coaching is an effective way to remedy this.
Yet communication (naturally) goes both ways. An essential part of avoiding burnout is to understand what tasks are important for right now, and planning is only one aspect of this measure. Don’t be afraid to ask stakeholders about the urgency of the tasks in which you have a part. There’s a decent chance that they have not considered how much increased pressure they have caused by involving you.
- Empathy
This is another skill at the top of the leadership list. Think you’re under stress? Take a look at those around you. Good leaders check that the people on their team are thriving.
There’s a lot involved in developing empathy skills. But, as mentioned above, all of these stress-proofing abilities are intertwined. In this case, the workplace skill that allows you to optimize empathy is time management. This is illustrated by the famous “Good Samaritan” experiment, which proved how most people will demonstrate empathy, as long as they have the time for it.
The Double Edge of L&D
Clearly, learning and development for managers is a solid way to fill your leadership pipeline with high-potential employees who will be able to cope with future challenges. But L&D is much more than that. Across your organization, learning and development gives workers the tools that they need to feel confident in being part of succession planning and taking on more responsibilities. It also demonstrates that your company is interested and willing to invest in the future of its employees.
L&D goes beyond helping employees deal with stress. It allows them to grow professionally and easily move into areas that they otherwise would not qualify for. That’s why 90% of millennials explain that career growth opportunities are so important to them. But, not all L&D programs are created equal.
Growthspace for Leadership Learning and Development
At the end of the day, there are countless best practices out there for delivering the best possible L&D programs. Customized courses is one; expert instruction by the best in the industry is another. And of course, a consistent and intuitive grading method is essential. But if you want to truly invest in your people’s performance, to boost both their output and their energy, then look to the top precision skill development platform available. Contact Growthspace to find out more.
