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The Leadership Skills Most Managers Never Learn (And It's Not What You Think)
Here's something that'll ruffle a few feathers: most of the leadership training happening in Australian workplaces is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. I've been consulting with businesses across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane for the past 18 years, and I can count on one hand the number of managers who've actually emerged from professional development programs as genuinely better leaders.
The problem isn't that we're not investing enough money. Christ, some companies are throwing $15,000 per head at these courses. The problem is we're teaching the wrong bloody skills.
What We're Getting Wrong About Leadership Development
Walk into any corporate training room and you'll hear the same buzzwords flying around: "emotional intelligence," "strategic thinking," "change management." All important stuff, don't get me wrong. But we're missing the fundamentals that actually make someone worth following.
Last month I sat through a leadership workshop in Perth where they spent three hours teaching executives how to "cascade vision statements." Meanwhile, none of these people could have a decent conversation with their own teams about why someone was struggling with their workload. It's like teaching someone to design a skyscraper when they can't build a bloody letterbox.
Here's what I reckon we should be focusing on instead:
The ability to shut up and listen. Not that performative listening where you're just waiting for your turn to speak. Real listening. The kind where you actually change your mind based on what someone tells you. I've worked with CFOs who genuinely believed they were great listeners because they maintained eye contact during meetings. Mate, if you interrupt someone every 30 seconds, you're not listening.
Admitting when you're wrong – properly. Not that corporate non-apology rubbish where you say "mistakes were made." I mean putting your hand up and saying "I stuffed that up, here's how I'm going to fix it." Revolutionary concept, apparently.
The best leader I ever worked with was a construction site manager in Adelaide who'd tell his crew every Friday what he'd learned that week. Sometimes it was technical stuff, sometimes it was about people management. But he never pretended he had all the answers. His team would walk through fire for him.
The Missing Piece: Technical Competence
This might be controversial, but I think we've swung too far toward "soft skills" and forgotten that people follow leaders who actually know what they're talking about. You can have all the emotional intelligence in the world, but if you don't understand the fundamentals of your business, you're just a well-meaning amateur.
I worked with a tech startup last year where the CEO had never written a line of code but was trying to lead a team of developers. Lovely bloke, great with people, but he kept making promises to clients that were technically impossible. His team lost respect for him pretty quickly.
Now, I'm not saying every leader needs to be the best at everything. But they need to understand their industry well enough to ask intelligent questions and spot when someone's spinning them a line.
The Confidence Trap
Here's where I'm going to lose some people: we're obsessing over confidence when we should be teaching humility. Half the leadership problems I see stem from managers who are too bloody confident for their own good.
Confidence is overrated. Competence isn't.
I've seen confident leaders drive companies into the ground because they were too sure of themselves to listen to warnings. Meanwhile, some of the most effective leaders I know are plagued by self-doubt – which makes them better decision-makers because they actually consider multiple perspectives.
The leadership skills for supervisors programs that actually work focus on building competence first, then confidence follows naturally. Not the other way around.
Real-World Application (Or Why Most Training Fails)
You want to know why most leadership development is useless? Because it happens in isolation. We take managers out of their normal environment, pump them full of theory, then expect them to transform overnight when they return to the same broken systems.
It's like learning to drive in a simulator then being surprised when you can't handle real traffic.
The companies getting this right are the ones integrating leadership development into daily work. They're having managers practice difficult conversations with their actual teams, not role-playing with strangers. They're solving real problems, not hypothetical case studies.
One manufacturing company in Newcastle I worked with scrapped their external leadership program and instead had their managers spend one hour each week coaching someone junior. That's it. Simple, practical, immediate feedback. Their employee engagement scores went through the roof.
The Australian Context (Why Location Matters)
Something else that irritates me: most leadership training in Australia is based on American models that don't translate well to our workplace culture. Americans love the whole "visionary leader" thing – the charismatic CEO who inspires through grand speeches.
That doesn't fly here. Australians are suspicious of anyone who talks themselves up too much. We respond better to leaders who demonstrate their worth through actions, not words.
The most effective Australian leaders I know lead by example rather than inspiration. They're the first ones in and the last ones out. They remember their team members' kids' names. They don't ask anyone to do something they wouldn't do themselves.
This is why business supervising skills programs designed specifically for Australian workplaces tend to be more practical and less grandiose than their international counterparts.
The Hard Truth About Change
Here's something that'll make the HR crowd uncomfortable: not everyone can be developed into a leader. I know, I know, it's not politically correct to say that. But after two decades in this game, I can usually spot within the first week whether someone has leadership potential or not.
Some people are brilliant individual contributors who should never manage others. And that's okay! We've created this myth that career progression always means managing people. It's causing all sorts of problems.
I worked with one company that promoted their best salesperson to sales manager. He was miserable, his team was miserable, and sales dropped 30%. When they moved him back to an individual contributor role (with equivalent pay and status), everyone was happier.
Not every star player makes a good coach. Football clubs understand this. Why don't businesses?
What Actually Works
If I had to design a leadership development program from scratch, here's what I'd include:
Month 1-3: Shadow someone good. Find the best manager in your organisation and follow them around. Don't try to copy everything they do, but understand their decision-making process.
Month 4-6: Practice with feedback. Start making small leadership decisions with constant coaching. Like learning to drive with an instructor beside you.
Month 7-12: Reflection and adjustment. Regular sessions analysing what worked, what didn't, and why. This is where the real learning happens.
Most importantly, stretch it out over time. These intensive two-day leadership boot camps are worse than useless – they're actually harmful because they give people false confidence without building real competence.
The Bottom Line
Look, I'm not saying all professional development is rubbish. Some of it's quite good. But we need to stop treating leadership like it's some mystical art that can be learned through PowerPoint presentations and trust falls.
It's a craft. Like plumbing or accounting. You learn it by doing it, getting feedback, and gradually getting better. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we'll start producing leaders worth following.
And honestly? If more managers focused on becoming competent before worrying about being inspiring, we'd all be better off.
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