Companies keep making the same mistake. They take their best individual contributors and hand them the keys to management. It feels like a reward. its a natural next step, but too often, it backfires. Instead of unlocking new performance, it creates inefficiency, frustration, and wasted potential.
These are the accidental managers. People promoted or hired into leadership roles without preparation, training, or a clear sense of whether they are suited for the job. They are not inherently poor managers. Many are high achievers with the right intent. But intent is not the same as ability. Research shows that 82% of managers in the UK have had no formal management training. Almost half have received less than two hours of leadership development in their careers. This is not an individual problem. It is a systemic failure baked into how companies promote and reward.
The result is predictable. Broken cultures, burned-out employees, and leaders who feel abandoned in roles they were never trained to handle. The paradox is simple: organizations think they are solving talent gaps by promoting from within, but they are often creating bigger problems than the ones they set out to fix.
This article pulls back the curtain on why good employees don’t always get promoted, why those who do are often set up to fail, and how companies can build a system where managers are prepared to lead instead of left to sink or swim.
Strong performance can be deceptive. Many high performers assume that mastery in their role guarantees they will thrive as a manager. The belief is understandable as steady advancement is wired into career logic. But leading people requires a different toolkit. Only 10% of people have natural leadership talent, and another 20% can develop it with proper support. The rest will struggle unless someone helps equips them with skills they have never practiced before.
Employees also want recognition, and a promotion signals this value. When the only way to get that recognition is through management, people chase it even if they are not ready. The outcome is predictable: overconfidence collides with reality, and both the new manager and their team pay the price.
The larger share of responsibility sits with companies. It is much easier to promote from within than to search outside. Familiar faces feel safe, and they are much more convenient than an external search. But comfort is not capability. Promotions often come down to likeability, loyalty, or speed of filling the role rather than readiness to lead.
Succession planning failures compound the problem. Fast-growing organizations feel pressure to put someone, anyone, in the seat. The myth of “better someone than no one” takes hold. Corners get cut and training is deferred. And suddenly, the company has a manager who is learning people leadership in real time at the expense of their team.
The myths are stubborn. The convenient assumption is that competence automatically scales. If you can sell, you can lead salespeople. If you can code, you can run the engineering team. Reality says otherwise. The skills are not just different, they are often opposites. Management is less about doing and more about enabling others. These are entirely new skills that require an entirely new learning cycle.
Another myth is the “sink or swim” mentality. Struggle is seen as a rite of passage, as if drowning builds character. In reality, it builds resentment and turnover. Half of employees with poor managers say they plan to quit within the year. A third have already left jobs because of toxic cultures rooted in bad management. Struggle does not strengthen teams. It fractures them.
Poorly trained managers slow everything down. Mistakes ripple across teams and require others to correct them. Meetings multiply, confusion spreads, and productivity sinks. Studies show that poorly managed groups are 50% less productive and 44% less profitable than well-managed ones. That is not a small tax. It is an organizational drag that eats at growth quarter after quarter.
The true cost is not just errors. It is the opportunity cost. The energy that could have gone into innovation or strategy is wasted on fixing avoidable problems. Every hour spent cleaning up a manager’s missteps is an hour not spent creating value.
It is not only the company that suffers. The individuals themselves often see their careers stall. A strong contributor who is pushed too soon into management may fail publicly. Once that happens, it is hard to recover. They are no longer seen as promotable, even if the failure was caused by lack of support rather than lack of potential. The personal cost is resentment, frustration, and wasted ambition.
Nothing erodes employee morale faster than watching an unfit manager stumble through their role. Trust in leadership evaporates. Engagement scores plummet. Research shows managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. When the wrong people lead, the damage spreads beyond one team. It shapes the entire culture.
Accidental managers don’t just hurt the present. They distort the future. Weak managers become the examples future leaders learn from. Dysfunction replicates itself. Diversity of thought shrinks, because promotions reward familiarity rather than fresh capability. Over time, organizations risk becoming brittle, unable to adapt or innovate because leadership pipelines are clogged with mediocrity.
Yes, sometimes. A raw promotion occasionally reveals a natural leader. Someone who steps up, learns fast, and inspires a team without formal preparation. These stories get repeated like folklore. They are held up as proof that risk-taking in promotions is wise. However, they are the exception rather than the rule. They give someone an opportunity where they would have succeed anyway.
But these are lottery wins, not reliable strategies. For every one success, there are dozens of quiet failures that cost far more. The myth survives because people remember the heroes, not the wreckage left behind. Companies point to rare exceptions as justification for broken systems. When a company looks to unique outcomes as the expectations for how things should be, they set many others up for failure, dramatically decreasing their overall success rate.
The truth is that extraordinary individuals succeed in spite of the lack of preparation, not because of it. Systems that rely on luck are weak systems. Leaders should not emerge by accident. They should be identified, trained, and supported so that success is the rule, not the rare exception.
The first fix is simple: stop guessing. Companies need clear ways to measure leadership potential before promotion. That means assessments, simulations, and structured interviews that test more than technical ability. It means creating leadership “tryouts” through project ownership or mentoring roles. A consistent monitoring system of how they are viewed by their peers helps to see if they naturally ascribe leadership tendencies to this person. These tools reduce bias and reveal who actually has aptitude for, and the interested in, people leadership.
Even with better selection, promotion cannot be the end of preparation. It must be the start. Too often, managers are handed a title and little else. Instead, they should enter a structured path of support. Blended training, mentorship, and continuous feedback through technology tools should be the baseline. Technology can create fast feedback loops, while experienced leaders can provide human guidance. No manager should feel like they are alone on an island, left to make their best guess without external support.
Cultures must stop glorifying toughness as survival. Struggle without support does not make better leaders. It makes bitter ones. The philosophy must shift to equipping, not testing. Organizations that invest in management training see returns of $3 to $11 for every dollar spent. In some cases, the ROI reaches 415% annually. There are few investments with payback that clear.
Picture a workplace where frustration with leadership is not the norm. Where managers set expectations clearly, coach consistently, and model accountability. Employee engagement soars when leadership is not a daily obstacle. Performance follows.
New managers no longer burn out or wash out. They step into leadership with confidence because they have been prepared. Their careers rise instead of stall. This creates a stronger pipeline of leaders who can scale with the organization. Up and coming leaders have an example and playbook to follow. Momentum builds and continues to compound.
A mature system blends internal promotion with external hiring. Companies gain continuity and culture from within, while refreshing perspective with outside experience. This balance prevents stagnation and keeps the organization adaptable. Loyalty is honored, but not at the cost of capability.
Right now, the unspoken assumption in many companies is that leadership should be innate. Sink or swim is still the default. This is not strategy. It is abandonment. It is an abdication of responsibility that wastes both talent and trust. Companies would be wise to acknowledge the full costs of this short term thinking.
The cost is already clear. Productivity loss. High turnover. Toxic cultures. Billions in wasted potential. Disengaged employees cost the US economy an estimated $350 billion annually. Companies that continue to tolerate accidental managers will continue to bleed value.
The problem is not a lack of talent. The problem is a lack of systems to develop it. If organizations truly believe in their people, they must prove it by preparing them. Anything less is negligence disguised as tradition.
Accidental managers are not personal failures. They are symptoms of systemic neglect. Companies promote for the wrong reasons, fail to measure readiness, and then abandon managers to figure it out alone. The damage spreads from lost productivity to broken careers to eroded trust.
The cure is not complicated. Assess leadership potential before promotion. Provide structured training and mentoring after promotion. Break the myths that survival makes better leaders. Stop treating leadership as a natural progression and start treating it as a discipline that requires investment.
The reward is clear. Competent managers create engaged teams, healthier cultures, and stronger business results. When leadership is built with intention, organizations thrive. The only question is whether companies will keep gambling on luck, or start building systems that ensure every manager is ready to lead.
