Quick answer:
Busy managers are more likely to engage with learning when it is easy to access, immediately relevant and useful for challenges they are facing right now. Rather than adding more training to an already crowded workload, L&D should make leadership development flexible, practical and available at the point of need.
Managers need development. That’s not particularly controversial.
Finding somewhere to put it in the working week is another matter.
The role of the manager has grown. They are expected to lead performance, coach people, communicate change, support wellbeing, resolve problems and provide clarity when they may not have much themselves.
None of that makes their own development less important. It just makes it much easier for learning to become the thing they’ll get to when everything calms down, which never really happens…
So perhaps the challenge for L&D isn’t simply getting managers to make more time for leadership development training. It’s creating development that can genuinely earn a place in the time they have.
The manager’s workload has changed
We’ve explored this growing pressure before in our piece on the rise of the “megamanager”: managers being given bigger teams and broader responsibilities, often without an equivalent increase in support.
Now, new research into the hidden reality of leadership adds another layer.
Leaders aren’t only delivering the things that appear on plans and performance dashboards. They’re also absorbing ambiguity, creating clarity, maintaining confidence through change and doing a lot of the human work that keeps teams functioning when things aren’t straightforward.
And that work has a cost. Nearly half of the leaders involved said succeeding in their role came at a significant personal cost, depleting things such as sleep, energy, wellbeing and emotional bandwidth. What’s clear is that leaders need healthier working habits, better support systems and learning that doesn’t add to the pile.
Being busy doesn’t mean managers don’t want to learn
Low engagement with manager training can easily be interpreted as a lack of interest.
Sometimes it’s simply a lack of space.
Manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% between 2024 and 2025, while growing spans of control are putting additional pressure on their role. Good management training can help, but there’s an obvious tension: the people who need support still need enough time and headspace to engage with it.
And many haven’t had enough support to begin with.
82% of managers are promoted into management without formal management or leadership training, while another recent study found that 51% of professionals had entered people management without formal leadership training.
We are, in other words, asking a lot of people who may never have been properly taught how to do the job.
Start with what the manager is trying to do
Most managers aren’t sitting at their desks thinking, I really need to work on my leadership competencies today.
They’re thinking:
- How am I going to give this feedback without making everything worse?
- Why won’t this person take ownership?
- How do I explain this change to my team?
Those are management problems, but they’re also opportunities to practise.
Knowing the theory behind a difficult conversation is useful. Finding the words when the other person disagrees, gets defensive or says something you weren’t expecting is where the skill gets tested.
Simulation gives managers the chance to practise that bit.
They can try the conversation, see how it develops, change their approach and have another go before the stakes are real.
There’s good evidence for learning this way too. A meta-analysis of 145 empirical studies found simulation-based learning had a large positive effect on learning complex skills.
It’s also the thinking behind the Video Arts AI Coach, where learners can practise realistic workplace conversations in a safe, judgement-free setting.
For a busy manager, that makes the development much closer to the reality of the job. The skill isn’t floating around as an abstract concept. There’s a situation, a conversation and an opportunity to practise handling it better.
Not everything needs to become microlearning
Making learning work for busy managers doesn’t mean squeezing everything into three-minute chunks, some things deserve more time.
Workshops give people room to explore ideas properly, and group learning lets managers hear how other people are tackling similar problems.
But a lengthy session doesn’t have to carry an entire development journey on its back.
Classroom learning might introduce a new skill with the depth it needs. Shorter learning can revisit it, reinforce it or show it from another angle. Practice can turn the idea into something the manager is actually comfortable doing.
That matters because leadership skills aren’t generally learned once and neatly filed away.
Only 30% of professionals say they have enough opportunities to develop new skills, with lack of time and competing priorities among the barriers.
People need more than exposure to a skill.
They need chances to use it.
If you want attention, give people something worth paying attention to
Busy managers aren’t only short on time, they’re short on attention too.
So learning that takes a long scenic route towards relevance is going to struggle.
For behavioural and leadership skills, there’s a big difference between explaining a skill and showing it in action.
Take delegation. You can define it, list the dos and don’ts, and explain why sharing responsibility matters.
Or you can show a manager confidently handing over a piece of work, then almost immediately talking themselves out of it. They start by offering support, then add a few “helpful” instructions, then a couple more checks, and 30 seconds later they’ve effectively taken the whole thing back.
It’s hyperbolic, but recognisable. And that’s part of what makes it work.
Humour is a great tool for engagement in learning. While the scenario itself gives learners something concrete to notice and remember, humour creates the hook to hold their attention.
We’ve been keeping learning funny for over 50 years, so we know a thing or two about engaging workplace learning.
That approach runs through our leadership and management and talent learning, where familiar workplace situations bring topics like delegation, coaching, feedback and performance management to life.
The real test comes after the learning
Getting someone to watch, click or complete something is useful.
But it isn’t the end goal.
The interesting bit is what happens when the situation turns up for real.
- Does the manager spot themselves starting to micromanage?
- Do they approach the feedback conversation differently?
- Do they ask one more question instead of jumping straight in with the answer?
That’s where learning starts turning into behaviour.
The opportunity to practise and apply learning back at work plays an important part in whether development actually sticks.
Sometimes the change will be obvious. Sometimes it’ll be a small adjustment in how somebody approaches a conversation.
Either way, it’s more meaningful than knowing they reached 100% on the progress bar.
Useful learning earns repeat visits
We also need to get away from the idea that learning has done its job because someone completed it once.
A manager can understand coaching perfectly well during a course and still want another look when they’re preparing for a conversation six months later.
They might remember the broad idea but forget the detail.
Or know exactly what they should do and want a little confidence before doing it.
That’s where a good learning library becomes useful.
It isn’t just somewhere to complete content. It’s somewhere people know they can come back to when a topic becomes relevant again.
And if the learning was engaging the first time enough, they’re far more likely to remember it’s there.
Training can’t fix an impossible job
There is, however, a limit to what even brilliant leadership development can solve.
If a manager has too many people, too many priorities and not enough time, we shouldn’t respond by teaching them to endure the situation more efficiently.
Development can help managers delegate better.
It can help them coach, communicate through change, manage conflict and have better conversations.
But capability and capacity are different things.
As we explored in our megamanager article, you can give someone all the right skills and still create a job that’s incredibly difficult to do well.
Some problems need training.
Some need the organisation to look at what it’s asking of its managers.
Knowing the difference is part of supporting them properly.
Leadership development has to earn its place
Busy managers don’t need convincing that being a better manager matters. What they need is learning that feels worth the time.
Something relevant to the problems they’re dealing with, engaging enough to hold their attention, gives them a chance to practise rather than only telling them what ‘good’ looks like and skills they can apply to their role.
Leadership development will always ask for some of a manager’s time, the least it can do is give them something useful in return.
Want learning your managers will actually engage with?
At Video Arts, we’ve spent more than 50 years making workplace learning people actually want to watch.
From funny, story-led videos and interactive learning to realistic AI coaching simulations, we help managers build the skills they need for the conversations and challenges they face at work.
If you’re looking for a more engaging approach to leadership and management development, get in touch with the Video Arts team.
Tell us what your managers are dealing with, and we’ll show you how we can help.
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