Somewhere in your organization this morning, a manager is being asked a question they can’t answer. Something has changed—a restructure, a new system, a policy that arrived without warning—and their team has come to them because that’s the natural thing to do.
That manager will do their best. They’ll say something reassuring but possibly a little vague, followed by a promise to find out more. Then the day will run away from them, nobody will follow up, the information gap will be filled by speculation, and a small amount of trust will quietly fade away.
That manager isn’t necessarily bad at their job. In fact, they’re likely very good at the technical aspects of it—good enough that they were promoted out of doing the work and into leading a team that now does what they once did.
What they may never have received is the support to understand how much their job has changed and what it really means to become a people leader. They were simply expected to become one of the most trusted sources of communication in the business and left to work out how to do it effectively.
Internal communicators have been raising this issue for years. Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2025/26 report found that 87% of communication and HR professionals see managers lacking the skills or capacity to communicate as a genuine risk to achieving their objectives. Yet only 21% of organizations provide managers with a toolkit to help them do it.
That’s a significant gap between what organizations expect from managers and what they equip them to deliver. It’s moving in the wrong direction, too: line manager effectiveness has climbed from the fourth-biggest risk to communication objectives to the third. We’ve noticed the problem, named it, and watched it get worse, which suggests that whatever we’ve been doing about it isn’t working.
Training is often part of the solution, and I know from my own work with managers that good training can make a difference: It provides useful skills, increases confidence, and creates a safe environment to practice.
However, training will always fall short when it’s treated as a standalone solution to a much broader organizational problem.
Where We’re Consistently Failing Managers
We hand over information and call it communication. When a big announcement is about to arrive, a manager often receives a briefing pack—sometimes not much before their team—with a request to cascade it. Some forward the pack untouched, some read from the slides, while others quietly put it off because they aren’t confident about the questions that will follow.
They’ve been given accurate information but no help turning it into a conversation or tailoring it to their team. As a result, what an employee understands about a major decision can depend almost entirely on which manager they happen to report to.
Managers are worth much more than cascading information. They help employees interpret what’s happening and understand what it means for them. They listen to concerns, provide context, notice when something hasn’t landed, and bring questions back into the organization.
We ask for authenticity and then hand them a script. In doing so, we immediately remove their opportunity to understand a decision well enough to explain it in their own words while staying consistent on the facts.
Authenticity also means being allowed to acknowledge uncertainty. Giving a manager the leeway to say, “Here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t know yet, and here’s when I’ll come back to you,” builds more trust than a polished but vague answer. A manager will only risk saying that if they know they won’t get into trouble for it, which makes this an organizational culture and psychological safety concern long before a training one.
Our managers are overloaded, and we keep piling on the communication. Managers are balancing operational targets, customers, administration, and the personal and developmental needs of their teams. Communication then arrives on top, often at short notice, with nothing taken away to make room for it.
A manager with multiple direct reports and back-to-back meetings may not have a skills gap at all. Instead, they’re more likely to have a time problem, an information problem, or a permission problem. Address those first, and the training that follows has a much higher chance of working.
And then nobody checks. 38% of organizations don’t track whether manager communication is working at all. Axios HQ’s 2025 research found that 80% of leaders think their communications are clear and engaging, yet only half of employees agree.
That gap sums up the problem: We measure communication by how clear it felt to send, rather than how clear it was to receive.
The more useful questions are whether employees received the information, understood it, trusted it, and took action as a result. Regular pulse questions, team conversations, focus groups, and other employee listening can show where communication is working and where managers need more support. This shouldn’t become another measure used to judge managers. It should help the organization understand what’s getting in their way and work out what to do about it.
What Would Help Managers?
Practice the conversations managers are facing. Not a fictional scenario or a generic competency framework, but the real conversations they’re dreading or struggling with: the team member who’s checked out, the restructure they can’t fully explain, or the feedback conversation they’ve been avoiding.
When I include this in manager training workshops, we use genuine examples and practice them out loud together. It can feel uncomfortable at first, but managers can explore what isn’t working, try a different approach, and build their confidence before having the conversation for real.
Bring managers in earlier. A lot of what looks like poor manager communication is really late manager communication. With more notice, managers can ask questions, work out what a decision means for their team, and think about how to introduce it.
Where possible, managers should also be invited to help shape how a change
You’re right. There was no good reason—I should have included it. Here’s the blog with American English spelling and Chicago-style punctuation, followed by the requested SEO details.
Why Manager Communication Training Keeps Falling Short
Somewhere in your organization this morning, a manager is being asked a question they can’t answer. Something has changed—a restructure, a new system, a policy that landed without warning—and their team has come to them because that’s the natural thing to do.
That manager will do their best. They’ll say something reassuring but possibly a little vague, followed by a promise to find out more. Then the day will run away from them, nobody will follow up, the information gap will be filled by speculation, and a small amount of trust will quietly fade away.
That manager isn’t necessarily bad at their job. In fact, they’re likely very good at the technical aspects of it—good enough that they were promoted out of doing the work and into leading a team who now do what they once did. What they may never have received is the support to understand how much their job has changed and what it really means to become a people leader. They were simply expected to become one of the most trusted sources of communication in the business and left to work out how to do it effectively.
Internal communicators have been raising this issue for years. Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2025/26 report found that 87% of communication and HR professionals see managers lacking the skills or capacity to communicate as a genuine risk to achieving their objectives. Yet only 21% of organizations provide managers with a toolkit to help them do it.
That’s a significant gap between what organizations expect from managers and what they equip them to deliver. It’s moving in the wrong direction, too: line manager effectiveness has climbed from the fourth biggest risk to communication objectives to the third. We’ve noticed the problem, named it, and watched it get worse, which suggests that whatever we’ve been doing about it isn’t working.
Training is often part of the solution, and I know from my own work with managers that good training can make a difference: It provides useful skills, increases confidence, and creates a safe environment to practice. However, training will always fall short when it’s treated as a standalone solution to a much broader organizational problem.
Where We’re Consistently Failing Managers
We hand over information and call it communication. When a big announcement is about to land, a manager often receives a briefing pack—sometimes not much before their team—with a request to cascade it. Some forward the pack untouched, some read from the slides, while others quietly put it off because they aren’t confident about the questions that will follow.
They’ve been given accurate information but no help turning it into a conversation or tailoring it to their team. As a result, what an employee understands about a major decision can depend almost entirely on which manager they happen to report to.
Managers are worth much more than cascading information. They help employees interpret what’s happening and understand what it means for them. They listen to concerns, provide context, notice when something hasn’t landed, and bring questions back into the organization.
We ask for authenticity and then hand them a script. In doing so, we straightaway remove their opportunity to understand a decision well enough to explain it in their own words while staying consistent on the facts.
Authenticity also means being allowed to acknowledge uncertainty. Giving a manager the leeway to say, “Here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t know yet, and here’s when I’ll come back to you,” builds more trust than a polished but vague answer. A manager will only risk saying that if they know they won’t get into trouble for it, which makes this an organizational culture and psychological safety concern long before a training one.
Our managers are overloaded, and we keep piling on the communication. Managers are balancing operational targets, customers, administration, and the personal and developmental needs of their teams. Communication then arrives on top, often at short notice, with nothing taken away to make room for it.
A manager with multiple direct reports and back-to-back meetings may not have a skills gap at all. Instead, they are more likely to have a time problem, an information problem, or a permission problem—address those first, and the training that follows has a much higher chance of landing.
And then nobody checks. Thirty-eight percent of organizations don’t track whether manager communication is working at all. Axios HQ’s 2025 research found that 80% of leaders think their communications are clear and engaging, yet only half of employees agree.
That gap sums up the problem completely: We measure communication by how clear it felt to send, rather than how clear it was to receive.
The more useful questions are whether employees received the information, understood it, trusted it, and took action as a result. Regular pulse questions, team conversations, focus groups, and other employee listening can show where communication is working and where managers need more support.
This shouldn’t become another measure used to judge managers, either. It should help the organization understand what’s getting in their way and work out what to do about it.
What Would Help Managers?
Practice the conversations managers are actually facing. Not a fictional scenario or a generic competency framework, but the real conversations they’re dreading or struggling with: the team member who’s checked out, the restructure they can’t fully explain, or the feedback conversation they’ve been avoiding.
When I include this in manager training workshops, we use genuine examples and practice them out loud together. It can feel uncomfortable at first, but managers can explore what isn’t working, try a different approach, and build their confidence before having the conversation for real.
Bring managers in earlier. A lot of what looks like poor manager communication is really late manager communication. With more notice, managers can ask questions, work out what a decision means for their team, and think about how to introduce it.
Where possible, managers should also be invited to help shape how a change is communicated. They often know things about the people closest to the work that never make it into the plan.
Give them support that reflects how they work. Different environments need different tools. A manager leading a frontline team without regular access to a laptop will need something very different from a manager running virtual meetings with a dispersed team.
When I work with frontline managers, communication support has to be straightforward, practical, and aligned with the flow of the working day. If a toolkit or cascade brief requires time, technology, or ways of communicating that managers don’t have, it’s unlikely to be used.
Keep coming back to it. A single workshop can provide a useful starting point, but communication improves through practice, reflection, and feedback. Managers need opportunities to revisit what they’ve learned, talk through new challenges, and learn from one another. More often than not, one manager hearing another admit that they found something difficult is what makes the biggest difference.
Make sure leaders are role models. Managers need to see good communication behavior from their own leaders, too. When senior leaders communicate the way they’re asking managers to, it builds confidence and makes the whole program far more likely to succeed.
Manager communication training keeps falling short because we’re treating it as a problem that training alone can solve. Managers need practical learning, realistic opportunities to practice, useful tools, timely context, permission to communicate honestly, and enough space in the working day to have proper conversations.
If you’re among the 87% concerned about manager communication, you probably already understand the problem. We keep telling managers that communicating well is one of the most important parts of their job—but what support have we actually given them to do it? If the honest answer is a slide deck and a bit of hope, that’s your starting point.