Managers learn by practicing, not by reading the handbook
Most manager training I’ve seen follows the same pattern. A deck. A framework with a memorable acronym. A few role-play exercises everyone finds a little awkward. Then everyone goes back to work and forgets most of it by Friday.
It isn’t that the content is wrong. It’s that the format doesn’t match how management actually gets learned.
The hard moments are rare
Think about the moments that really shape whether someone is a good manager.
The first one-to-one with a new hire. Telling someone their work isn’t where it needs to be. Noticing that a new person is quietly struggling and not saying so. Delivering news someone doesn’t want to hear.
A new manager might face each of these only a handful of times a year. That’s not enough repetition to get good, and every one of those reps happens with a real person on the other side, which is a high-stakes place to practice.
Reading about it isn’t rehearsing it
You can’t learn to have a hard conversation by reading about one, any more than you can learn to drive from the manual. You need to make a choice, see what happens, and try again.
That’s why I’m more interested in practice than in content. Give managers realistic situations, let them choose how to respond, show them the likely consequences, and let them do it again without anyone getting hurt. Repetition is cheap in a simulation and expensive in real life.
Why a game
After building an onboarding game for new hires, the obvious next question was whether the same approach could work for managers. I think it can, and it’s what I’m building next: short scenarios drawn from the moments that matter most, with choices, consequences, and a reason to replay them.
The goal isn’t to gamify leadership. It’s to give managers more reps at the moments they’ll otherwise only meet for the first time when it counts.
What good practice looks like
A few things I’m holding myself to:
- Real situations, not trick questions. If the right answer is obvious, it isn’t practice.
- Consequences, not scores. Show what happens next, not a percentage.
- Short enough to repeat. Five minutes, not an afternoon.
- Connected to the real work. The scenarios should mirror the conversations the onboarding system already prompts managers to have.
Managers are part of almost every people outcome a company cares about. They deserve better preparation than a deck and a good luck.