Editorial
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The Future of Leadership Development: AI-Driven Manager Enablement
Most conversations about middle management start in the wrong place. They start with engagement scores, burnout surveys or coaching programs, as if the problem is that managers are not resilient enough. The real issue is structural. The role itself was never deliberately designed. It grew, layer by layer, and now it is carrying weight it was never built for.
Manager engagement has been falling steadily. Gallup’s latest data shows it dropped nine percentage points in just a few years, landing well below where individual contributors sit. That gap did not close because individuals became more engaged. It closed because managers ran out of room. And the instinct, like running a resilience workshop or offering a week off, does not address the actual cause.
The cause is role design. Or more precisely, the absence of it.
The Role Nobody Sat Down and Built
Here is what I see across organizations, including my own. A layer of people sit in the middle who are not fully managers and not fully individual contributors. Instead, they are both. Part of their job is doing work. They produce output, build decks, work in spreadsheets, delivering against their own goals. The other part is leading. They are coaching their team, delegating work, reviewing progress and keeping people aligned.
On paper, that split sounds reasonable. In reality, it breaks down quickly. The doing role and the leading role do not just compete for time. They require fundamentally different skills. Most managers were promoted because they were strong at execution. Very few were evaluated on whether they could coach, develop and lead others.
Over time, the tension becomes obvious. Managers focus so much on their own deliverables that leadership takes a back seat. At the same time, their teams are asking them for guidance. Their manager is asking for outcomes. Both demands show up at once, and the pressure sits squarely in the middle.
The pattern is predictable. During the day, managers spend their time supporting their team. Their own work gets pushed into early mornings, late evenings or weekends. The expectations of the role exceed the time and capacity available.
How Organizations Accidentally Build the Bottleneck
This structure rarely comes from a single decision. It builds gradually. A promotion here. An added layer there. An attempt to retain someone by creating a title.
Over time, the organization grows vertically. Not because the work demands it, but because it feels like the natural way to expand.
I aim to run our organization of 2,500 with three layers only. My advice is to work with the least amount of layers possible to unlock speed and collaboration. When the structure is simple, messages move quickly, priorities stay clear and work flows without much friction. Now compare that to an organization with six or seven layers. At that point, information gets diluted as it moves. Strategy loses clarity on the way down. Context disappears on the way up. The people in the middle are left translating, coordinating and absorbing pressure from both sides.
There is another issue that often goes unnoticed: span. When a manager oversees only a handful of people, the leadership portion of the role does not fill their time. Rather than rethinking the structure, organizations fill the gap with individual contributor work. Now that manager is carrying two jobs, not because the work requires it, but because the span is too narrow to justify a full-time people leader. A wider span would not just solve the capacity problem. It would force the organization to treat management as the actual job.
In cases where managers are splitting their time deliverables will always take priority. They have deadlines. People development does not. Over time, leadership responsibilities get deprioritized, even though they’re critical to long-term performance.
The Title Problem Makes It Worse
Organizations have tied progression too closely to management. For many employees, the only way to move forward is to take on a leadership title. That pushes strong individual contributors into roles that require a different set of skills.
I have seen this play out repeatedly. When increases or bonuses were not an option, titles became the substitute. Senior manager becomes director. Director becomes senior director. The role stays the same, but the title changes. Over time, layers build for reasons that have little to do with the work.
When promotions are driven by tenure or circumstance rather than the skills required to lead, the gap becomes clear. Titles increase, but capability does not always move at the same pace. Managers are left figuring it out in real time, often without the support they need.
The data backs this up. According to Skillsoft's Workforce Readiness Report, only 28% of employees strongly agree that their job description accurately reflects their day-to-day work. And 69% say they are only somewhat or not very clear on which skills actually matter for success in their role. Titles are moving. Job descriptions are not keeping up. And the people being asked to lead through that gap were never given a clear picture of what the role requires in the first place.
These decisions make sense in the moment. They help retain people and maintain morale. But over time, they create structural friction. Layers multiply. Expectations blur. The pressure concentrates in the middle.
Redesigning, Not Reinforcing
The answer is not another training program. It is a structural reset.
Start with an honest look at layers. Not every reporting line needs a manager. Some layers exist because they were convenient, not because they are necessary. Removing them does not reduce capability. It often clarifies accountability.
Next comes separating execution from leadership. In most fields, these are different roles for a reason. Coaching a team requires focus. Delivering complex work requires focus. Trying to combine both without adjusting expectations leads to trade-offs that are rarely explicit.
This is not just about workload. It is about skills. Organizations need to be clear about what leadership actually requires. Coaching, developing talent, setting direction and making decisions are distinct capabilities. Being strong at execution does not automatically translate into being strong in those areas.
When a hybrid role is necessary, it should be clearly defined. The balance between delivery and leadership should be intentional, not assumed. Workloads need to reflect that reality.
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Decision-making also needs to move closer to the work. Managers often carry accountability without authority. They are responsible for outcomes but lack the ability to make the calls needed to drive them. That slows everything down and adds to the pressure they already carry.
Finally, progression needs to shift. Advancement should reflect capability. The skills someone brings, the problems they can solve, and the outcomes they can drive should matter more than how many people report to them.
This Isn’t a Manager Problem
Addressing this requires leaders to look at the structure they have built and ask whether it is truly serving the work. Layers can feel like control. Hierarchies can feel like stability. But when they create bottlenecks, they start to work against the people inside them.
The people in the middle are not the issue. They are operating within a system that places too many competing expectations on a single role.
The answer is not to redraw the org chart and hope it works. It starts with understanding the skills required at each level, what the work actually demands, and whether the structure supports that reality. From there, the organization can be shaped to match the work, instead of forcing people to make outdated structure work.
Editor's Note: How else has middle management been feeling the pressure?
- Manager Burnout Is About More Than Workload — Burnout doesn’t only come from doing too much. It also comes from doing too much of the wrong things.
- Middle Management Is Stuck. Time for a Reset — Middle management is the glue holding workplaces together. So why aren't they better supported?
- First-Time Managers Need Help. Is AI Coaching the Answer? — The CCL reports 60% of new managers never receive training. Unsurprisingly, generative AI solutions are popping up to solve the problem. Are they the answer?
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