29 Jul Why do we keep setting our managers up to fail?

In one of our recent OD Café, we explored a pressing challenge many organisations face: Why are we doing so poorly at handling poor performance?

As we listened to our clients and broader community, two key insights stood out:

First, many of us simply don’t like discomfort. We shy away from tough conversations. Giving critical feedback, addressing underperformance, or confronting conflict head-on? It triggers all kinds of emotional responses like anxiety, fear of hurting someone or fear of rocking the boat. These are very normal human reactions.

Second, the people most often tasked with managing poor performance are line managers, and they’re typically the people who were promoted because they were excellent individual contributors. They’re experts in their field. They’re the ones who shine. Naturally, when it comes to promotions, these star performers are offered people-management roles and very few turn them down. But here’s the problem: technical brilliance does not automatically translate into management competence. And unfortunately, many organisations leave these new managers to “figure it out” on their own.

So, why aren’t organisations doing more to fix this?

At WorldsView, we’ve been talking (a lot) about the imbalance between leadership development and management development, especially for first-line and mid-level managers.

Here’s the truth: stepping into a people management role requires more than just a new title or expanded job description. It requires a deep mindset shift, from managing your own work to enabling the performance of others.

And that shift doesn’t happen by osmosis.

When organisations fail to equip managers with the tools and support they need, a few things start to happen:

• Teams disengage.
• Poor performance goes unaddressed.
• High performers get frustrated.
• And many promising managers start to feel like they’re failing — not because they aren’t capable, but because they were never truly set up for success.

So, what’s the answer?

Great management development isn’t just about skills training, it’s also about personal development. Managers need support to build the confidence, emotional resilience, and self-awareness required to handle hard conversations and lead people with clarity and compassion.

That’s where we come in.

Talk to us! We’ve helped managers across industries make this shift, and we know the difference it makes.

We’d love to hear from you:

• Are you a manager who’s struggling with performance conversations?
• Are you in HR, OD or L&D and see this playing out in your organisation?

Drop us a comment below or get in touch with me directly. Let’s start the conversation.

Written by: Liezel van Arkel