The pattern is all too familiar: A talented individual contributor is promoted to be a first-time manager. They start their new role brimming with excitement, only to realize in a moment of panic that they fundamentally lack the skills needed to do the job. Though they thought they knew the managerial role inside and out — after all, they watched someone else doing it for years — they quickly come to understand:

• They don’t know where their new job ends and their team members’ jobs begin.
• The specialized skills that drove their performance as an individual contributor are inadequate to the challenge of leading and managing people.
• They can issue orders but don’t know how to use “soft influence” to direct their team.
• They don’t know how to build appropriate managerial-employee relationships.

A recent nationwide study of more than 2,000 workers, the Oji Leadership Poll, conducted in partnership with The Harris Poll, helped paint a more complete picture of how first-time managers are impacting their teams. The survey revealed some startling results, showing that 4 in 10 employees felt “stress or anxiety about going to work” due to a first-time manager. More than 33% of workers surveyed lacked motivation, and 1 in 5 had trouble sleeping at night because of the poor skills of a first-time manager.

Where do these management failures lead? To unhappy teams, low engagement and lagging productivity. But perhaps most consequential for leaders is that more than a third of respondents (and a full 40% of women) had a desire to leave their companies due to a first-time manager.

In a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) article, Linda Hill, a Harvard Business School professor, bestselling author of “Being the Boss” and an expert collaborator on the issues faced by new managers, shares that, “In my research, I’ve seen how strong individual contributors are often promoted to management roles with little or no leadership training, with a ‘sink or swim’ philosophy. It’s no surprise that these untrained leaders often struggle in many areas, dragging their teams down with them in the process.’”

Many businesses don’t offer new managers formal training of any kind. And those that do typically offer low-cost or low-value video learning paths or brief workshops that are akin to reading a book on chess and expecting to start winning tournaments.

It’s not that these programs cover the wrong topics (though they often do) but rather that they suffer from two profound flaws: First, they are rarely based on cutting-edge, research-tested systems of thought. Instead, they present reheated business anecdotes and theoretical academic papers that don’t translate to real-world excellence. Even if you could integrate this learning into your behavior, it wouldn’t take you to the next level of performance.

Second, and most important, is that these programs conceive of their mission as one of knowledge transfer, as if a manager with the right information would do the right things. The trouble is, as is the case in most types of workplace learning, people don’t need information, they need skills. Skills are built over time with practice, feedback, reflection, discussion and more. Try fitting that into a half-day workshop.

Many learning leaders and executives recognize that leadership training for first-time managers is falling short. When executives say things like, “Our people enjoy leadership training, though we wish it would stick better,” they’re actually saying, “It’s nice that people appreciate the training, but we wish it actually worked.”

A New Path Forward

The Oji Leadership Poll also showed that four in ten workers rate first-time managers as being weak at “reducing conflict,” “handling difficult situations,” “providing quality feedback,” “running a productive meeting” and “making decisions.” Doesn’t every leader need to be competent, if not exceptional, at these basic skills? These findings confirm that a broad leadership learning deficit has hobbled organizations of all sizes and stature.

This leadership deficit is in large part the result of organizations’ continuing lack of attention to leadership mastery, rather than merely imparting leadership knowledge. It’s only when an organization works to grow their leaders’ skills step-by-step over time that leadership performance can thrive. It’s obvious when you think about it: Learning any behavior — an academic skill, a sport, a musical instrument — isn’t about gaining knowledge. Rather, it focuses on building skills with practice over time, using a variety of techniques.

When working to develop leadership mastery, organizations should choose an iterative approach to learning, breaking the learning journey into a series of bite-sized mini-lessons that are experienced over months, not hours. This approach takes advantage of pedagogical concepts like spaced repetition and spiral learning, leading not just to knowledge retention, but to lasting skills.

Keep in mind that while content may be king, that “content” doesn’t just refer to talking heads delivering information; in fact, building mastery requires hands-on activities, self-reflections, coaching, scenarios, role-plays and much more.

Through it all, remember that practice really does put employees on the road to mastery. Because of the confines of the traditional work week, practice is often overlooked. The good news is that learning technologies make it possible for employees to practice at their convenience, so they can build real leadership “muscles.”

Developing the Leaders of Tomorrow

There is no “quick fix” for developing a great leader. But the first and most important step, as corporate leaders, is to acknowledge that new managers don’t magically gain strong skills when they’re promoted. It’s our obligation as L&D leaders to help them acquire those skills.

Take a critical look at the training you’re delivering. Is it mastery-centered? Will your leaders still be using these skills five years from now? The potential for long-term skill application is the difference between delivering knowledge versus developing mastery.

Taking bold steps, today, to help your first-time managers become strong leaders will enhance your culture, retain your top talent and elevate your business results.