We spend a great deal of time talking about L&D departments, training budgets, learning platforms, facilitators and programmes.

But one of the most powerful influences on whether people actually develop at work may be sitting much closer to them.

Their manager.

Your managers may never design a course or facilitate a workshop, but they are teaching every day. They teach through what they delegate, what they explain, what they tolerate, what they reward, how they respond to mistakes and whether they create room for people to stretch.

And sometimes the lessons employees learn from their managers are much stronger than anything we teach in the training room.

An employee attends an excellent programme on innovation and returns to a manager who punishes every failed experiment. Another attends leadership training and learns the importance of delegation, only to return to a senior leader who wants to approve every decision. Someone learns how to give constructive feedback and goes back to a boss who becomes defensive the moment anyone challenges him.

The programme says, “Try this.”

The workplace says, “Don't you dare.”

Guess which lesson usually wins.

I know the developmental power of a manager personally.

During my National Service at GTP, my first boss could easily have treated me as exactly that: a National Service person who was there temporarily, junior and inexperienced.

He didn't.

When the Stock Planning Manager was away sick, he asked me to act in the role. He gave me an opportunity that was bigger than my experience at the time, but he trusted me enough to try. He also mentioned me to the CEO and introduced me to senior people who expanded my view of what might be possible for my career.

There was no formal development programme attached to it. No certificate. No learning platform.

But there was learning. A great deal of it.

Years later, I still remember what that experience taught me: sometimes people grow because somebody trusts them with work slightly bigger than the person they are today.

My boss was developing capability.

That is why I think we need to broaden our understanding of L&D. Delegation can be a learning intervention. So can coaching, feedback, exposure, a difficult assignment, an invitation to a senior meeting or a thoughtful conversation after somebody makes a mistake.

Some of the most powerful development opportunities in an organisation may never appear on the training calendar.

Yet we sometimes promote excellent technical performers into management and assume they will automatically know how to develop other people. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 reported that only 44% of managers globally said they had received management training. We expect managers to deliver results, manage performance, coach employees, navigate change, resolve conflict and develop talent, while many have received little preparation for the role itself.

There is an uncomfortable irony there.

We expect managers to develop everybody else, while sometimes doing very little to develop the managers.

There is also a challenge for L&D.

If managers are part of the learning system, we cannot continue designing programmes around them. Too often, a manager's involvement in employee development begins and ends with approving attendance. The employee disappears for two days, returns with a workbook and perhaps a certificate, and nobody asks what they learned, where they will apply it or what support they need.

That is not enough.

The manager does not need a 40-page guide. Sometimes the conversation can be remarkably simple: What did you learn? What will you do differently? Where can you practise it? How can I support you?

Those questions tell the employee that learning matters beyond the classroom.

And CEOs need to look beyond the training budget too. You can have an excellent L&D department and still have a weak learning culture if managers hoard knowledge, avoid feedback, refuse to delegate and give employees no room to stretch.

Equally, good managers can multiply the value of formal L&D by creating opportunities for employees to practise, experiment and grow.

“Your managers are already teaching. The question is whether they are teaching your people to grow, or teaching them to stay exactly where they are.”
Margaret Jackson

So perhaps the question for leaders is not simply, “How much are we investing in L&D?”

Ask instead:

“What are our managers doing every day to build the capability of the people they lead?”

Because your L&D system is much bigger than your L&D department.

Your managers are already part of it. The question is: what are they teaching?