Role-played empathy, laminated scripts, and no actual skill development
Walk into a manager training session and you’ll likely find stale coffee, a tired facilitator, and someone reading off a PowerPoint like it’s sacred text. There’s a laminated worksheet titled something like “Effective Communication in the Modern Workplace.” You’ll be asked to role-play empathy with someone named “Alex,” who’s pretending to be upset. The script says: nod, validate, offer options.
It’s adult daycare. But with buzzwords.
Training isn’t development. It’s damage control.
Most manager training is reactive, not generative. Something breaks-retention, morale, a lawsuit-so HR rolls out a course. In theory, it’s about upskilling leaders. In practice, it’s about saying we did something.
Ask any mid-level manager what they remember from their last session. Odds are, they’ll mention the awkward group activity or a vague acronym. They probably won’t say it made them better at handling actual conflict or building trust.
Because these sessions aren’t designed for depth. They’re designed for coverage. Cover harassment. Cover bias. Cover communication. Cover your ass.
Quoting the script doesn’t make you a better leader
Managers are taught to “hold space.” But no one explains what that means. They’re told to “lead with empathy,” but only in the narrowest, most polite ways. There’s no room for discomfort, nuance, or the kind of relational messiness that real teams bring.
The goal becomes appear empathetic, not be someone people trust.
It’s theater. Perform the right moves. Say the correct line. Use phrases like “I hear you” and “thank you for sharing” at the appropriate beat. The laminated script is gospel.
In The Stupidity Paradox, Alvesson and Spicer describe this kind of behavior as functional stupidity-organizations reward people for avoiding deep reflection, and just doing what looks right. It’s all appearance, no insight. The manager plays the role. HR applauds the performance. The system stays safe from scrutiny.
Here’s what would actually help
- Train managers in real-time problem solving.
Bring them cases from their teams, not case studies from some 2008 HR binder. - Ditch the jargon.
If you can’t explain it in words your team would actually use, it’s not useful training. It’s branding. - Build spaces for managers to screw up and learn.
Not every mistake is a fireable offense. But if you train managers to fear being wrong, you’re just training robots who play safe and say nothing. - Pair learning with power.
Don’t teach managers to be better at listening if they don’t actually have any decision-making authority. That just breeds resentment-for them and their team. - Stop pretending training is enough.
If you’ve got a culture problem, a two-hour Zoom isn’t your savior. Leadership behavior needs to shift first. The fish rots from the head.
