Training for First-Time Managers: Start With Confidence, Not Skills

The obvious way to open a first-time manager program is with skills. How to give feedback. How to delegate. How to run a one-on-one. All useful.

But if you're the one deciding what goes into the program, I'd ask you to put something else first. Because the new manager sitting in that room isn't only missing technique. They're also stuck on a belief about themselves, and that belief shapes how they step into the role.

Here's the belief: "I need to feel confident before I can really lead."

I think it's backwards. And I think fixing it pays off far beyond the job. In my experience, working on insecurity, even a little, improves people's lives more than a promotion, a raise or a better standing ever does.

The belief that keeps new managers waiting

Almost everyone assumes confidence comes first and leadership comes after. Build it up, then step into the role.

It works the other way. Practicing leadership, as long as it's authentic and includes real self-expression, is the most effective way I know to build self-confidence. Not the only way. The most effective one.

The mechanism is simple. When you have something worth building, take responsibility for it and start acting, your skills grow. Reality starts to move in your direction, slowly at first. And your sense that you can make things happen, your self-efficacy, climbs with it.

The opposite also holds. The surest way to drain meaning out of a role is to shrink your sense of what you can influence. A new manager waiting to feel ready is doing exactly that, every day they wait.

So the first topic on my list isn't a skill. It's this reversal. You don't wait for confidence to lead. You lead, and confidence is what shows up afterwards.

The real pressure: what others think

If you want to understand a new manager's insecurity, don't only look at what they can't do yet. Look at whose opinion they're worried about.

And let's be honest about something. All of us care what other people think of us. It's not a character flaw. It's a basic survival need, psychological and biological. A new title doesn't switch it off.

Some new managers answer this with "I don't care what they think of me." I don't buy it, and I'd gently challenge it in the room. Usually that sentence gets adopted because not caring looks admirable. It's still about being respected. The need didn't go anywhere, it just got a nicer explanation.

There's a second trap worth naming, especially with smart, well-read people. The more personal-development language someone has, the more sophisticated their excuses become. Fear gets explained in therapeutic terms and starts to sound like wisdom. A good program gives people permission to call it what it is: I want to do this, and I'm scared.

Keep the frustration, drop the inferiority

One distinction I use a lot with the people I coach.

Someone I worked with was frustrated that her results weren't growing fast enough. She wanted more, now. I told her that's great. Every big jump I've had came from being annoyed that things weren't good enough yet. That annoyance is fuel. It pushes you into action.

The problem is what often rides along with it. The first time it happened to me, the frustration came packaged with inferiority. A voice saying I'm a zero for not being further along. That voice is what breaks the loop. So I told her I'm all for the anger and completely against the inferiority. They have nothing to do with each other.

For new managers this is gold. "My team isn't where I want it" is a healthy starting point. "I'm not cut out for this" is comparison talking. Teach them to tell the two apart.

A map of where a new manager's confidence sits

In my book I describe confidence through four positions, borrowed loosely from how a person grows up. I find it a very practical lens for looking at a cohort of new managers.

The fetal position. Like an infant: no sense of being able to influence anything around you. Adults land here too, in moments when they feel they can't affect anything.

The childlike position: influencing authority figures. Like a child who learns what works with the adults in charge. Grown people get stuck here by creating authority figures for themselves: the boss I have to win over, the policy that's to blame. For many adults, this is as high as their confidence ever gets.

The adolescent position: self-reliance. Like a teenager claiming independence and proving they can handle things alone. That independence comes with risk, failure and pain, the exact things we're taught to avoid, so plenty of people never fully get here.

The mature position: leadership. A position that sees what's possible and isn't afraid to share it so everyone benefits. It's the position we should be running teams and businesses from.

Now look at your new managers through this map. Who is still mostly trying to satisfy the person above them? Who is busy proving they can do it all alone? They need different things from the same program.

Why a moment of leading matters

Here's the part that changes how I'd design the program.

The act of leading throws a person, even briefly, into the highest version of their confidence. For a moment, they experience themselves at their best.

What happens next matters more than the moment itself. If they judge themselves for the gap between that version and their everyday self, the moment is wasted. If they take inspiration from it and aim to grow toward it, one experience like that can shift a lot.

This doesn't usually happen in a day. It gets built over time. But it can start from one specific trigger: a conversation, a course, a single talk.

So give new managers real, small moments of leading early in the program. Then debrief them with one rule: we're studying the best moment, not punishing the gap.

Confidence doesn't replace skills

I don't want to oversell this. A bigger role really does demand new skills. When someone moves from being part of a team to leading it, the missing skills are often the first thing they feel.

A while back I gave myself a new role: empowering people not only here, but around the world. That meant teaching in English. My English is good. I competed in debate in English. But the moment I tried to do my professional work in it, I found myself missing terms and words. My confidence dropped. And when my confidence was lower, every small interruption threw me off more than usual. A new skill was needed, not a pep talk.

The reverse mistake is just as common. A close friend of mine keeps deciding to get healthier and keeps suspecting some limiting belief is holding him back. In reality he knows how to cook exactly one dish. He's hungry, the fridge is empty. You could dig into his beliefs about cooking, but a few lessons with a good cooking teacher would get him further, faster.

A good first-time manager program checks both. Is this person stuck because of how they see themselves, or because nobody ever showed them how to do the thing?

Two exercises worth putting in the program

If confidence comes from evidence, give people evidence.

The first exercise I use is a certainty check in small groups. Everyone shares two to four real strengths they know they have. Then I remind them that this first test is biased. We're sometimes wrong in both directions. So we add a second, harder test: name one concrete achievement that proves it. It doesn't have to be huge. A very hard exam you passed. Helping someone through a complex task. Leading a study group. Something that challenged you, or that most people would find challenging, and you did it.

The second is a set of short interview conversations. Each manager asks a few people who know them what they see as their strengths and weaknesses. We all carry illusions about ourselves. Other people's answers give you a much clearer picture.

What I'd put on the agenda

If you want the short version for your planning document:

1. The reversal: leading builds confidence, not the other way around.
2. Caring what others think as a normal need, and the excuses fear hides behind.
3. Frustration versus inferiority.
4. The four positions, so each manager can see where they stand.
5. Early, real moments of leading, with a debrief that studies the best moment.
6. A clear split between confidence gaps and skill gaps.
7. Evidence exercises: strengths, achievements, interview conversations.

Built around your managers

Every group of new managers is a little different. Some are still performing for their own boss. Some are trying to carry the whole team alone. Some just need one specific skill nobody gave them.

That's why, for sessions like this, I build the talk around your event and the challenge your team is actually facing, rather than bringing a fixed deck. The topic can lean toward authentic leadership, management or influence, depending on what your new managers need to hear first. For a lot of rooms, that turns out to be this: you don't have to feel ready to start leading. Leading is how you get ready.