By Jonathan Justus | jonnynow.com | 25 May 2026
Photo: Annie Spratt via Unsplash (free to use).
Most of the people running teams were never taught how. Research from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) found that 82% of managers step into the role with no formal management or leadership training — a group the institute calls "accidental managers." The same body of work links that gap to a blunt consequence: roughly one in three employees has quit a job because of a poor manager.
The figure has hardened into a reference point for human-resources and learning teams since the CMI, working with YouGov, published it. It marks a sharp rise from the institute's 2019 estimate that around 68% of UK managers had no training, and it reframes a problem often mistaken for personality as one of preparation.
How managers are made — and unmade
The mechanism is familiar in most organisations. A strong individual contributor is promoted for technical excellence, then handed a team and expected to lead it on instinct. The skills that earned the promotion — producing the work — are not the skills the new job demands, which are delegation, feedback, prioritisation and difficult conversations.
Without training, managers default to what they have seen. Some replicate good habits; many reproduce the rigid or absent management they once endured. The CMI describes accidental managers as more likely to be reactive and less confident challenging poor behaviour, leaving teams to absorb the cost in lower morale and higher turnover.
Key statistic: 82% of managers have had no formal management training, and roughly one in three workers has left a job because of a bad manager.
Source: Chartered Management Institute / YouGov.
Why the gap costs more than it looks
The damage rarely appears as a single line on a budget; it surfaces as attrition, disengagement and stalled projects. Separate research cited by the CMI found that a sizeable share of employees report being less motivated because of ineffective management — a quiet productivity drain that compounds long before anyone resigns.
Trained managers behave measurably differently. The institute reports that those with formal development are more likely to trust their teams, to feel confident leading change and to call out poor conduct early. In other words, training does not merely polish technique; it changes how a manager holds authority day to day.
From accidental to deliberate
The remedy is not heroic. It is treating management as a discipline that can be learned rather than a reward that is assumed. That means equipping new managers before they take the reins, giving them clear systems for feedback and decision-making, and supporting them with structured coaching rather than leaving them to improvise.
Organisations that make that shift convert their most exposed layer — the front-line manager — from a source of risk into a source of stability. The accidental manager is not a character flaw. It is a training decision waiting to be made.
Watch: why leaders earn trust
In one of the most-viewed talks on leadership, author Simon Sinek argues that the best leaders make their people feel safe — the kind of trust the CMI links directly to trained, confident management.
Turn accidental managers into deliberate leaders
Elevana's PRO Leader programme gives managers the systems, clarity and influence that formal training is meant to provide — the difference, in the CMI's data, between a team that trusts its leader and one that heads for the exit.
Explore PRO Leader →No one is born knowing how to lead a team — and the organisations that remember to teach it keep the people who matter.