Most new managers in Asia are promoted because they were good at the job, then given a team and very little else. The skill that got them promoted is not the skill the new role needs. Leadership development closes that gap, and the evidence is clear that it happens mostly through real work rather than in a classroom.

Here is what works, what the research says about the balance, and what HR can put in place.

Why does this matter now?

Companies across the region are expanding fast, running hybrid teams, and promoting people into management sooner than they used to. That combination produces a lot of first-time managers learning on the job with no support.

When a manager hasn’t been developed, you see it quickly. Instructions land ambiguously. Small disagreements grow because nobody addresses them. People stop asking for help. Eventually the good ones leave, and they usually leave the manager rather than the company.

The Society for Human Resource Management continues to rank manager development among the highest-priority investments for building workforce capability. It is also one of the easiest to underfund, because the cost of not doing it shows up somewhere else on the balance sheet.

What makes leadership different in Asia?

The principles travel. The practice needs adapting.

In many organisations here, seniority carries real weight in how teams operate. A manager who waits for the team to volunteer opinions will often wait a long time, and will mistake that for agreement. Drawing out quieter people is an active skill, not a passive stance.

Most teams are also genuinely multicultural, with people bringing different assumptions about feedback, directness and pace. A manager who leads everyone the same way will land well with some and badly with others without understanding why.

So alongside the usual management competencies, managers here need communication, relationship-building and cultural awareness. Our piece on cross-cultural leadership in Asia goes deeper on this.

How do managers actually develop?

Mostly not in training rooms. The 70-20-10 framework from the Center for Creative Leadership puts it roughly as:

  • 70 percent from real work: stretch assignments, difficult projects, decisions with consequences
  • 20 percent from other people: coaching, mentoring, peer conversation
  • 10 percent from formal training

The ratio is approximate and it is often quoted too literally. The useful point is the ordering. Most organisations spend most of their budget and nearly all of their attention on the 10 percent, then wonder why a two-day course didn’t change anything.

That is what the numbers are really telling you. Formal training gives managers language and frameworks. Applying them under pressure, with someone to talk it through with afterwards, is what turns them into capability.

What does a good programme include?

Four components, and the value comes from combining them.

  • Coaching. The highest-impact element. Managers get honest feedback on how they actually come across, which they almost never get from anyone else.
  • Stretch assignments. Real decisions with real consequences, with support available. This is the 70 percent, and it is free.
  • Peer groups. Managers facing the same problems talking honestly to each other. Cheap, consistently well-reviewed, and usually the first thing cut.
  • Formal training. Gives the foundation. Necessary, not sufficient.

If you can only fund one, fund the coaching. If you can’t fund coaching, set up peer groups and give managers deliberate stretch work. That costs almost nothing and outperforms a workshop on its own.

How should HR structure the pathway?

The shift worth making is from isolated sessions to a progression tied to career stage:

  • First-time managers need the basics: delegation, feedback, running a meeting, having a difficult conversation
  • Mid-level managers leading larger or multiple teams benefit most from coaching, because their problems are increasingly specific to them
  • Senior leaders need strategic capability and the ability to develop others
  • Everyone needs the learning tied to a real problem they currently have, not a hypothetical one

Tie development to progression and you build a pipeline. Run it as an annual event and you build a calendar entry. The same principle applies to team training: structure beats occasion.

Questions we get asked

How soon should a new manager be trained?
Before or immediately after they take the role, not six months in. By then they have established habits with their team, and habits are much harder to change than to form.

Is coaching worth it for first-time managers, or just senior leaders?
It works at both levels, but if budget is tight, first-time managers usually give the better return. They affect more people directly and their habits are still forming.

How do you measure whether leadership development worked?
Look at the team, not the manager. Retention, engagement, whether problems reach the manager early. A manager can enjoy a course without anything changing for the people who report to them.

Does 70-20-10 mean training isn’t worth funding?
No. It means training on its own won’t do it. The 10 percent works when it is followed by application and conversation. Without those, it is a good day out.

Finding the right partner

Leadership development works when it is tied to real work and reinforced afterwards, which makes the provider’s design approach more important than their content library.

Growth Academy Asia matches HR and L&D teams with vetted providers across Hong Kong and Asia. We don’t deliver training ourselves. We interview every provider before they join the platform, and we match on fit against your brief. Tell us what you need and you’ll have tailored proposals within 24 hours, or browse the directory.

Stuart Harris is co-founder of Growth Academy Asia. He has spent over 20 years working with HR teams and training providers across Hong Kong and Asia.