The Leadership Gap No One Talks About: Manager Training Isn’t Equitable

The Myth of Equal Opportunity

We like to tell ourselves that leadership potential is everywhere — and it is. But access to high-quality development opportunities? That’s another story.

In well-funded companies, leadership training is often baked into a person’s journey up the ladder. There are curated cohorts, off-site retreats, executive coaching sessions, and whole departments devoted to employee development. In contrast, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and small businesses often rely on outdated slide decks, ad hoc mentorship, or a trial-by-fire approach to management. It's not just a resource gap, it’s an equity issue.

The problem deepens when we look at who is already underrepresented in leadership: women, especially women of color, first-gen college graduates, people with disabilities, and others from historically excluded communities. These groups are more likely to work in sectors with fewer resources for professional development. And when leadership training is offered, it’s often built on norms, examples, and case studies that weren’t designed with their experiences in mind.

Why It Matters

Lack of access to quality management training doesn’t just affect individual careers, it affects whole workplaces. Poorly trained managers contribute to higher turnover, employee dissatisfaction, and uneven performance. When rising leaders don’t see themselves reflected in the people giving the training, they’re less likely to internalize those lessons or feel like they belong in the role.

What’s more, skipping leadership development altogether often results in promoting based on tenure or individual technical performance rather than actual leadership readiness. That perpetuates cycles of dysfunction and reinforces the status quo, making it even harder for new, diverse leadership voices to emerge and thrive.

Building Better, Smarter, More Equitable Support

So what do we do?

We stop thinking of leadership development as a perk and start treating it as infrastructure. Just like data systems or compliance tools, manager training is foundational to organizational health, especially if we want equity to be more than a buzzword.

And we stop acting like one-size-fits-all training works. Leadership development should be adaptable, culturally responsive, and accessible in both cost and design. That means:

• Funding leadership pipelines specifically for staff from underrepresented communities.

• Embedding coaching and mentorship into everyday workflows, not just annual retreats.

• Valuing emotional intelligence, cultural competence, and systems-thinking as core management skills, not optional extras.

• Training managers on how to develop other managers, so we don’t rely on a single charismatic leader to “fix” culture.

One of my most effective tools as a leader is to model the behaviors and practices I hope others will emulate. For example, I hold quarterly coaching sessions with each of my managers, not just to support their individual growth, but to transparently demonstrate the mechanics of effective coaching. I’m explicit about what I’m doing and why — framing questions, drawing out reflections, setting goals — so they can experience the impact of coaching while also seeing how to replicate it. It’s a dual-purpose approach: I’m investing in them as professionals and, at the same time, equipping them with a leadership tool they can confidently use with their own teams.

A Call to Millennial Managers

Millennial managers — many of us got here without formal training. We learned through Google searches, uncomfortable mistakes, and asking for advice from that one cool supervisor who seemed to get it. If we’re going to change the future of management, we can’t hoard that knowledge.

Let’s normalize talking about the learning curves, the access gaps, and the emotional toll of leading without support. Let’s advocate for the budgets and tools that actually build leadership capacity — especially in the organizations doing the hardest work with the fewest resources.

And most importantly, let’s make sure that leadership development is not just available to those who can afford it or who look the part. If we want more inclusive workplaces, we need to pave more inclusive paths to leadership.

The gap won’t close itself. But we can choose to build bridges instead of ladders. If you have ideas on how to build bridges, drop your thoughts in the comment section.