Insights / Managers
Training managers to support someone who is struggling
A facilitated workshop raises manager confidence for these conversations by 68%. The same content as e-learning raises it by 23%. That difference is the entire argument for live delivery.
By McKinley Malbrough III, J.D., MS-HRM. Published September 26, 2026.
Short answer
Imperial College researchers compared the same manager mental health program face to face and online: confidence rose under both and rose further face to face. Unmind puts 16% of managers at no training at all, with nearly half of the trained getting a single session. Teach the opening line, the boundary and the handoff, not diagnosis, because a manager applying a symptom list to someone having an ordinary bad month makes things worse. Hold the frame with pairs and hypotheticals so the room does not slide into disclosure.
How much training do managers actually get for this?
Very little, and the shape of it matters more than the volume. 16% of managers report no mental health training at all in Unmind's survey of 2,500 respondents, while nearly half of those trained got a single one-off session and more than a third say they receive no ongoing support.
The result is predictable: 56% of managers say they feel equipped to support an employee experiencing difficulty, which means nearly half do not, and they are having the conversation anyway.
Does the delivery format really matter here?
More than almost anywhere else in the training catalog. Imperial College researchers compared the same manager mental health program delivered face to face and online. Confidence improved under both, and the face to face cohort improved more, with the gain sustained at follow-up.
That is not a small gap and it is not mysterious. The skill is saying an awkward sentence to a real person and tolerating the silence afterward. A video cannot make you tolerate silence.
What goes in the session?
The opening line, the boundary, and the handoff. Managers do not need clinical skill, and the handoff they need to know by name usually runs through leave and accommodation. They should not be given the impression they have any.
They need one sentence to open with, a clear statement of where their role stops, and the specific internal path to what comes next. Everything else in a session on this topic is decoration.
What is the most common mistake?
Teaching managers to diagnose. A manager who has learned a list of symptoms will start applying it to a direct report having an ordinary bad month, and the conversation that follows is worse than no conversation.
Teach the observation instead. Describe the change you noticed in the work, ask an open question, then stop talking.
How do I run it without turning the room into a disclosure session?
Set the frame in the first two minutes and hold it. Participants will bring their own experience to this topic, and a room that slides into personal disclosure is a room the facilitator has lost the ability to close safely.
Use pairs and hypotheticals rather than open plenary invitations. What to do instead of icebreakers covers openings that do not force self-exposure.
What does it change downstream?
The number to put in front of a budget holder is escalation volume reaching HR, tracked quarter over quarter, because every escalation avoided is HR time and HR time is the cost nobody forecasts.
The escalation number is the one to put in front of a budget holder, because every escalation avoided is HR time, and HR time is the cost nobody has forecast.
Where these numbers come from
| Unmind workplace mental health survey of 2,500 respondents, reported by HR Executive | 16% of managers report no mental health training; nearly half of those trained received a single one-off session; more than a third report no ongoing support. |
| Imperial College London, comparison of face-to-face and online manager mental health training | Manager confidence improved with both delivery modes; the greater change was observed with face-to-face training and was sustained over time. |
| Careerminds (an outplacement firm), The Leadership Readiness Gap, 2026 | 97% of HR professionals believe managers receive adequate training for emotionally sensitive conversations, against 41% of managers. |
Data current as of September 2026. Sources are linked where each figure appears.
Keep going
Facilitating after layoffs
When the whole room is struggling at once.
Difficult conversations training
The wider skill this sits inside.
What to do instead of icebreakers
Openings that do not force self-exposure.
Want this run for your own managers?
Book twenty minutes and bring the session you are trying to build.