In every organization, there exists an essential yet all-too-often overlooked segment of leadership: the middle managers who form the backbone of daily operations. These aren't senior executives who receive specialized coaching, nor those who lack experience and may be enrolled in early manager training. They're the steady performers who keep things running day in and day out. Managers who are making do, holding on as best they can, while typical development programs pass them by.
This "forgotten middle" represents an enormous opportunity. When properly developed and supported, these managers become the driving force behind engaged teams, strong retention, and improved business performance. Yet traditional approaches to leadership development consistently fail to reach them effectively.
Most organizations understand that managers matter. Our research shows that employees with excellent managers are 5.3x more likely to see growth opportunities and 4.1x more likely to feel valued by their organization. Conversely, those reporting to poor managers are 10x more likely to leave within a year — with these departures representing nearly half of all voluntary turnover.
But knowing managers matter isn't enough. Despite significant investments in leadership development, organizations struggle to create meaningful impact because:
The result? A significant portion of your management layer — the people who most directly influence your employee experience — continues to struggle despite significant investments of time and resources.
Perceptyx’s research-based leadership development solution, Grow, fundamentally reimagines leadership development by transforming it from an episodic program into a continuous experience that's personalized, actionable, and measurable.
At its core, Grow creates a virtuous cycle between feedback and development. By connecting leadership behaviors directly to employee experience data, Grow surfaces exactly what managers need to improve and how those improvements will impact their teams. This creates development that's not just personalized but purposeful, focused on behaviors that truly matter.
Let's see how this experience-aware approach differs from traditional development through a simple example.
A manager receives feedback that they need to improve team communication. They attend a generic workshop on communication skills that offers best practices but lacks context about their specific team challenges. Back at work, they struggle to apply these concepts amid competing priorities. Six months later, with no follow-up or measurement, any initial improvements have faded.
The same manager receives feedback highlighting communication gaps, but Grow's AI Coach shows them exactly which communication behaviors their team needs most, based on employee experience (EX) data. The manager sees that psychological safety scores are low and learns that team members are hesitant to share concerns. AI Coach helps create a targeted development plan focused on the precise behaviors known to improve employees' sense of psychological safety at work.
Throughout the following weeks, the manager receives intelligent nudges in their workflow — micro-learning moments that provide practical guidance for upcoming team meetings, one-on-ones, and projects. These nudges aren't generic tips but contextual prompts informed by their team's actual needs. This allows the manager to apply learning within the context of real-world scenarios, creating a more psychologically safe environment in their everyday interactions with team members.
As the manager practices these behaviors, Grow measures both their engagement with development content and the impact on team metrics, as seen through changes in their teams’ sentiment over time. The entire experience flows naturally within their daily work, requiring minimal additional time while delivering maximum impact.
Grow's approach rests on four interconnected components that transform how managers learn and grow:
Early adopters of Grow have already seen impressive results. While the following story combines experiences from several of these early users into a composite hypothetical narrative, it reflects the transformative outcomes we've observed and demonstrates Grow's real-world impact.
Consider a global aerospace company with 10,000 employees and more than 800 frontline and mid-level managers that had arrived at a crossroads. Recent employee feedback had uncovered deep cultural challenges that threatened both performance and reputation. Teams reported feeling dismissed and unsupported. Internal communication was fractured. Trust in leadership had eroded to concerning levels. Many employees felt there was no safe path to raise issues without being labeled a problem.
These concerns weren't theoretical — they were having tangible negative impacts. Performance metrics were suffering. Safety initiatives were stalling. And the company's reputation was increasingly at risk.
The executive team recognized the urgency of the situation: if they couldn't rebuild trust between managers and their teams, cultural change would stall completely. But previous attempts at traditional leadership training had fallen flat. Generic programs failed to address the specific day-to-day leadership behaviors that needed changing, and couldn't rebuild credibility with a workforce that had already lost faith.
The company took a different path by implementing Grow. Rather than treating leadership development as a standalone activity disconnected from employee experience, Grow embedded development directly in the real experiences of employees.
The platform drew insights from engagement surveys, 360 feedback, and continuous listening to pinpoint exactly which leadership behaviors were doing the most harm, and where the greatest opportunities for repair existed. This data-driven approach revealed distinct patterns across the organization:
Grow used these insights to deliver targeted, behaviorally informed nudges and personalized AI coaching to over 800 managers across the organization. Unlike generic leadership tips, these interventions showed up directly in managers' workflow, helping them have better check-ins, communicate expectations more transparently, and encourage team voice without defensiveness.
Because AI Coach was connected to the EX dataset, it could deliver coaching that specifically addressed the issues most important to the company's teams and business priorities. Coaching wasn't just personalized to individual managers — it was purposeful, focused on what mattered most to employees and the business.
Within just six months, the company saw clear signals of progress:
Most importantly, the initiative began rebuilding the fractured trust between managers and teams. Rather than receiving generic leadership training disconnected from their daily challenges, managers received practical guidance directly relevant to their teams' needs. This relevance drove unusually high adoption rates among managers, creating a virtuous cycle of improvement visible throughout the organization.
What makes Grow fundamentally different is that it's not just personalized – it's "experience-aware." Built on the Perceptyx listening and action platform, Grow understands how teams are feeling, what behaviors are holding them back, and which cultural priorities matter most.
This integration enables Grow to foster trust through leadership development that's:
Grow demonstrates that effective development doesn't require more time — just smarter, more targeted approaches that meet managers where they are.
At a moment when organizations face unprecedented talent challenges, the "forgotten middle" of management represents both the greatest vulnerability and the greatest opportunity. By transforming how we develop these critical leaders, we can drive engagement, retention, and performance from the inside out.
Grow helps organizations take measurable, meaningful action – and gives managers at all levels the tools they need to lead effectively, develop continuously, and create the kind of team experiences that drive lasting business success.
Ready to transform your approach to leadership development? Download our comprehensive white paper, The Future of Leadership Development: AI-Driven Manager Enablement, to learn how organizations are moving from episodic training to continuous, personalized support that drives meaningful change. To learn even more, schedule a demo to learn how Grow can help your organization unleash the full potential of your management team.
And while you’re here, subscribe to our blog for more insights on employee experience, leadership development, and how data-driven approaches are transforming the workplace.