Your best individual contributor can become your worst manager when nobody teaches them how to lead people.
The biggest management mistake may happen before someone even gets the job. Organizations promote high performers into leadership, then expect people skills to magically appear. The result is weak management, frustrated teams, and missed potential. Leadership training, people skills, internal mobility, and manager development have to be connected.
In this episode… Lisa Perez breaks down why managers need training before they step into the role, how AI is changing the definition of a team, and why remote work has permanently changed the way managers need to communicate and lead.
Key Takeaways :
Being a great worker doesn’t automatically make you a great manager. High performance as an individual contributor and the ability to lead people require different skills.
Train future managers before the promotion. Succession planning should include people-skills training before high performers make the jump into management.
“Battlefield promotions” create avoidable problems. Promoting someone because they crushed their individual targets doesn’t mean they’re prepared to manage a team.
Remote work changed what effective management looks like. Lisa argues that working from home proved organizations can still operate effectively outside the traditional office.
Zoom itself became a management skill. Camera placement, engagement, platform features, and virtual communication now require their own kind of training.
Teams are changing too. Lisa sees the modern team as potentially including coworkers, AI agents, and technology working together to scale what people can accomplish.
This episode was recorded live at SHRM Annual 2026
The Heroes of HR podcast is a limited series sponsored by isolved.
isolved is an HCM platform that modernizes HR, benefits, and payroll across Healthcare, Hospitality, Manufacturing, and more.
Learn more about isolved: https://www.isolvedhcm.com/
Guest : Lisa Perez
Founder, NMTW / HBL Resources, Lisa focuses on the gap between promoting people into management and actually equipping them to lead. Her “Complete Manager Makeover” curriculum is built around closing that gap.
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaiperezsphr/
The Heroes of HR Podcast is hosted by
Amy Miller, Product Evangelist at isolved
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycmiller/
Ryan Leary, Co-founder at WRKdefined
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanleary/
William Tincup, Co-founder at WRKdefined
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tincup/
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