For many organisations, the summer months bring a change of pace. While some teams are planning around annual leave, HR and L&D often have a valuable opportunity to reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and where managers may need more support.
As managers take annual leave, organisations gain a different perspective on how leadership is working in practice. With managers away from their day-to-day responsibilities, teams are given the opportunity to work more independently, creating useful insight into both leadership capability and team effectiveness.
While no one expects everything to run exactly as it would if the manager were there, this period can highlight strengths, uncover development opportunities and reveal where additional support may be needed.
Rather than simply getting through the holiday period, it’s worth asking what you can learn from it.
Does the team continue to perform?
One of the biggest indicators of effective leadership is what happens when the manager isn’t there.
Do priorities remain clear? Are decisions still made? Does the team continue to collaborate and solve problems?
If work grinds to a halt or every decision has to wait until the manager returns, it may suggest that people have become overly dependent on one individual.
This isn’t usually because managers want to create dependency. More often, they’ve never been given the skills or confidence to delegate effectively, develop decision-making within the team or gradually build greater ownership.
These are all capabilities that can be developed through focused leadership development.
How could holiday cover become a development opportunity?
Annual leave often means people need to take on new responsibilities, whether that’s leading a team meeting, coordinating a project, making decisions or stepping in for their manager.
Rather than simply filling gaps, encourage managers to see these moments as valuable development opportunities.
Taking on additional responsibility, even for a short period, helps people build confidence, broaden their experience and develop leadership skills in a real-world setting. It also gives managers the chance to practise one of the most important leadership skills of all: delegation.
It can also reveal people who naturally step up when given the opportunity. While a few days of holiday cover won’t tell you everything about someone’s leadership potential, it can highlight individuals who show initiative, build confidence in others or thrive when given a little more responsibility. Those observations can provide useful input into future development and succession planning conversations.
HR and L&D teams can support this by encouraging managers to think about:
- Could someone else take this on while I’m away?
- Who would benefit most from the experience?
- What support or guidance will they need?
- What went well, and what could they do differently next time?
Some of the most valuable learning happens when people are trusted to stretch beyond their usual role, with the right support around them.
Where do managers struggle?
Managers often find preparing for annual leave surprisingly difficult.
They may feel unable to switch off, worry that things will fall apart without them, or spend hours trying to document everything before they leave.
These challenges can highlight where additional development would be valuable.
For example:
- Are managers confident delegating meaningful responsibility rather than simply allocating tasks?
- Do they communicate priorities clearly?
- Have they developed enough capability within their teams?
- Do team members understand how decisions should be made in their absence?
Rather than viewing these as operational issues, HR and L&D teams can use them to identify common capability gaps and shape future development programmes.
Are managers role modelling healthy leadership?
Another important question is whether managers feel able to genuinely switch off.
If managers continue responding to emails from the beach or spend their holiday checking in several times a day, they may unintentionally be reinforcing a culture where people feel they must always be available.
Healthy leadership includes creating teams that can operate confidently without constant supervision.
Developing delegation, trust and clear accountability doesn’t just improve business performance; it also supports manager wellbeing and creates more sustainable ways of working.
Turning observations into action
The summer period provides a unique opportunity to gather evidence rather than assumptions about leadership capability.
As September approaches, ask yourself:
- What patterns have we noticed while managers have been away?
- Which leadership strengths have become visible?
- Where have capability gaps emerged?
- What should we prioritise in our next phase of manager development?
The answers can help ensure your leadership programmes address the challenges managers are actually facing, rather than the ones we assume they have.
At Willow & Puddifoot, we believe leadership is a craft. Like any craft, it develops through practice, feedback and continuous learning. Sometimes the most valuable learning comes from observing leadership in action and using those insights to shape what happens next.
About the Author
Louise Puddifoot is the founder of Willow & Puddifoot, where she and her team CRAFT™ confident, capable leaders at every stage. With over 20 years’ experience in leadership and learning, Louise designs practical development that builds confidence, capability, and impact. Her work is built on the CRAFT™ Leadership Framework, focusing on communication, resilience, authenticity, future focus, and transformation, to create real behaviour change that lasts.