Let’s be honest, manager’s get a bad reputation. How many times have you read the article attention grabber “People do not leave their companies, they leave their managers” or these days seen a millennial “Tik-tok” humorously, (but seriously) discussing a fear of getting fired after receiving an ominous and urgent message from their manager? How often have you listened to a friend share frustration related to not receiving a pay raise or promotion in years but not knowing how to approach their manager? What about all those times your colleagues have shared a brilliant idea with you only to complain that their manager took that idea and presented it with their own boss and absorbed credit for it? Micromanagement… meeting overload…inequity of treatment in employees… low emotional intelligence… dominating… missing in action… the list goes on and on of common complaints employees have with management (do not get me wrong, there are some amazing managers out there… we will get to that). The data is prevalent on the impact managers have on employee job satisfaction as well as the data is strong to support that employees do in fact site their managers a core reason for leaving a position. However, what if we flip the script on this, what if we change the narrative a bit, what if I tell you, it is not the fault of the manager?
Managers are not equipped to effectively fulfill their roles
For years in my professional career I heard the comment surrounding how managers are often promoted due to technical expertise or mastery of a process or functional understanding and that managers are not trained and are ill-equipped to handle the shift from an individual contributor to being responsible for a group of people. Having gotten t see inside hundreds of organizations for over a decade while supporting helping organizations focused on implementing changes, they all always ended up discussing a point similar to this statement. However, almost never did I see organization doing much of anything to solve for it. Conversations surrounding poor employee satisfaction surveys, low engagement on the latest and greats “new solution” that has been implemented, high turnover, poor culture, lack of accountability and the list goes on – but rarely did any of the companies I observed talk about making radical shift in the way managers are prepared to support and equip their employees and their peers and work with their managers.
Organization’s expect to pour so much out of this middle layer, yet pour so little in to it. Now, let me be clear, I have seen organization’s with extremely robust training programs for managers (so many pride themselves on just that “join our MIT (Manager in Training) Program and again, do not get me wrong they are great – in specific focuses:
Hiring and Firing
Conflict Resolution
Delegation
Planning
Risk Management
Compliance
Decision making
Accessibility training
Diversity and Inclusion
Budget Management
Strategy and Forecasting
Managers are lacking Fundamental Training on Critical Skills
What is almost always missing are the fundamental skillsets required to succeed in engaging directly with other humans and doing so in a capacity that you are seeking to drive the best outcomes from them for their own individual growth but also to achieve your results and outcomes that rollout to the businesses strategic initiatives. These skillsets are often passed off as “soft skills” and the best managers are said to have these skills “innately” and these comments are taken for fact and these critical skills, which are actually the hard and completely necessary skillsets are left out of training. Skills such as;
Authenticity – how do I establish my own leadership style and set meaning in my intentions for managing my team?
Vulnerability – how do I show up authentically with my leadership style, while also recognizing I am growing right along with my team? How do I lead when I do not have all the answers and may not be getting all the support I need from my own manager?
Empathy – how do I meet my people where they are at in their personal lives because that intersects with how they will show up at work each day?
Flexibility – Work is changing, in every industry, for every person. How do I integrate flexibly in to my own leadership style by breaking down my own antiquated views of how work has to happen while ensuring I stay within the bounds of what my organization would deem appropriate for flexibility?
Boundaries- how do I set my own personal boundaries to separate or integrate my work-life and my personal-life. How do I shift my mindset that boundaries support my performance and do not take away from it. After I have established my own boundaries, how do I help my team do the same and how do I honor those boundaries?
Advocacy – How do I plan to drive growth in each individual, and how do I show up as an advocate in everyday situations that will set my team members up for significant career growth, even if it means that growth has them move beyond my own team?
Follow-through – how do I actually do what I committed to doing so I do not lose trust from my employees?
These skillsets are the foundation for building excellence within management and the pillars to establishing trust and becoming a manager that people want to work for. They have to precede the other training – because it is a lot easier and more cost effective for an organization to get a manager more help on nailing their budget forecasting skills than it is to replace the employees who leave because their managers treat them poorly or as means to end. Managers impact the health and wellbeing of not only the organization’s bottom line, but of each and every person who work for them. It is too important to get wrong.
For a self-guided manager planner that begins to introduce these foundational skill sets click here:
For information on training for managers in these fundamental areas click here:
For coaching for managers, management teams or executives: click here.
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