What Got You Here.....Won't Get You There....

I am a fan of Scott Adams' cartoon strip 'Dilbert', the manager with the two cone hairstyle and poor man-management skills. Why? Well he is someone we have all met in the past, but if we are honest with ourselves we also have been 'Dilbert' at one time or another. Even though all of us want to be competent managers and leaders, ineffective practices are extremely common in the workplace.

Management skills are not simply common sense but represent the right attitude, learned behaviours and knowledge. When looking to promote someone to manager level, it is natural to consider those who are excellent contributors with great technical skills. However, the skill set and motivation needed to excel in managing people is very different to what is needed to do the actual work.

So why are management skills so important? How can training help?

Managers have the most significant impact on employee retention and customer satisfaction. Good communication skills, setting clear expectations, breaking down barriers, appreciating and recognising a job well done creates satisfied engaged employees. Happy employees make happy customers. One of the top reasons for leaving an organisation is the poor relationship with one's line manager. Lack of good management skills can lead to an unhealthy work environment, customer dissatisfaction, lower profits, and ultimately business failure.

For example, a good sales person is likely to be skilled at prospecting customers, selling the products and gaining new clients. He or she is usually motivated by competition, winning, being rewarded and striving for results and individual excellence. Managers of a sales team, on the other hand, need to help sales people set goals, monitor performance, provide feedback on what's going well and coach people to improve. Many top sales people don't initially enjoy or know how to manage people; they are more comfortable selling products than coaching others how to sell. The same situation can happen with people who excel at working with Technology and solving technical problems. They enjoy working with computers but may not be as comfortable in dealing with people problems. This discomfort can cause new managers to avoid approaching and communicating with their staff, in the hope the issues will solve themselves and go away.

Even when managers do try to coach and teach new employees how to do a job correctly, they may not be successful. They may assume that all people learn the way they did or that lecturing is the best way to train others.

I regularly have conversations with newly appointment managers who, after the promotion honeymoon period has ended, are struggling with their new role. They have found that their previous team mates, are no longer that matey. They may now be the line manager of someone who had applied for the same job but wasn't successful and are now struggling with the subsequent fallout from it. The fear of failure drives them to micro-manage and not be brave enough to delegate properly. They have no idea how to give productive and constructive feedback, so they either don't do anything and allow the issue to continue and grow, or they do and it ends badly, damaging the relationship and trust. Confidence and self belief in their own abilities begins to reduce, and that once confident, competent and high performing staff member can become demotivated and disillusioned not only with their role but with the organisation.

It is important to remember:

A weekend is not enough time to change from being a member of the team, to being a competent manager of the team!

Stephen Covey in his best selling book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" wrote about the transition from Dependence to Independence to Interdependence. When I am working with managers, their awareness is raised to the importance of their teams consisting of individuals who know and can carry out their own job 'Independently' and as a manager it is their job to ensure they get them there as quickly and efficiently as possible. It is therefore unfair to expect a manager to be able to manage others, if they haven't been given the opportunity to learn how to do it.

When managers get a chance to build their own skill set, customers benefit by dealing with more competent employees, employees benefit by having effective managers and managers benefit by having the skills to do their jobs well.

So how do we measure the ROI? A frequently asked question, accompanied by "it's expensive" or "we are too busy at the moment". The real question is this: What is the real cost of not training your managers?

Often companies don't account for the amount of money that is costs them to hold a meeting to resolve employee issues. It could cost more than £500 per hour of meeting time. The next time you are sitting in one of those meetings, calculate how much each individual is paid to attend the meeting. The wasted cost may surprise you!

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