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Good Managers are
Built, Not Born
by Jit Agarwal |
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| Management
Development
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Unlike good
athletes, who are often said to be "born" with the right tools to
succeed in their profession, good managers become successful by acquiring their
skill set over time, rather than inheriting it. The art of management is not
one that can be easily distilled into a formula and many books have attempted
to address this topic to varying degrees of success. Yet, the lack of good
management pervades corporate America, especially in the technology sector. It
is a sad truth that it often takes the presence of bad management for
employees, customers and the organization to realize the importance of a good
management. The necessity to groom good managers is the burden of every
organization that wishes to succeed. Below are five pitfalls an organization
should avoid in its endeavor to create outstanding managers.
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Promoting for Individual Achievement: Many organizations promote
employees who have exceeded their individual goals to management positions.
Elevation to a management position is often seen as the desired end goal or
just reward. Unfortunately, often this has exactly the opposite affect for both
the employee and the organization. Many employees who are awe-inspiring
individual contributors are frankly not prepared for the new challenges of
managing a team of people. In fact, it is often the singular focus on one's own
efforts and abilities, which generally leads to superb individual performance.
This inward focus however, doesn't work when you're leading and driving a team
where the focus is about the group, not any one member of the group. Thus,
these newly anointed managers find that while they may have succeeded as
individuals they fail miserably with their larger group. Most corporations who
have high expectations for their stars to whom they have given management
positions often don't provide these managers with the tools to succeed. The
concept of "baptism by fire" is a commonplace strategy to teach a "newbie"
manager the ropes of handling a team. Instead of this approach, the
organization should reward outstanding individual accomplishment with even more
levels of responsibility and larger goals. The organization should also
carefully, cultivate star employees by grooming them to become managers without
immediately dropping them into these positions.
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Lack of Formal Management Training: Organizations display their lack of
understanding for the need of management training by not supporting formal
training programs. A comparable analogy would be driving a car. While one could
eventually learn how to drive a car by sitting behind the wheel and trying to
figure it out, that process would most likely be fraught with multiple
accidents and be dangerous to everyone on the road. It is a more prudent and
safer strategy to train everyone first. That's why we have compulsory drivers
education here in the US. Similarly, any attempt to grow managers requires a
focused and formal effort to train these managers. Fortunately, for most
organizations, building a formal program doesn't require them to build these
skills in house. Many institues and organizations specialize in providing these
services. Outsourced management training is often better because of its
external and objective point of view. A few examples of these outside
organizations are the Covey Institute, Dale Carnegie and a whole host of
others. Some large organizations like GE have built world-class institutes to
train managers (disclosure the author has attended GE's institute) and may be
willing to work with other companies to leverage this core competency.
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Lack of Informal Mentors: The role of a manager is difficult enough
without a support organization to help that manager succeed. Think on this for
a moment. If a manager has a dilemma he or she is struggling with, to whom
should they turn for help or an unbiased ear? Going to ones superior, while a
possibility, brings with it the risk of appearing "weak" or "incapable", which
might affect future promotions. Turning to one's peers, while also a reasonable
option, invites the possibility for unscrupulous competitors using your
situation to their advantage in the future. Finally, looking to subordinates,
depending upon the situation, is often not even a real option. It is all too
easy for a rumor or "water cooler" talk to destroy a career. Therefore,
organizations looking to grow a strong management team should create the
opportunity for this team to have an informal set of mentors to whom these
managers can turn in times of need. There are organizations like SCORE that can
help provide these services or the company's board can step in to provide this
assistance.
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Management of Areas with Relevant Experience: One of the most critical
mistakes an organization can make is to give a manager ownership of an area in
which they have no experience. Often this is done to "grow" the executive or to
have them "fix" the area of the company that is broken. Unfortunately, if the
manager has no background in the area they are going to, it is more likely the
situation will deteriorate, rather than improve. The team under these managers
faces no greater frustration than a manager who doesn't understand their world.
Being on of these teams requires you to do your job and your managers too.
Essentially the employees have to make all the decisions, which would have been
left up to their manager, due to their lack of experience, and they need to
train the manager on the job. There is no better way to spell disaster. There
is an easy way to solve this problem however, ensure when your hiring the
manager for an area, that you have some key members of that group in the hiring
interview loop. Their feedback should be taken into consideration regarding a
candidate's competency in their area and not necessarily beyond.
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Reviews as a Paper Trail: Sometimes reviews in an organization are used
to document a pre-determined action concerning an employee. While this may not
be ostensibly, what a "review" is for, when it devolves to this in the
organization, watch for it. Telltales signs are a lack of "voluntary" manager
reviews from the bulk of a team, or key members of the team, or if they seem
scanty and forced. Then you may have review fatigue and potentially a manager
who could benefit from a little more support or training. Your organization may
have managed to avoid all of these pitfalls. However, in the off chance it
didn't its worth a quick double check don't you think?
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