It seems like a slam dunk. Find high performing staff and plug them into management positions. They’ve already proven themselves to be winners, they have expertise and organizational history. They should be perfect as managers.
But there is a problem with that theory, because management skills and a management mindset are very different from the skills and mindset of individual contributors.
Managing people involves different skills than simply managing oneself- and many of these skills don’t come naturally. They include delegation, motivation, communication, training, listening, time management, performance management, conflict management, team building, change management, coaching, and performance feedback.
Changing mindsets from success dependent upon their own performance to success dependent on the performance of others can be a challenge.
Other challenges that new managers often face include having a lack of empathy and patience, having a problem managing former coworkers, having a problem of letting go and not micromanaging, and making mistakes that make HR pull out their hair.
Some new managers are simply ill-suited to being a manager.
When a 2021 Gallup poll found that between 33% and 35% of managers reported that they felt burnt out “very often or always,” this indicated that the managers lacked the delegation, time management, and performance management skills they needed to be effective.
The Society for Human Resource Management conducted a survey of American workers in 2020 and found that the top five skills they felt people managers could improve were: communicating effectively (41 percent), developing and training the team (38 percent), managing time and delegating (37 percent), cultivating a positive and inclusive team culture (35 percent), and managing team performance (35 percent).
84 percent said poorly trained people managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress.
57 percent said managers need training on how to be a better people manager. And
50 percent felt their own performance would improve if their direct supervisor received additional training in people management.
The solution is to recognize that being a manager requires an entirely new skill set and provide pre-supervisory training prior to promoting staff. And, for managers already in their positions but unprepared to act as managers, the solution is to provide intensive training and coaching support as quickly as possible, before bad decisions make situations worse.
In summary, let’s not throw new managers into the deep end of the pool without preparing them with the skills they need to stay afloat. Their primary job as managers is to set their employees up for success. They can’t do that if they’re floundering themselves.
#management #managementdevelopment #newmanagers #peoplemanagers #training
