Garry Kranz has a great snippet over at Workforce Management on how managers actually hinder the efforts to achieve company goals.

Kranz quotes a bit of research showing that more often than not, companies are unable achieve performance goals because managers are at a loss for how to have “difficult performance discussions” with underachieving employees.

My initial (sarcastic) thought was “no kidding?”

Kranz also says:

Moreover, managers aren’t sending consistent signals to employees about the value of ongoing career growth. The report says less than 40 percent of employees (37 percent) receive regular performance feedback.

Okay — let me say it one more time: The role of a manager does not mean doing more work than the ‘rank and file,’ nor improving on that work. To perform well in their roles, managers must learn an entirely different skill set:

 Listening
 Understanding behavioral styles of each employee
 Understanding what motivates each employee
 Planning
 Organizing
 Sharing said plan
 Gathering feedback and considering it
 Training the ‘rank and file’

And yes:

 Conducting performance reviews
 Helping, coaching, and guiding
 Initiating ‘difficult conversations’ and disciplining when necessary

Sure there’s more, but if a manager can’t learn and do the above, then s/he has no business being a manager.

Please read the above sentence again. If you have those duties and tasks down pat, you’re on the right track and this post does not apply to you.

But if you can’t do the managerial duties listed above, you have to two choices to be effective:

a) Learn how to the things listed above
    or
b) Quit

Some newly appointed managers pick up their new responsibilities quite quickly. Others don’t.

At a meeting with other entrepreneurs last evening, an executive who recently retired from a very large privately-held corporation related how most companies he’s seen do a TERRIBLE job of selecting and equipping managers.

Again, I thought, “duh.”

All of this tells me one thing: If your company can quickly equip its managers to do the above list well, it is far and away going to be a better organization than 90 percent of what’s out there.

No kidding.
 

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Filed in Training, Management, Team Building, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Coaching