How much time have you invested in your management team in recent years? It’s an important question, because it seems growing numbers of organisations are promoting people to managerial positions without adequate preparation, and who simply don’t have the required skills to manage.
What’s behind this? What are the consequences? And what can you do to prevent it happening in your organisation?
The changing workplace dynamic
The path to a managerial role often used to involve a clear trajectory of accumulating experience, honing skills, and demonstrating leadership potential.
However, the dynamics of the workplace have shifted dramatically, with businesses facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
Three factors have converged, causing businesses to re-evaluate their management needs and implement rapid transformations to their management structure:
- The urgency for leadership during recent tumultuous times led to rapid promotions, sometimes prioritising immediate needs over long-term suitability.
- The rapid acceleration of digital transformation, and the increasing need for fast and agile decision-making, have altered traditional management roles, necessitating a greater emphasis on management skills that support innovation, rapid decision-making, and adaptability.
- The current climate of talent shortages and high employee turnover has pressured organisations to fill management gaps quickly, often with less qualified talent than they would like.
What could go wrong?
When employees are thrust into managerial roles without adequate preparation, the repercussions can ripple throughout the organisation:
- Teams led by unskilled managers may experience a lack of direction or cohesion, affecting overall performance and morale.
- For the managers themselves, being unprepared can lead to overwhelming stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction.
- At the organisational level, operational efficiency is affected, potentially tarnishing both financial performance and company reputation.
We’ve noticed that unskilled managers can be a particular challenge in high tech businesses, where technical specialists may get promoted into management roles without any experience or training in the softer, empowering, more empathetic side of management. Without training, these managers struggle to connect with team members and the inevitable result is a decline in team morale, more stress for the managers, and potentially project delays and budget overruns.
So what’s the solution?
It’s easy to say, but a multifaceted approach is needed, with the development of management capabilities at its core. Management skills must be identified, nurtured and valued.
- Understand what good looks like: Map out the capabilities that you need your managers to have, so that people know what they are working towards, identify gaps in current capabilities, and create a plan of how to fill them.
- Establish a culture of continuous learning: Cultivate an environment that encourages ongoing professional development and learning, providing access to educational resources, encouraging attendance at industry conferences and seminars, and supporting further education and certification in relevant fields. This is an important first step to unlock the full potential of all employees, enabling you to identify and develop talent that you have already.
- Implement mentoring and coaching programmes: Your future managers will benefit from the guidance and support of your experienced leaders. Mentoring programs pair less experienced employees with seasoned executives to provide one-on-one coaching, career advice, and professional development. Similarly, coaching programs, either internally or through external coaches, can help individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses, set career goals, and develop personal growth plans.
- Create leadership development opportunities: Beyond formal training, you should provide opportunities for potential managers to lead projects or teams, offering a safe space to apply their skills and learn from experience. These opportunities could include leading cross-departmental projects, or managing temporary teams, which can provide invaluable hands-on experience.
- Implement comprehensive training programmes: It’s easy for organisations to overlook the need for training in the broad range of skills necessary for effective management. These include effective communication techniques, performance management, conflict resolution, time management, and prioritisation. With effective training and development structures in place, you will be able to anticipate your management needs ahead of time, and discover that you have a suitably qualified person ready to take the step up.
- Adopt a criteria-based promotion process: To ensure that only qualified candidates are promoted to managerial positions, it’s important to establish clear and objective criteria for promotion. Base them on demonstrated competencies, performance outcomes, and leadership potential, rather than tenure, seniority or even just availability. This approach helps to ensure that individuals are promoted based on their readiness to manage and lead effectively.
Promoting unprepared employees to management positions poses significant risks for any business. We have a great track record of helping business leaders to cultivate the next generation of capable leaders that will secure the sustainable success of their organisation.
Can we help?
At Cognitive Union, we support organisations of all sizes with their management and leadership capabilities and upskill. Email me at karen@cognitiveunion.com for a no-obligation chat about how we can work with you.