We Need to Shift Our Focus Towards Supporting Managers

Highlights:

• High-performing managers are hyper-in tune with the skills and abilities of each team member
• A low-performing manager is promoted into a manager position but continues to be an individual contributor who tells others what to do
• Investing in the professional development of managers is essential to the success of the organization and the retention of employees.

Lately, all the talk is around developing better leaders, visionaries, and people who motivate the masses towards the goal. Leaders are like coaches. They encourage and develop a strategy. They shoot plays, aka objectives, to the team, and the team, runs them. So why are managers needed? Why are they so important?

A high-performing manager is someone who can read team members’ physical and mental states. They monitor the energy levels and the workload of each person. They are hyper in tune with the skills and abilities of each team member, and they know exactly how much a team member can take and how much they can not. They assign the right task to the right person at the right time. They identify and champion for the resources and environment the team needs to be successful. These managers contribute great success to the organization. They have fully transitioned from being an individual contributor to a manager who carefully and strategically manages the organization’s essential resources, the people.

A low-performing manager is promoted into a manager position but continues to be an individual contributor who tells other people what to do. They stay busy by finding projects to contribute to because that is the only thing they know how to do. They do not take the time to learn the skills and abilities of their team members because they see no value in doing so. They blindly assign a task to whoever is available or do it themselves. They wait for the team members to come to them if there are any issues or if the workload is too much. They do little to alleviate any pain points or stress because they are waiting for upper management to handle it. These managers are burnout makers, and they will burn out too.

There are not a lot of high-performing managers out there, and very few have an innate ability to realize they must transition from individual contributors to a manager of resources to be successful in their role. Proper training is the solution: for leadership when they select managers and for the new manager when selected.

It is time to stop promoting or hiring managers into positions and allow them to figure out their roles through trial and error. It is wreaking havoc on the people who work for under-trained managers, and the organization suffers as a whole.

Investing in the development of managers is essential to the success of the organization and the retention of employees.

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