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Sink or Swim
New research finds many organizations do a woeful job of training new managers. Better screening of potential managers and role playing as preparation can help. Metrics are also useful in getting senior-management buy-in for enhancing the training process.
First-time managers too often are promoted into positions without the know-how, tools or training to successfully lead a team. That's the upshot of a new survey from i4cp, a workforce-productivity research firm based in St. Petersburg, Fla., that found only 25 percent of respondents judged their organizations to be "good" when it comes to how well workers make the transition from individual contributor to manager. The survey, conducted on behalf of i4cp's member companies, found 16 percent ranked their organizations as "poor" at such transitions while the majority -- 60.5 percent -- assessed their firms as "fair." For many HR experts and practitioners, the survey results affirm what they see occurring routinely in organizations. First-time managers are often largely expected to navigate their new role on their own. "I've been in HR for about 20 years and I am always amazed when companies promote or hire great employees and make them managers without any training," says Cathy Missildine-Martin, a senior vice president with Intellectual Capital Consulting in Atlanta. "It's like sink or swim, and then senior leaders are perplexed when the people they promoted don't perform well as managers." Missildine-Martin says HR leaders can effect positive change for new managers by understanding what competencies make managers successful at the organization and then training to those specific needs.
In Gwendolyn Ward's view, HR's most important role comes before the employee is promoted to management. Ward, a principal at FOOW (Fish Out Of Water), a career-consulting firm in Leesburg, Va., emphasizes better screening up-front, noting "a great engineer doesn't necessarily make a great candidate for engineer manager." "To promote first and train later can be a lazy way for some companies to fill management slots, instead of creating a program that determines if the candidate is the right fit through personality and qualification assessments," Ward says. Specifically, Ward says, organizations should take a comprehensive approach to screening new managers -- including personality assessment, 360-degree evaluations and situational management interviews -- that assess how a new manager will react on the job. She also stresses the value of interviewing exiting managers. "If the current management's staff's strengths and weaknesses are known via exit interviews and feedback programs, HR is less likely to recruit the same inefficiencies," Ward says.
Role Playing The one thing all new managers lack is real-life experience dealing with sensitive employee issues. HR can help address that issue by emphasizing the importance of role-playing scenarios, says Linda Konstan, principal of LMK Associates/Sensible Human Resources Consulting in Denver. Recently, Konstan's role-playing work has focused on the all-too-common scenario in which a manager asks an employee to take on additional job responsibilities due to staff cutbacks. "I take the part of the employee and we do role plays until the manager feels comfortable with just about any pushback he or she may hear in a real discussion with an employee," says Konstan. "HR needs to proactively offer mock scenarios so managers learn how to respond and react." Konstan also advocates for an HR representative or consultant to sit in on a few meetings between a manager and his or her direct reports to get a clearer sense of how they interact and to pick up any signals or body language. She recalls one manager who was unaware he was rolling his eyes when an employee said something he didn't agree with, while another "used Ph.D. language to talk to a maintenance crew." "After the meeting, ask the manager how they think it went and why," Konstan says. "You can demonstrate what the employees looked like during certain parts of the meeting or point out things the manager might not have noticed, like half the staff was doodling instead of taking notes."
Customize Solutions Eric Swenson warns against a cookie-cutter approach to new manager orientation and training. Rather, Swenson, an HR consultant in Encino, Calif., and author of the upcoming book, The Intentional Manager, focuses on tailoring training to a manager's needs or weaknesses. He recently worked with a company where he was given permission to survey several newer managers, all under the age of 30, to see what their specific needs were. "The managers loved their jobs, but were frustrated because they had not had any formal management training," Swenson says. Through the surveys and follow-up interviews, Swenson determined that, for most of the managers, being able to effectively delegate was the most pressing issue. He then developed training focused on delegation skills. "When you get senior management to identify training needs as they see it, and then develop a program to meet those needs, then the buy-in is automatic," Swenson says. "You're presenting a solution to solve the exact problems they identified."
Measure Results Ultimately, for HR to get the necessary buy-in to adequately train new managers, they need to show the impact poor management can have on the bottom line. To provide concrete measurement, Jennifer Mounce, founder of Coach Effect, a leadership coaching and organizational development firm headquartered in San Francisco, says HR should develop a baseline prior to manager training for issues such as turnover rates, employee satisfaction, productivity, safety incidents or other factors tied to the bottom line. "When companies do not train new managers they are leaving all this to chance," Mounce says. She also suggests relying on external research, such as Watson Wyatt data that reports that total turnover costs including hard dollars and lost productivity are approximately 48 percent to 61 percent of salary. For an organization with 20,000 employees, a 15-percent turnover rate and an average salary of $50,000 would mean annual costs between $72 and $92 million, she says. "Show the equivalent numbers for your own organization and you might start turning heads," says Mounce. "Go beyond anecdotal evidence and get out the calculator and do the math."
August 31, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
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