Why should your organisation provide training for its managers?

Why should your organisation provide training for its managers?

The simple answer to this question is that there are so many facets to being effective as a manager, you cannot possibly pick these up quick enough once promoted. Training, however, will very much help to accelerate the process and provide them with best practices. 

Managers have to be able to practise leadership, build relationships with people, set goals and plan to achieve them, develop employees through coaching, motivate them, prioritise, delegate work, manage time, manage conflict, build teamwork and lead and manage change.

No one has all the competencies necessary at the start of their management career. Worse still, they develop some poor or ineffective practices along the way. I played golf from a young age – how I wish I had proper coaching in it when I was a young teenager, rather than when I turned 40. Even now, I struggle to do what I was coached in and stray back to bad practices. So can managers. 

If business is war…

“Business is war” – so says Ray Croc, founder of McDonalds, played by Michael Keaton in the movie ‘The Founder’. If business really is war, which country would send its soldiers off to fight, led by untrained officers? Businesses are doing it all the time.

According to the business website “raconteur.net” in 2019, 70% of companies in the UK do not train their first-line managers. The writer couples this with a statistic that suggested just over 10% of employees are actively involved and enthusiastic at work, and that a lack of engagement costs the UK economy billions in lost productivity.

The assertion is obvious – managers play a key role in employee engagement at work, and the lack of management training plays a major role that affects a company’s turnover, and the UK economy as a whole.

You might disagree that business is war (and most would say there are a number of similarities, but no, nothing can compare to the losses of life and health of people, and the damage to the environment and economy.) Even so, you should be thinking about how engaged at work your employees really are – and the fact that the vast majority of daily engagement comes down to how well they are led, developed and motivated by their managers. 

And what does greater engagement equal? More goals achieved. Better quality work. Better customer service. Better results. Improved profits.

Do people leave managers, not companies?

“People leave managers, not companies” is a mantra you often see on Linked In and Facebook. Whilst this is not completely true, a fair amount of research indicates that managers are a main reason why people resign or move on from a position. And that is those who leave. How many stay on, but are disengaged from work, only offering up the minimum they can get away with?

How engaged are your employees?

So, how engaged are your employees? Are your managers getting the best from them? Have you actually asked your employees this? (Obviously, best done anonymously.)

In his book ‘First Break All The Rules’, Marcus Buckingham suggests 12 questions to ask your employees which will judge how engaged they are, and through this you will measure the strength of your workplace. Each requires a ‘yes’ answer. They are:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?

9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?

12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

The majority of the yes’s to these questions will be as a result of how well the employee is led by their manager or supervisor.

This is how important your managers are and why it is vital that they know how to be effective at leadership and other key aspects of the role.

Do they like and value their employees?

Oh, and they do actually need to like people. It may sound obvious, but I have encountered managers in the past that came come across as not really liking people very much, especially their employees. You can imagine how they then treated them. It usually brings a laugh when I say this on training, but if you don’t like people, don’t become a manager, work with computers, machinery, or with animals, trees, or gardens.

A manager who does not like people very much is definitely not going to value them. And valuing your employees is such a key part of getting the best from them. Do your managers come across as actually liking those they lead?

When I am delivering training, this is a question I will often bring before managers – ‘Do you value your employees?’ They are actually a manager’s (and a business’s for that matter) greatest asset, because they are the ones who get your results. During a Q&A session at an open forum in 2010, Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson was asked this question – “The key to success (in business) in three words, please?” His answer, “People, People, People.”

Businesses and managers need to recognise that their greatest asset are their employees. 

What do managers need to know and do then, in order for them to be effective at what they do?

To be effective, a manager needs to know what leadership actually is and how it differs from management. 

Forget the debate on leaders vs. managers. It is pointless and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the topic. In fact, in a book I am writing on leadership for managers, I call an end to the debate. As one quick reason, do a search now on ‘leaders versus managers.’ 

I just did it and got this quote “A manager tends to focus on controlling resources and optimising processes, while a leader focuses on inspiring and empowering people to work together towards a common goal. Understanding the difference between managers and leaders is essential for effective leadership development.” This is from a university website. 

So, does that mean managers do not need to empower people to work together towards a common goal? You know that’s not true, they do. Again, in the last statement, it should be ‘understanding the differences between management and leadership’, not managers and leaders. 

Other sites tell you:

· ‘Leaders coach people, managers direct them’. 

· ‘Leaders share the credit, managers take the credit’. 

· ‘Leaders create, managers implement’. 

It is obvious to anyone reading that managers need to coach to develop employees, that not sharing the credit will simply diminish motivation, and that managers need to think creatively sometimes to solve problems.

The list goes on with one consistent theme, ‘Leaders good, managers bad’. How confusing is that for any manager?  In fact, pretty much everything in these comparisons is actually talking about, ‘The effective manager vs. The poor/ineffective manager’.

The differences that should be covered, which we actually deliver in our training, is how leadership differs from what I call ‘pure’ management, and how both of these come under the umbrella of ‘modern management’. These differences become more obvious when you look at the original meanings of both words. 

What else do managers need to know and do?

As I mentioned previously, managers should know how to coach and develop their employees, and the importance of this.

There are essentially two key elements that are needed for a person to do a task well: competency in it (knowledge and skills) and willingness (motivation and confidence.) 

Managers can improve competencies in employees through coaching. Unfortunately, the a lot of managers do not really know how to properly coach (which is not their fault if they have not receiving training on how to do it), so we always give a good amount of time to develop this with managers on our courses. It is then up to them to practice it.

A manager who says “I want my employees to come with answers, not questions” clearly has not learned how to coach. If that puzzles you, ask me why – send me an email, or send a message in the website’s message box.

Managers need to empower their employees, for theirs and for their staff’s sake (it helps employees feel trusted, giving them motivation and enthusiasm. They like their jobs better. It also helps to stop managers from getting stressed and burnt out, giving them a better work/life balance.) 

Coaching can help with empowering employees. Another key way is through delegation. The vast majority of managers I have trained say they do not delegate enough, and the training helps encourage them to do this, whilst giving them key ways to do it properly. I have six simple golden rules of delegation which I cover on every management course, which can help managers do it more effectively. 

A manager also needs to be able to motivate their employees to a higher level of engagement (the ability to coach and motivate team members are clearly important facets for any professional sports manager, are they not? It is the same in business.) There are key ways a manager can do this with their staff.

They also need to communicate effectively, as studies show that the majority of managers (and employees for that matter) communicate 80% of the time at work (face-to-face, in meetings, by telephone, Zoom or Teams, email, text and so on.) Most of us think we communicate well, but the majority of people actually listen at only 25% efficiency, so what we mean is we’re good at talking (and even that is questionable!)

Other key areas include how to give feedback, in particular corrective/constructive feedback. This is possibly the most difficult part of a manager’s role. The Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) suggested in one article a few years ago that only 10% of managers do this effectively, so that the employee is able to receive the negative feedback and respond accordingly.

Additional areas are, how to give effective one-to-ones, why and how to develop a successor, how to set goals and how to write them down clearly (quite a number of managers struggle to do this well), and how to prioritise and manage time. Also, how to lead employees through change, how to manage conflict, how to build teamwork, and possibly also how to run an effective meeting (since ineffective meetings are probably the one of greatest time wasters in the workplace!)

Emotional Intelligence

We could also include in this list, developing and understanding Emotional Intelligence (EI). Daniel Goleman, the EI Guru and writer of the best-seller on it, suggests from his research that the world’s most effective leaders are highly emotionally intelligent. 

There is therefore a lot that a manager needs to know and develop in order to be effective at what they do. Training always helps with this and will confirm best practices, suggest ones they need to stop, and then definitely give them ones they should start doing.

How are your managers doing?

So, how are your managers in these areas? If we can help, then do let us know. Not only do we provide training, but we can also provide ways to follow up after, to help with implementation. We offer training courses both face-to-face or online, as well as individual coaching. Training is the most economical.

If you are an SME with a small number of managers, why not partner with one or two others and share the costs?

Developing your managers through effective, interactive, training should increase your results overall, by helping to improve employee engagement and reducing employee turnover. It is a comparatively small investment that should bring about a greater return. 

Richard Pheasant is director and lead trainer of Bespoke Business Training. He has been involved in training several thousand managers since moving into business training nearly 13 years ago, both in Europe and the Middle-East. Previous to that, he lectured on leadership at a university in the Arabian Gulf.