The Chartered Management Institute reported over 80% of new managers take on management responsibilities without any formal training, over half do not hold any management or leadership qualifications and over a quarter of senior leaders and managers have never received any formal management training.
Some managers might appear natural-born leaders, others may appear to need guidance but why, when managing teams effectively and efficiently is at the heart of almost every business, is it acceptable to expect someone to manage people without proper training?
Some managers might appear natural-born leaders, others may appear to need guidance but why, when managing teams effectively and efficiently is at the heart of almost every business, is it acceptable to expect someone to manage people without proper training?
Why seek training?
- It is not unusual for someone who has built up a reasonable level of technical knowledge and competency in their particular area of work to be promoted into a staff managerial position. However there are specific ‘soft’ skills essential for effective managers to be competent in and to help them assert themselves, for example goal setting, motivating a team, running meetings and giving feedback.
- If an organisation has effective managers, then its staff are more likely to be productive, more likely to stay with the organisation, and more likely to be happy. Research from Gallup has identified that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. The difference between having a great manager or a poor manager contributes to so many different areas for example productivity, profitability, quality, staff turnover, absenteeism.
Whether you are new to management, or have been a manager for some time it is worth considering:
- Does your senior management communicate with you the business goals and objectives so you can align your team’s strategy accordingly?
- Do you have specific metrics in place that link to the wider business objectives, how you, and your team contribute to these?
- How do you measure these to identify what is working well, where are there areas for improvement?
- Do you have the tools necessary to drive those improvements and to measure these changes?
- Seeking feedback from peers, more junior and more senior colleagues may help in considering how you are perceived more objectively.
