Managers don’t always have the easiest time. From top-down pressure to deliver more with less and little time in which to do so, often with insufficient training to adequately prepare them for management. What’s often overlooked is that managers tend to be promoted into these positions based on performance and skills, but the skills that they have may not be enough to lead.
In learning and development environments, one frequently hears about managers not being supportive enough, communicating effectively, or creating the space for their teams to grow and learn. This leads to mistrust, not feeling valued or that team members are being micromanaged.
This may lead to managers being labelled as the ‘blocker’ or ‘the problem’, when more often than not, it’s the oversight of the organisation in terms of providing the right training to prepare employees to take up management positions.
With today’s digitally-enabled, flexible and possibly remote workforce, it’s more important than ever for managers to be equipped with the right skill-set in order to lead diverse and inter-generational teams.
Core capabilities for successful managers:
- Job knowledge: in order for managers to expect their teams to do a job, they need to understand that job. They need to ‘walk the talk’ and occasionally share the load in order to truly lead from the front and earn the respect of their team members.
- Coaching/mentoring skills: managers need to have the ability to provide the right support for their teams without micro-managing them. You need to trust them to do the job that they’ve been employed for whilst ensuring that their development requirements are being met.
- Communication skills: a manager is the bridge between leadership and people on the ground, so being able to adequately translate strategic information to a team is key and can largely determine the success of an organisation. Delegation skills are also imperative in large-scale organisations in order to meet challenging objectives.
- Connections: managers need to stay connected with their teams, peers and experts both inside and outside of the business. This is especially true for remote teams.
Being a manager is often a thankless and demanding role with the core focus being on ensuring that the team thrives and meets their own objectives and at the end of the day, this is the key to being successful in a management role.
The team from Summit are on hand to assist organisations to prepare newly appointed managers according to organizational needs. Contact us to find out more.