How to Develop Managers For Today’s World of Work
As a teenager, my first job was working at a golf course as a caddie. It also happens to be the most fun job I’ve ever had, and where I first learned about the importance of a great manager.
After a year into my role as a caddie, I was asked to be the manager of the caddie program. This meant being responsible for about 100 fellow 15-18 year olds who were independent contractors and caddied on weekends at the golf club. This experience was a trial by fire of how to manage, especially as a teenager.
Like many first time managers, I went through a lot of the same mistakes. Not understanding “what got me here won’t get me there,” and having to accept that I was going to have to learn and adopt new behaviors for a new role, trying to direct people through commands and stern warning, and many other missteps.
Fortunately, I had a good boss who watched over me and caught me before i was making too many major mistakes, and eventually I grew adept at the role and really enjoyed it. I got plenty of energy and joy out of watching others achieve more through working behind the scenes and providing training and coaching to make the other caddies more effective. I developed some strong bonds with a few, not to mention, won the respect of the members at the club.
These experiences would later serve me well when I began managing teams on projects as a consultant. While some of the basics carried over from when I was 15, managing a case team for a Fortune 500 client had slightly different stakes than managing at a country club. Here, I learned about how using your experiences and expertise to help others see the bigger picture of the project at any given moment was super critical, and how sometimes the best thing you can do when you are leading a team of really smart and driven people is to find the things they are good at, put them in positions to do those things and get out of the way. Giving up control was hard at first.These two experiences, along with the many other great managers and people leaders I have met along the way have solidified to me the importance and value of a good manager.
In an often cited statistic, Gallup tells us that up to 70% of the employee experience is directly influenced by an employee’s manager, and Humu tells us that 58% of employees in their survey believe a bad manager is the no 1 cause of burnout. And 15Five shares that while many employees believe people leave companies is a result of poor managers.
In today’s world of work, the role of the manager is critical, but often not well-defined, well trained, or well resourced.
As a leadership facilitator and consultant, I have the opportunity to see how management and manager training of new managers works in many organizations. Unfortunately, not enough companies adequately prepare, train, and empower their managers for the role.
While this seems to be changing given the new priorities of many HR and People Leaders, there are a handful of actions that I see newly minted managers taking on themselves in order to embrace the new role of people manager.
1)Master The Inner Game – Understanding yourself through self-awareness and emotional intelligence is a great place to start. Being able to understand what your values, strengths, interests and preferences are with respect to working is a good baseline for identifying how those fit into your new role as a manager of people and outcomes versus just being an individual contributor.
2)Master The Outer Game – Since being a manager is about more than just yourself and requires working closely with diverse groups of people it’s also important to understand the world around you. This goes for understanding your employees, the nature and dynamics of your team, and the broader organization. When you can see yourself as a person within a broader system or organization, you still absolutely matter, but you have to acknowledge how you fit within the broader
3)Learn, Unlearn, Re-learn – Each new manager has some kind of idea of what a manager could and should be doing based on their own influences and their aspirations. While there is a chance that some of those beliefs are accurate, there is equally a chance many of those are not. Just like I had to unlearn some of the aspects that I had first learned as a manager at 15 of a bunch of teenagers who were about my age, new managers who have make the time to learn what and synthesize what they think management is, unlearn irrelevant or unhelpful mindsets and behaviors, and commit to relearning the new mindsets and behaviors of management for their organization put themselves on the right path
Practice and model behaviors – Management is not a one shot deal, and the best manager training falls short when there is no practical application, feedback, and continuous learning. The best managers, new, or experienced, realize that each time they do a 1:1, provide feedback, or set expectations is a chance to improve upon their management skills.
Source: 15Five Manager Effectiveness Survey, 2023
Having seen diverse approaches to the role of the manager through my work as a leadership facilitator and my own experience working in diverse organizations, the specifics of the role of the manager can look different from company to company. And while each company will ultimately have to define for themselves what they would like out of their managers in way that is tied to the overall objectives of the organization, but here are a common set of responsibilities where generally speaking, good management can start from:
- Clarity – Providing an understanding and definition of expectations for employees around performance and role, as well as clarifying when possible as things evolve and change. When mismatched expectations arise, it’s often because of this (or lack thereof)
- Connection – Helping employees feel connected to their work, to the team and to the broader organization.
- Culture – Serving as a culture carrier, and embodiment of the behaviors and ways of working that scale actions and values of the organization
- Coaching – Providing a protected space for employees to ask questions, pose challenges and hurdles and then using coaching tools to unleash the potential and performance of employees through feedback
- Career – Empowering employees and increasing engagement by getting to know their employees aspirations, strengths and interests and supporting that within their role and finding more ways to help them grow
The late Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen once said, “management is one of the most noble professions, when practiced well.”
In a workplace that relies on human connection and collaboration in order to get things done, I can’t think of a more important role to make an impact on people and organizations.
What Are Great Resources For Managers?
The following are a list of podcasts specifically focused on helping people become better managers. As always, if you are a fan of these podcasts, make sure to listen, save, and subscribe to their feed (and leave a review!)
- Radical Candor – Kim’s book Radical Candor was a huge hit in modern management books. In this podcast, she and Jason go deep on elements of radical candor, and how they apply to various tasks and responsibilities of managers
- The Edge of Work – A podcast that helps leaders and managers think differently so that they can improve how they develop people and organizations.
- Building Better Managers – Better Manager is a provider of Manager Training and leadership development programs and in this podcast, they bring on guests to talk about best practices and tips for becoming an effective manager
- SuperManagers – Aydin is an enthusiastic and thoughtful interviewer, and also the founder of a productivity and collaboration app Fellows. In this podcast, Aydin interviews leaders about tips and best practices for increasing trust and collaboration between managers and employees
- The Modern Manager – Marnie’s podcast covers quick tips for managers and interviews with guests on topics related to what it takes to succeed as a manager today
- HBR Ideacast – A weekly podcast from HBR on ideas and issues related to management in today’s workplace
