Five Topics Managers Almost Never Get Trained On

You’re now a leader, good luck and see you in ten years!

You do your best to identify the up-and-coming talent in your company who have the potential to be capable people managers. Likely, they have already distinguished themselves as subject matter experts and have excelled as individual contributors. You’ve also noticed that they naturally possess the emotional intelligence and soft skills to influence others. Unfortunately, as Gallup has reported, only about 10% of new leaders naturally possess all the essential skills to be effective managers. What’s your plan for developing their skills before you turn them loose on a team in your company?

One study found that, remarkably, there is a ten-year gap between promotion to management and the first formal training people managers receive! Most newbies fend for themselves and learn through a process of trial and error. Maybe you learned to snow ski that way – by falling down a mountain over and over until you eventually mastered the art of perfectly carving beautiful parallel curves in the powder. Or, maybe you chose to take a few lessons on your first trip to the slopes and learned to practice the right way. It’s likely that if you chose the latter path, you would be skiing with proficiency much sooner and probably break fewer bones.?

Certainly, one way to help your newly-minted supervisors grasp how to manage teams is the learn-by-doing approach in which they make all the rookie mistakes, or you can be more intentional about providing them with some foundational knowledge that they can practice in the real world. This type of formal education can have an “Amplifier Effect” on the valuable lessons they learn from their day-to-experience and the wisdom they receive from mentors.

Covering the Basics Leaves Some Serious Skill Gaps

A typical management training regimen will provide all the indispensable tools for leading and motivating people:?

? Navigating Difficult Conversations: how to get to a good outcome when the stakes are high

? Managing Time and Priorities: work every day with energy and focus

? Identifying and Developing Talent: create a unique growth plan for everyone on your team

? Delegating vs. Dumping: build initiative in your people to take on greater responsibility

? Building Trust to Get Results: create, maintain, or restore trust with just about anyone

? Using Metrics to Manage: hold your team accountable without micromanaging?

? Giving Performance Feedback: share the real-time insights that make people better

? Interviewing and Onboarding: identify the best candidate and set them up to win

? Manager as Coach: help your people solve their own problems

These are timeless topics and are required for every manager. What even the best companies often neglect, however, are some of the core frameworks for managing teams in a 21st-century reality in which complexity mounts, timelines are compressed, and employee engagement is dependent on providing interesting and challenging work. Below are 5 of the most often-overlooked management training topics:

Working with Grit

What It Is:

Grit is holding the same top-level goal over an extended period of time through passion and perseverance.?

Why It Matters:

Today’s work teams are oriented toward short performance sprints and bite-sized strategic goals for instant gratification. Managers need to empower their teams to tenaciously face obstacles, keep focus on long-term goals and development and persevere when the work is slow-going.

Management ≠ Leadership

What It Is:

Management is planning and directing the work of others. Leadership is influencing others to follow you in a direction.

Why It Matters:

Managers are often confused about what “hat to wear” when leading their teams – manager, leader, or individual contributor. Recently-promoted supervisors tend to default to their individual contributor skills and aren’t comfortable providing direction and motivation. Over time, the manager hat is worn with more ease, and the supervisor falls into the pattern of focusing on immediate priorities. What goes neglected is the leadership hat of being intentional about thinking about the future, casting vision, and rallying the team in that direction.

Overcoming Cognitive Bias and Making Good Decisions

What It Is:

When faced with multiple alternatives, managers must slow down decisions, think in terms of probabilities, do the necessary research, and filter out bias.

Why It Matters:

Your managers make dozens of decisions every day, and some of them could greatly impact the bottom line of your company. Unfortunately, the “best” way forward is often unclear. This ambiguity is compounded by the pressure to make fast decisions using intuition, past experience, or conventional wisdom.?

Getting the Most out of 1-on-1 Meetings

What It Is:

The key to great 1-on-1 meetings is for your managers to make the meeting all about the direct report and their agenda, plus hit a variety of developmental topics with consistency.

Why It Matters:

The majority of managers are too focused in 1on1 meetings on work progress and treat other topics at a surface level, like workload, real-time feedback, praise/recognition, process improvement, and others. Discussions about these subjects deepen the relationship and create higher engagement.

Creating an Environment of Trust

What It Is:

Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to the actions and decisions of someone else. It’s built over time but can be lost in a second.?

Why It Matters:

Managers become overly focused on competence and performance as the primary drivers of trust and often don’t see the importance of character and benevolence. Character is defined as using values to make decisions and direct behaviors. Benevolence is displayed by demonstrating respect and caring and looking out for others’ best interests

Want to know how you can develop these skills? We have an in-depth downloadable resource on our homepage that details how you can implement them. We’re also happy to discuss - don’t hesitate to contact us!?

Don’t Leave Your Managers to Fend for Themselves?

Good managers have a multiplier impact on the teams they manage. The more adept the people manager, the greater the results of their team’s efforts. While the everyday challenges of managing will help them gain some insight and skills for leading people, a small investment in a more formal classroom setting will deliver the tools and frameworks they can bring to every leadership situation.?

Emergent Execs would love to partner with you in developing a custom manager training program for your company. Please contact us at [email protected] or call us at 512-895-9551 to arrange a free consultation with one of our instructional designers.