Leadership Blind Spot #8 Failing to Train and Coach Management Team
Martin Hill (mISP)
Sandler West Midlands | Empowering ambitious business leaders to grow their business | Leadership | Sales Performance | Associate Lecturer, University of Worcester | Global Strategy | International Operations | NED
Today’s blind spot is failure to train and coach managers. Think about this for a second. All the people who work for your organisation are reporting to a series of managers. They are the pinnacle where you, as the leader, ask your management team, “How’s it going? What can we project? Where are our holes? What do you need help on? What are the successes?” That is your main communication hub as the owner, or the leader. I talk to my management team and I rely on my management team to give me accurate information.
But here’s the problem. It’s like having an x-ray, and asking the x-ray technician to give you a diagnosis based on the x-ray. I would rely on them. I want them to tell me what’s going on because I don’t understand that x-ray, it’s not what I do every day. But if that technician wings it, gives me an answer to the best of their ability, “Well, I used to sign people into the x-ray room, so I saw a lot of these, I think this is what it means.” Would you feel comfortable? I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable.
But that’s what we do with our people. We take people from the floor who had experience and are technically highly competent and we turn them into managers. Because when there’s a spot in the management team, we try to fill that as quickly as possible, because as senior execs we have to fill that spot and we have our day job to do. So, we bring these people in who are successful at their current job. And then we say what? “Good luck to you.” And then they learn by baptism of fire. They’re expected to manage those who they were really colleagues with yesterday, it’s impossible.
In the revenue generation side of your business, why would you put a salesperson into a key sales management role which should deliver 60% or 80% of your revenue and you did not train them? Every single manager should go through at least eight plus days of management training every single year.
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If you write down your management team names and jot down what training you provided them last year and what do you plan on doing this year? If you want to have a learning environment and culture and be congruent expecting others to continually push and stretch then we also have to do it as an organisation.
If you want to know more about these blind spots, how to uncover them and what to do about them or you are interested in having a free assessment of your business then get in touch.
??Business Strategist ?? Helping Business Owners to reach their potential and scaling up their businesses ?? Keynote Speaker ?? Executive, Team and Business Coach
11 个月This post sheds light on a critical blind spot in leadership - the failure to adequately train and coach management teams. It's a sobering reminder of the importance of investing in ongoing development for those entrusted with leading others. Your analogy of relying on an x-ray technician for a diagnosis hits home the significance of providing proper support and education for managers. Thank you for sharing this insightful perspective Martin Hill (micfm, mafp)