The Management Myth: Why Technical Skills Aren't Enough

Years ago, at the start of my career, I was having problems with one of my colleagues because our manager had told us both different things so she thought I reported to her. In my mind, this was an easy fix, all our manager had to do was tell her that she wasn’t my boss, problem solved! Except, she wasn’t told this, and this issue dragged on, leading to more tension.?

The senior managers including my manager and her manager had their offsite meeting at which one of the issues on the agenda was to come? back with a clear resolution so both me and my colleague waited with baited breath. The senior managers came back from their offsite and not a word was said to either of us. We waited for weeks, in the end, my colleague and I sat down and resolved it between ourselves as the reality of the situation was that I didn’t report to her but she had been erroneously told at her interview that I did.

The above was poor management at its worst! Poor management costs the economy billions of pounds and yet people are promoted into management routinely without the right skills.? Last Friday was World Manager Day, yes there is such a thing and goodness knows there is a need for it.

The truth is, people are made managers most of the time based on their technical skills and they are expected to pick up management skills on the job. However you don’t go from being a skilled technician to suddenly having good managerial skills like:

• Communication
• Assertiveness
• Empathy
• A sense of fairness
• Setting team priorities?
• Giving and listening to feedback,
• Coming up with strategy and setting clear goals
• Motivating staff to achieve goals,?
• Mentoring
• Coaching
• Performance appraisals
• Interviewing and hiring
• Addressing toxic people and culture

Expecting someone to pick up all of the above on the fly is a tall order. Management is a profession in its own right and there are organisations such as the Chartered Management Institute that focus on Management.

Apart from management being a skill, it is also an art. Some of the attributes require a level of maturity, intuition and emotional intelligence that is developed with experience. For example knowing when to listen rather than proffering an opinion, when to read between the lines or read the room, when to take a stand or back down.

To be fair, there are some organisations that ensure that their managers take some basic form of leadership programme but in reality they are reserved for senior management. In the trenches of the lower rungs of management where most people cut their teeth on the real meaty issue of day to day management, a lot of it is simply left to chance.

This is a very expensive mistake and leads to toxic workplace culture and high staff turnover. The cost to the economy notwithstanding, bad management has a very high personal cost. People get badly scarred and it can lead to mental health issues particularly if someone is just starting out in their career and are not that confident in themselves yet, and think there will be more of the same further down the line.

The problem of poor management to my mind is an easy fix. Don’t treat management as an afterthought. Give it the respect it deserves and make sure ALL your managers are trained in the skill and art of management. Leaving it to chance is irresponsible, expensive in the long run and can ruin lives.

P.S. IF you want to balance your life and be an effective leader in the workplace, you can reach out here.