Managing Managers

Managers are people too, aren’t they? So isn’t managing managers just the same as managing any other team members? To a point, yes! The typical schedules of interaction still apply, the need to be clear on expectations, to provide appropriate support, to give effective feedback and to hold accountable all still stand.

However, there are most definitely some differences. I’m going to focus on the four differences that I see most often missed by people. For three of these, they’re not binary differences but significant variations on a spectrum. For the second item below, it is actually a difference:

1. First things first. Understand the value of developing great managers and, based on that, understand the value of time invested in doing that. If you have a number of managers reporting to you, they each have teams and broader responsibilities that they oversee. As a consequence, the scale of impact they can have on your business is significant. Developing their management skills, such that they can get the best out of their team or operation, is among the more valuable ways you can invest your time. It is a real point of leverage that you can tap into.

It is easy, when you have a team of managers reporting to you, to simply not focus enough on managing them. They’re often experienced, skilled people with strong capacity to run their operation. As a result, it often ‘feels fine’ to just let them get on with it. Don’t! Of course you should empower them and leave them with appropriate autonomy, but you must also invest the time to provide absolute clarity about expectations, to keep them on track and, however good they are, support them to grow further.

2. Perhaps the single most common mistake I see in managing managers is forgetting that the person manages other people……so should be managed to that! Sounds obvious but, more often than not, I see people focussed primarily on the relevant subject or activity. For example, when a GM is meeting with their Sales Manager, the conversation typically focusses on sales activity and perhaps on the performance of the sales team as a whole. Too little time is spent discussing how the Sales Manager is going about managing the individuals in their team. Almost no time is spent coaching the Sales Manager on coaching skills, how to give feedback well, how to hold their team accountable while also keeping themselves out of the actual sales activity.

Management is a very specific activity with a distinct set of skills required to do it well. If you’re managing managers, a large share of your time with them needs to be invested developing those skills; not just discussing the activity or part of the business that they manage.

3. The likely problem you’ll face is that your managers are probably busy. In those roles, you should be able to leave them to manage their operations to a large degree. So you may not have a huge amount of time with them, 1:1, that can be focused properly on helping them be successful managers. As a consequence, I believe there are two very important changes you should consider:

a. Spend more time thinking about and planning your conversations with them. The type of development your managers require, and how you manage them to their role, are likely to be less simplistic than some junior roles. So think deeply and plan carefully how you will conduct a conversation with them. Make even a 15-minute conversation count!

b. In line with that, be sure to master the skill of using questions to influence. Those short conversations must be impactful, which means that you have to be skilled at helping your direct reports have breakthroughs, to develop real clarity in their own minds and to generate deep realizations about themselves and whatever it is their managing. By far the simplest way to achieve that is to ask really effective questions. If you’re interested, my book, “The Question Code” is all about that very subject.

Your managers have the opportunity to influence your business almost more than anyone else. Developing great managers, helping them to know where they need to go, supporting them and holding them accountable to get there are spectacularly valuable ways to invest your time. Even 10 hours a week will provide among the higher payoffs of any activity you can do in business.