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This is from a blog post I stumbled upon at
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2008/08/28/three-reasons-why-manager...
IBM and the Human Capital Institute recently found - "While 84 percent of organizations know that workforce effectiveness is important to achieving business results, only 42 percent of those surveyed say managers devote sufficient time to people management."
Why not? What keeps managers from spending time on people management?
The 3 reasons are:
[b]1. They don't think it's their job.[/b] It's easy to laugh at this and chortle about how managers think their "real work" is something other than people management. But in many cases neither their boss nor the performance evaluation system measure them on people management. Besides, they were probably promoted based on their ability to do the "real work."
[b]2. They don't have the tools they need. [/b]I don't have any statistics on this, but I know there are a couple of boatloads of managers out there that have never received a scintilla of training in the basic communication skills they need to set expectations, check for understanding, praise good behavior and performance and confront the team members that don't do what they're supposed to.
[b]They won't deal with the uncomfortable parts.[/b] Since we don't select people to be bosses based on their ability to do the work that bosses do and don't give them the tools to do it, it's no wonder they find things like confronting poor behavior or performance to be very uncomfortable. And when things make us uncomfortable, we tend to avoid them.
I would add -
4. Companies reward hitting your bottom line results, not your "managerial" work.
5. It's easier for managers to focus on what their comfortable with, which is their technical work.
So, MT managers are swimming against the stream. And they're stronger for it and so are their directs.
Re: 3 reasons why managers don't do people management
[quote="US101"]I know there are a couple of boatloads of managers out there that have never received a scintilla of training in the basic communication skills they need to set expectations, check for understanding, praise good behavior and performance and confront the team members that don't do what they're supposed to....[/quote]
Training? What's training? :?
People Management
What is a manager?
Going by the age-old generic definition, a manager would be a person whose job is to manage and control and group of people in a corporate environment.
But this definition is old and irrelevant in the 21st Century.
The ancient image of managers as unemotional robots who care about nothing other than the employees getting the work done has undergone a huge change, and companies today are looking to hire individuals as managers that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty along with the employees they overlook.
Managers are now expected to be leaders, not bosses.
So, here’s a updated and revised definition of a manager: a person who acts as a guide and a leader for the employees working under him who also gets to know them individually on a personal level.
This is what the companies of today are looking for in a manager. They want a person who can relate to the employees and can also develop a mentor-mentee relationship with them.
It is quite evident that employees deliver better quality work when they task has been assigned by a friendly face, rather than a person that is constantly reminding them of their contractual obligations.
Great Manager Institute aims at creating managers that conform with the new and evolved definition of a manager, as this is rapidly becoming the universal norm.