Are We Undervaluing Management Skills?
Posted by business | management | Posted on April 21st, 2010
Copyright (c) 2008 Shona Garner
There’s much emphasis these days on leadership kills. Almost every organisation talks of the need to develop these; and almost every manager or aspiring manager is encouraged to develop them. But in the race to invest often huge sums of money and time into leadership development programmes, have we forgotten or somehow demeaned the critical skills of managing others?
My colleagues and I spend a lot of time coaching, either 1-2-1 or in workshops, in a variety of public and private organisations, across all types of industries, and there are some issues which come up over and over again. Our experiences, and recent, large-scale studies show:
- Over 70% of people leave jobs because of relationship issues, and most of those are with their immediate supervisor. – Managers typically lose 25% of their day to unnecessary conflict, argument and misunderstanding. – Two thirds of staff feel undervalued at work. – Managers are one of the greatest sources of stress at work.
What does this actually mean for you and your organisation?
In a company of 100 managers, and an average salary of £40,000 per annum per manager, then the cost to the company will be £1,000,000 per annum – and that’s not counting the higher staff turnover costs, missed opportunities, absenteeism, low morale and poor teamwork!
And, for the manager themselves, they lose confidence, feel frustrated, and risk their reputation.Somewhere, in the midst of this concern for developing leadership skills, are we neglecting the need to ensure managers know how to manage?
You see, we believe leadership is about “looking out”. It’s about market awareness, about vision, and about strategy. Its vital for the organisation – but do we need every manager to focus on and prioritise leadership skills? Management is about “looking in”. It’s about managing the resources you have to best effect, in order to hit the targets set by the vision.
And the most important and expensive resource you have as a manager is your people. The manager who gets his/her people management right, will improve the bottom line for their company, as well as their own credibility.
The 80 – 20 rule? In our opinion, an organisation encouraging managers to focus on leadership is taking too many eyes off delivery – too much of the time. For very senior managers, MD and CEO level, spending 80% of the time on “looking out” is not only sensible, it is critical.
But for managers, perhaps the focus should be reversed? Managers should focus 80% of their time on “looking in” – on customer satisfaction, on delivery, and on engaging and motivating their staff so they are solution focused, productive and, dare I say it, happy.
And this is not fluffy bunny land! Happy staff – are engaged staff. Engaged staff are more productive, more willing, more open to change, more creative, more focused, more reliable and more flexible.
It’s my bet you have managers in your organisation who consistently produce exceptional results. You’ll also have those whose teams seem to consistently underperform, who take up HR time because of conflict situations, and where performance surveys consistently reveal dissatisfaction, both internally and externally with customers.
Perhaps we should redress the balance a little? Perhaps we should be ensuring we are adequately equipping our managers with the techniques, the tools and the tactics to ensure they really understand how to get the best out of people; how to not just manage conflict, but pre-empt it, how to develop and coach others to greater performance, and how to encourage their staff to become involved, committed and enthusiastic about the hours they spend in the office or in their role.
A 10% increase in staff engagement will rocket your results – and the beauty of it is, it’s an almost infinite resource. No other resource you have has as much potential to help you achieve better results. Ensuring managers know how to tap it is the key to releasing this extra potential.
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Can I make a small suggestion?
Repeat the last few seconds of your previous videos with the next one…
It’s really hard to figure out what’s going on…Especially when you have to wait for the video to load, and you forgot how the last video ended…
Thanks~
This must be an exam question. Go back to your books first.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs. Total Quality provides an umbrella under which everyone in the organization can strive and create customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs that result in profitability.
The thought that it is continuous must be qualified with a statement that it must be emphasized by management and exercised at all levels to be functional if quality is to improve continuously. Every time I’ve implemented a TQM as CEO I have seen initial gains that were substantial, but to get secondary or tertiary results, the TQM had to be reemphasized and implemented again and again. Some mountains still need to be climbed even when the summit has been reached. There always seems to be a higher peak next door.
Good luck in your quest.
so saving the climate will let us survive without having to do major ass adaption, a low carbon economy will create more jobs and help us get out of the recession and we will be leaving a healthier, more intact planet to future generations! is that bad?!
Films and tv programs represents a true view about the business industries . If you need more information search in a search engine by filling the related options, good luck
I have created a simple, but useful page, which has all the links to this series of videos listed in the correct order.
The site name is of the standard format with the usual (US) extension after the dot. The site name is then followed by a forward slash and the name of the page, so the first word is my site name and the second bit is the page name (but you need to put D O T h t m on the end).
pharmgateway howitallends
Yep, most degrees are NOT confined to just one area of careers. With that business degree and depending on the school system, you might be able to teach in some of their schools.
Because management can be so full of themselves and forget why they are in that position. Sooner or later power goes into people's head and they forget what the business is about. For example, it is really easy for someone sitting in the headquarter of McDonald's to forget life of minimum wage people in front of a grill.
Management should periodically look at the business from various perspective, and if they still decide to keep same old way of doing business at least it is an informed decision.
Best wishes.
you know the earth is warming when people living in the Caribbean start complaining about the heat. and people in new york are actually glad when it gets warmer. record breaking temperatures
The columns represents action or inaction.. the rows represent the uncertainty of the debate “Alarmists being right or skeptics being right.”
Essentially Action is buying insurance, inaction opting out of insurance. Global Warming is the reason your making a choice to buy insurance or not..
The economic harm is the cost of the insurance.. The only Jedi Mind Trick is Greg implying that it wouldn’t cost money for insurance.
i have something else to add:
is it bad to conserve resources for future generations? even if global warming isn’t real, why should we leave a polluted, resourceless hunk of rock for our kids? climate change is real, (and we have solid, real proof that we are causing it), so we should have some moral and ethical considerations to save the huge amount of species here on earth, BUT we should think about our own KIDS.
Not for nothing but the current growth in GDP is ~2.9% which would mean a total halt in economic growth.. During the Great Depression there was stagnant growth of around 1.7% (3% is $2.7 Trillion)
Also its no Jedi Mind Trick.. the columns represent the certainties… the rows are the variables.. which is why the economic harm is a certainty and global warming is still a variable.
You should know that.
The FMC (also called FMS – Flight Management System in some installations) is generally a remotely mounted computer, located in the avionics bay along with the radio receiver/transmitter units, TCAS, EGPWS, etc. The MCDU is the actual display screen and keyboard that you see in the flight deck. It's just a "dumb" control panel for the FMC. The radios work the same way; controllers/displays in the flight deck, actual radios in the avionics bay.
The FMC sends guidance commands to the flight director, which drives the autopilot.
Pilots monitor progress by viewing information displayed on the multi-function display (MFD). It's usually set to display a moving map that can be configured to show flight plan waypoints, high or low navigation aids, airports, airways, etc.
I've owned two condos and in both situations the builder selected the management company. Once the association was turned over to the owners, then the home owner's association had the power to hire/fire the management company.
Do you know who your board members are? It's always been my neighbors and we could approach them with concerns. You could also attend the next board meeting.
Good luck.
answer this question
he outright says it would. did you watch the video?
Both exist in columns and rows, not one or the other.
and yes it is.
To me, human relations would be the best.
Our purpose is to attempt to change attitudes and instill responsibility for personal actions.
We can achieve these aspects through understanding the human psyche and applying known methodologies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, within the judicial context.