Leading People. Peter Mills
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well in a specialist role.
When appointed, they are often underequipped for the managerial role they are given. The knowledge and skills necessary to perform their role have to be gained on the job, over time, and largely through trial and error. Even when trained to be a ‘manager,’ the training is often piecemeal and a mix of models, practices, and theories which individuals struggle to bring together into a meaningful and implementable framework for their managerial work.
To make things worse, their own manager has often been ”developed” under the same process, and the organization’s senior leadership team has failed to provide the required systems of work to support good managerial leadership practice.
The causes of ineffective individual performance may originate in the organization but in the end they are owned by the manager.
Organizational Causes of Poor Performance Effectiveness
There are four causes directly attributable to the organization’s leadership team. These are:
1. Lack of a clear definition of the role of a manager
A. Some organizations do not have a clear and common understanding of the role of a manager. If fact, often senior management have conflicting views of what a manager should know and do. In these circumstances, how can an individual manager understand their role in an organization?
2. Lack of organizational models
A. Some organizations have not identified the knowledge, skills, and behaviors their managers need in order to lead, manage, and develop people effectively. As a result, they do not have standards to establish a benchmark for good practice. Therefore, managers don’t know what standards are required by the organization.
B. Some organizations have identified the individual capabilities required but fail to communicate these to managers. As a result, managers are unaware of what is expected.
C. Some organizations have identified the individual capability requirements and communicate them to managers, but they fail to make sure managers have the required capabilities and deliver them. They assume that managers deliver on those expectations and do not assess each manager against the required criteria to ensure a standard of performance.
3. Lack of systems of work to support managers in their managerial work
A. Managerial work requires the organization to provide effective systems of work to enable managers to be successful, such as recruitment or performance effectiveness systems. Some organizations do not provide these systems for managers, or they are poorly designed or implemented and often not integrated.
4. Lack of role models
A. Managers of new managers may not have the knowledge, skills, and experience required themselves. As they were also developed on the job, they do not have the capability to develop their own direct reporting managers. Even if the manager is effective, they cannot pass on this knowledge to their direct reporting managers because they are unaware of how they have been effective.
Individual Manager Causes of Poor Performance Effectiveness
There are five causes directly attributable to managers themselves. These are:
1. Lack of understanding of the role of a manager, or the knowledge, skills, and experience required
A. Some managers don’t understand the role of the manager, or know what knowledge, skills, and experience are required to lead, manage, and develop people effectively. They do not have a coherent standard to benchmark themselves against.
2. The manager does not value managerial work
A. Valuing the work is about the person’s level of interest, commitment to, and sense of involvement in what they do. To perform at a high standard continuously, a person must value their work. If a manager does not find value, is not interested in, or finds no enjoyment in managing people, they are unlikely to be able to sustain effort over time, or to excel in their role. As managers are often promoted from being a competent specialist, it does not automatically mean they want, or even value, the role of a manager.
3. The manager does not have the mental capacity to solve the complex problems of managerial work
A. In essence, this refers to the manager’s cognitive ability to assimilate data and information, and to exercise sound judgment in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty. It is a critical, threshold condition for fitting a person to a role, and often is lacking when a person is over-promoted. The exercise of judgment becomes more and more important when the facts and figures fall short of obvious solutions, and the increase in variables makes decision-making increasingly difficult.
4. The manager exhibits extremes of temperament
A. The manager may be achieving the required results, but their overall capability to perform a role successfully is overshadowed by one or more negative personal characteristics, and this has never been ”corrected.“ Extremes of behavior may include: chronic problems with interpersonal relationships, aggression, disabling extremes of temperament, or drug or alcohol dependency.
5. Lack of application
A. Managers know what they should be doing, but for various reasons, don’t do it. As a result, people are poorly managed and developed leading to low staff engagement.
The Solution
To overcome these issues, one fully integrated, proven Leadership Framework for people management has been developed. The framework provides a set of principles and practices for effective decision-making, and for diagnosing and correcting managerial leadership and organization issues. It brings clarity of thought and rational understanding to the nature of work, what it is, and how it should be structured, distributed, executed and assured.
The Leadership Framework provides a methodology for the design and deployment of an organizational structure that ensures the right organizational design, with the correct number of managerial layers, with the right work at the right levels, with well-defined accountabilities and authorities to execute business strategies. It enables the design of people management systems to support productive work.
At the framework’s core is a strong manager-employee relationship. This is a two-way, trusting, productive, working relationship focused on achieving business goals with team members working to their full potential.
This Leadership Framework has three interconnected parts with a coherent set of integrated principles and practices.
Leading people specifies actions required of all people who are appointed to managerial roles and are accountable for the output of others. It comprises the minimum and essential requirements of all managers, from “frontline” managers up to and including the CEO/ Managing Director. It is about the day-to-day things managers do to lead and manage their team, such as creating effective roles and filling them with good people, assigning and assessing work and recognizing and rewarding good work.
Leading the organization specifies additional requirements of senior executives and middle management in designing and implementing workplace conditions, such as structures and systems of work that enable and support effective managerial leadership and productive work. Implementing business strategy and building workforce capability are part of this.
Leading yourself is about understanding the manager’s role and how to work with others across the organization to build constructive working relationships.
The framework is underpinned by certain beliefs about people at work, and that work is only enabled when managers provide an environment that allows people to work together,