Developing Emerging Leaders – Success or Failure is in your hands

JOHN ROBERTS, Business Development Manager of Leadership Management Australasia looks at the development of our emerging business leaders.

LEADERSHIP Management Australia has long held the view that many organisations set-up their emerging first time leaders for failure. It is the norm that one employee will be promoted into a supervisor or management role over another employee based on their tenure in the business or the calibre of their technical skills rather than their potential as a leader or manager of people.

Moving from a hands-on role into a supervisory or management role is often the most difficult transition employees will make in their career. Many struggle to make the mind shift and transition from being part of the team or “one of the boys” to leading a team to meet business goals and targets.

We often hear the story from participants doing our programs, “I’m finding it a challenge to delegate work I use to do myself to Bob. We’re good mates! We have a beer and a laugh down at the pub every Friday after work”.

A lack of investment in developing an employee’s supervisory and management skills and insufficient support in the role ultimately contribute to a higher than acceptable failure rate in new leaders transitioning to their first leadership role, as either leading hand, team leader, supervisor or manager.

Everyone knows training and support is important, so the question has to be asked – ‘why are our organisational leaders and senior managers so apparently short-sighted when it comes to investing in the emerging leaders of today and tomorrow?’

It may be that an organisation has had a bad experience with training in the past – “the training company over-promised and undelivered”, “it was too academic for our guys”, “a week later aft er the two-day course nothing changed”.

Or it could be an attitudinal thing – “we’re a small business and don’t have the time to put our guys through training”. This is in itself is a paradox. If a company wants to progress, they need to be seeking to improve performance and productivity.

Our research has shown that a manager’s working relationship with the immediate direct reports with whom they have frequent contact can have a significant impact on their performance and satisfaction in their role. In 2012 the top five most important characteristics for a good manager to have in order to positively influence their staff ’s performance in their role at work are:

• Is trustworthy and open in approach
• Clearly communicates where we are going
• Gives me ‘space’ to do my work, supports me
• Listens to/respects my input into decisions
• Gives honest feedback on how I am going

Further the research highlights the top five biggest sources of pressure for leaders and senior manager at the present time as:

• Continuously being in demand
• Increase in personal workload
• Quality of staff in organisation
• Balance between personal and work life
• Ensuring effective communication within the organisation

Middle managers, and how they interact with and engage their teams, are the greatest threat to employee retention. People join a business based on a company’s reputation and the role expectations but often leave because they are poorly supervised and managed. We all know employee turnover represents a huge often unseen cost to an organisation.

The bottom line is, putting a great operator/performer into the role of leading or managing a group of their former colleagues without adequate training, development and support is a recipe for disaster.

Sure, some will, through their own fortitude and focus, be able to adapt and apply themselves successfully to the role without support. But many will flounder, make avoidable mistakes and become disillusioned and de-motivated with what should be an inspirational development in their careers.

Once bitten or burnt, many will exit the role and fail to put their hand up for future leadership positions – they will effectively be tainted or scarred for life. It is this outcome that must be prevented – and the trick to preventing it is identifying, investing in and supporting first time leaders.

ABOUT LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT AUSTRALASIA (LMA)

LMA was established 40 years ago. It delivers leadership and management programs to improve productivity, performance and leadership through 70 locations across Australia and New Zealand.

LMA has worked with over 115,000 people in small and medium organisations, large corporations and government departments.

If you would like to inquire about our programs, please call John Roberts (03) 9822 1301 or 0408 137 349.

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