Some managers don’t want to be managers they find themselves in this position as a natural career progression from being a well regarded professional. But being a good teacher, social worker, nurse, architect, engineer etc does not mean you will make a good manager. Some people find them selves in management and simply don’t want the hassle.
The management issues some managers avoid dealing with
There is a long list of issues some managers try and avoid dealing with. It may be they don’t feel comfortable challenging team members, they feel they lack the necessary skills, they are concerned that in the current climate they will be accused of harassment or bullying, or they think HR should deal with these issues. Absence management is one such issue – “ HR isn’t doing anything about this individuals frequent absence or long term sickness “.
A manager complains to HR about the poor performance of an individual’s work which means it has to be checked and corrected something this experience member of staff resents. Deadlines are frequently missed so the manager is constantly chasing them up. To top it all the individual has now submitted a grievance accusing the manager of bullying saying the manager is. “Always on my back, always finding fault with my work”. Why are HR not being more supportive?
Often along side quality of work there are complaints about the individuals attitude, uncooperative, negative and cynical undermining team morale and questioning the managers decisions/authority.
Another problem these managers look to HR to solve is the personality clash between two team members or an individual and the rest of the team. “ why can’t HR just move them to another team?”
These managers abdicate responsibility for managing their employees instead expecting HR to deal with ,”problem or difficult” people. They don’t own unpopular decisions instead they say things like, “ senior management have decided”. It not hard to see how having managers like this in an organisation would be a negative factor.
Name and shame
When presented with this information some organisations respond by saying ,”Tell us who these managers are and we will get rid of them” but not only would that not be compassionate it wouldn’t work because if nothing else changes they will simply be replaced by more of the same. In any case this is really about the management culture with in the organisation rather than simply some individuals.
So what should organisations do?
The problem wouldn’t exist if organisations recruited individuals with strong people skills into management posts. But working with the existing management group means providing training to improve managers people skills , provide additional support from HR, introduce a comprehensive mentoring system and ensuring the organisation’s
management culture reinforces management responsibility.
There will always be professions who don’t want to go into management so why force them . Instead make it possible for professionals to progress without going into management by offering roles that utilise expertise such as involvement in training and support of newly qualified professions, input into working groups, place on non management interview panels and the pay and status of being a “ senior practitioner “.
