Over the years I’ve had many HR folks and other leaders ask me to describe a typical engagement with a company. What do you usually do to help organizations like ours, Keith?
I’ve long given out the same answer. There is no “usual”. More than a decade in the consulting space and everybody has slightly different requests.
“Please help us address this very acute problem.” [great, because it’s a rampant issue for your team]
“Whatever you do, do NOT mention this very acute problem.” [uh, ok…but it’s a rampant issue for your team]
There is, however, a Most Commonly Requested Service. And that is manager training.
And I have a theory as to why that is. I suspect there are two main drivers. One has to do with systemic problems with how we handle knowledge work and undervalue emotional intelligence in general. The other has to do with the mentality of your average CEO.
Painting with broad strokes, knowledge work is a field in which we can recognize the value of individual contributors much more easily than we recognize the value of managers. If someone is a fabulous engineer it’s pretty easy to see. There are common metrics and they aren’t that difficult to measure, even subjectively. Fewer bugs, bigger problems, quicker solutions.
But the same cannot be said of managers. Which is funny, because pretty much everyone has had a crappy boss at some point so we all appreciate there’s a quality spectrum. Where it falls down is in our readiness to see the Venn diagram of The Set of Contributor Skills and The Set of Management Skills is two separate circles. There’s this assumption most companies have run with for years: if someone’s great at doing X, they will implicitly be great at managing those who do X.
This is false.
The result? We don’t know what skills a great manager actually needs, we don’t train for it, but we need someone to press a group of ICs into alignment so bam, we promote one of them to manager with no training or preparation. And when Keith asks about our management training we go, “Oh. Yeah. I guess we should have some. Do you do that?” Which is when we start talking about emotional intelligence. And having difficult conversations. And psychological safety. Radical candor. 1:1s. How to make performance management not suck.
OK so that’s driver #1. Tons of untrained managers.
Driver #2 is the mentality of the average CEO. I don’t know how much of this is nature (only folks with this gene become CEOs [psychopaths in the c-suite, anyone?]) or nurture (the environment surrounding a CEO produces this trait), but I can tell you this. I’ve been across the table from many CEOs. Companies of less than 10. Companies of hundreds or thousands. And I’ve witnessed this particular tendency again and again which can best be described as follows:
“I’ll begrudgingly admit that my company may not be perfect. But I’ll be darned if I’ll connect any imperfection to decisions I make or cultural pillars that I inculcate through my actions. Ergo, if this consultant is going to find some way to improve our organization it will have to be through addressing others. Don’t threaten my ego.”
And thus, manager training.
See, managers is Them. Not me. That’s safe. I don’t have to change, my managers do. And since I’m allowing a consultant to train them, that means I’m ticking the box of Improving The Workplace without challenging my own role in creating an org that needs any form of improvement.
Now I’m not saying this is every CEO. I’ve absolutely met some who readily put their ego on the chopping block and engage in good faith conversations about what could be better. And it’s so much easier to work with companies like this! There’s so much more we can do together to bring about lasting change where it’s needed most.
But even if I’m working with a Chief Ego Officer, I’m still happy to do the manager training. Because folks still deserve a great boss.
image courtesy of Kacper Chrzanowski via unsplash