Executive Coaching: 3 Ways to Optimize Your Management Team

Executive Coaching tips to improve managers

Extensive research reveals startling conditions in typical organizational settings. Gallup’s State of the American Manager Report, last updated in 2017, confirms a strong correlation between company prosperity and middle management abilities.

Through the Manager Report and numerous surveys, Gallup has exposed lingering trends in employee disengagement, distrust, and dissatisfaction, which directly hit the bottom line. Managers are 70% responsible for employees’ attitudes about their jobs, affecting their attendance, quality of work, willingness, loyalty, and customer feedback. Gallup’s No Recovery Report found that the American GDP per capita has slowed its growth from 3% to 0.5% in the last 50 years. The growth in personal productivity has essentially stopped, even with the advent of improving technology.

This puts the onus on top leadership to ensure their management structure is as effective as possible, a condition that statistics say is rare. Surveys indicate that only 10% of people have a high talent for managing effectively. Unfortunately, they also show that about 82% of the management segment is chosen from outside this small window.

When top leaders prioritize the quality of their management team, their organizations thrive. When they don’t, they struggle, sometimes marginally, sometimes catastrophically. Leaders enjoy the highest levels of success when they put the right people in the right roles and train them to develop and engage their employees. Each of these steps requires a thoughtful approach and diligent upkeep.

1. Find the Best Management Candidates

Leadership mindsets have changed over the last few decades. In the 2018 article, Want to Improve Productivity? Hire Better Managers, Gallup managing partner Vipula Gandhi describes the traditional leadership philosophy of control and privilege. Experience shows that this has always been detrimental to organizational life. However, employees no longer accept controlling environments or stern practices. Leaders with controlling methods suffer from high employee disengagement, inefficiencies, and turnover. This is not a recipe for success.

Another frequent practice is placing people into leadership roles based on their seniority or past accomplishments, emphasizing their technical skills. Unfortunately, effective leading is much more dependent on people skills. Employees respond much more favorably to managers who know how to relate with them than those with technical savvy. Technical skills can be honed to lead technically, but people desire managers who can lead personally. People’s skills are heavily influenced by personality, which makes it much harder to adapt. Many technically capable managers have poor people skills and thus have poor followings with the associated fallout. 

Leaders need the most effective management team to run the most effective organizations, which means putting the right people in management roles. The right candidates have the strongest people skills, so it is important to stress this attribute in the recruiting and placement process. Technical skills are necessary, but weighing them too heavily is a critical mistake.

Unlike technical skills, people skills are more difficult to assess on paper. This is why getting to know candidates personally is critical. Interviews are valuable for grasping a candidate’s soft skillset.

Here are some areas to explore with a candidate, whether they are internal or from outside the organization:

• What is their philosophy of leadership?
• How does their character convey positivity and motivation?
• How do they exhibit pride, humility, respect, and accountability?
• What kind of wisdom, discernment, and insight do they have?
• Are they interested in people and enjoy engaging, supporting, and encouraging them?
• How do they value their staff?
• Do they care about employees as people or just physical resources?
• What kind of collaborative spirit do they have?
• Do they seem interested in benefitting themselves or others?
• What is their definition of fairness?
• Will they fit into the culture?

Many of these answers can be sensed through conversations or what-if scenarios. Ask candidates to role-play specific situations. Ensure their people skills are strong before offering them a management position.

2. Training Your Managers

You want your employees to enjoy their jobs, which means enjoying their managers. You need your people to be engaged and willing to follow their supervisors to enhance your organization. Only managers with high people skills can ensure this, and only managers who continuously develop these attributes can become highly skilled.

Even good people-oriented managers have room to grow and improve. The most successful leaders ensure their managers are on a path of growth by providing opportunities to train and learn. Most organizations offer technical training, and this is important. However, too many leaders underappreciate the need for their managers to train in people skills. Leaders who emphasize a people-first culture raise managers who excel in these areas.

You may find resources within your staff that have the right experience to conduct training for your managers. If not, find external resources for training in your facility or nearby. Many executive coaches or teachers can offer training in soft skills.

Here are some areas where training is beneficial:

• Listening and feedback
• Delegating
• Negotiating
• Empathy
• Collaboration and multi-discipline interaction
• Transparency
• Problem-solving
• Teamwork
• Interviewing for job openings or promotions
• Approachability and conversation
• Firmness with fairness
• Conflict management
• Stress management
• Running a meeting
• Accountability
• Coaching and mentoring

A trained manager can pass on that training to their people. This is why coaching and mentoring skills are vital for managers to enhance the effectiveness of their staff. The most successful organizations engage managers capable of raising future managers.

In addition to people skills, company policies and procedures training is vital for managers to relate well with their people. Here are some areas of specific training that allow managers to assist their people on a personal level:

• HR policies / internal staff-related policies
• Employee development and promotion policies
• Employee career planning and training policies
• Performance review and assessment procedures
• Corporate vision and mission philosophies

Well-rounded managers are best able to address the needs of their people and maintain their engagement, motivation, and effectiveness. Some types of training may need to be offered as regular refreshers. Prioritizing training creates a culture of excellence.

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3. Keep Your Managers Engaged

Another important aspect of optimizing your management team is keeping them highly engaged. Gandhi cites a significant Gallup finding that 85% of employees are not engaged in their jobs. This translates into dire disabilities for leaders. If, as indicated earlier, 70% of employee attitudes are impacted by their managers, then it’s clear that manager engagement is critical.

Few leaders recognize this. Of those who do, many struggle with thinking of ways to engage their managers. The same applies to managers if you understand what kinds of things engage employees. Each wants to be a part of something great. They want purpose, enjoyable relationships, the ability to succeed, and recognition for their achievements. The degree may differ for managers and their employees, but they are similar nonetheless.

Your managers desire growth opportunities, both personally and corporately. Provide a path to achieve them: Lay out plans to groom managers for advancement. This includes challenging projects that call for higher levels of responsibility, technical skills, and people skills. Experience overcoming challenges empowers and qualifies managers for more. Cross-training is another way to enhance managers’ skills, and many experience a greater appreciation for their company.

Managers raise their engagement by being informed and included in leadership matters. Let them in on corporate plans and visions, and invite participation in activities that are normally above their level. This helps managers feel valued and appreciated. They can bring additional perspectives to leadership discussions, with insight from the working end of the operation. Opportunities to create and deliver presentations to higher-level leadership and other departments also increase motivation and give managers a sense that they have much at stake in their careers.

Include manager engagement in performance evaluations. The most effective are 360-degree evaluations that incorporate anonymous feedback from all levels, including supervisors, colleagues, employees, and customers. See how people really view the manager’s engagement.

Leaders who optimize their management team find sustainable success and satisfaction in ways that outshine all other strategies. The employees with the best managers have the best experiences and the best futures.

David Herdlinger

Creator of the KASHBOX: Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Habits

Helping You Realize Your Potential

I help people discover their potential, expand and develop the skills and attitudes necessary to achieve a higher degree of personal and professional success and create a plan that enables them to balance the profit motives of their business with the personal motives of their lives.

herdlinger.com