According to a recent Gallup poll, 25% of employees would, if they had the power to do so, fire their manager. 47% of them distrusted their senior management team and 75% reported that the single most stressful aspect of their job was their immediate line manager. So what is going wrong?
Digging behind the statistics shows that there are a number of reasons for this issue, which enlightened organisations are now realising and so beginning to address. The main reasons for these startling statistics include:
1. Many organisations set key performance indicators (KPIs) which encourage or place significant pressure on managers to focus on shorter term results to the detriment of team morale, customer experience and longer term success.
2. An ineffective use of feedback by managers who do not know when and how to deliver it to create a positive impact.
This last point often arises because managers are being appointed almost exclusively on the basis of their technical experience and previous track record as such an expert.
Whilst managers with a technical background can learn how to effectively give feedback and manage people, sadly many of them are given little or no management training support when it comes to developing these vital people management skills. This being the case they focus exclusively on short term KPI's and ignore the people management part of their role.
If you have promoted technical experts into a management role. Support their transition with effective management training.
