If you have an infection in your body, a doctor has two options. Option 1 to prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic, in the hopes that it might work. Option 2 is to take a sample, culture (grow) the bacteria in a laboratory, work out scientifically which antibiotic will treat the infection, and only then prescribe the right one. Yes, Option 2 takes a few days to fully diagnose the specific needs of the patient. But, Option 2 delivers a more targeted therapy which will address the needs of the patient and spends valuable resources only on the right drugs (and minimises risk of antibiotic resistance). In fact, in this diagnosis phase they may discover that the issue is caused by a viral, not bacterial infection – so antibiotics would be the wrong solution. [If the patient is about to die or in a critical condition, Option 1 is the right approach – you haven’t got time to do option 2.]
What’s this got to do with management? Well, many companies tell us generic things like…
- “our management skills aren’t very strong”
- “we’ve promoted all these people into manager roles, and they have no experience”
- “our engagement survey suggests we need to improve our management skills”
The obvious answer is… ‘let’s put everyone through a management development programme’. But, when you scratch beneath the surface, it’s not so always so simple. Often there are a blend of people – some with more experience and some with less. There are people who are brilliant at setting goals and driving / reviewing performance, BUT they cannot have a development conversation for toffee. There are people who are technically super-talented and yet struggle to read the emotions of the people around them. There are people that are work really well with individual direct reports, but cannot get a team to work together in their absence. There are people (often the most senior) that think they are personally very good at management, but everyone else needs to develop. The truth is, great managers demonstrate a range of subtly different capabilities. We believe the following subsets of skills are key to making a well-rounded set of management capabilities:-
- Growth mindset
- Adapt to get the best from others
- Drive for performance
- Coach for performance & development
- Communicate courageously
- Engage & inspire others
- Build a cohesive team
Sometimes senior HR or other leaders in organisations think they ‘know’ instinctively the gaps at an organisational level, but often they cannot back up this knowledge with any specific data, and they rush to prescribe a generic management development programme to address it. Maybe this level of diagnosis is OK at an organisation level, although you risk spending a lot of money building skills that are already in place, or worse, missing critical capability gaps. But at a micro level, how does the individual connect with why they personally are being expected to develop these management skills? I can assure you that ‘HR tell us we have to attend this management course’ – does not result in the most motivated of learners!
‘Sheep-dipping’ everyone with the word ‘manager’ in their job description through a prescriptive programme is not always the best answer. Why aren’t we enabling a more personalised learning experience that targets the specific gaps or capabilities that someone has, and that they have been engaged in determining?
If they are genuinely new to management, perhaps the learner does need a bit of everything (albeit with individual focused learning goals). But for those with experience or prior training, using the sheep dip can put people off learning and can feel like (and actually be) a waste of time and money.
Here’s a different approach we are trialling – to enable objective data to drive how we tailor the learning journey for delegates at an organisational and individual level. So, before we design or recommend implementing any management development intervention, we start by taking the temperature of management capabilities at both organisational and individual levels. In short, we set up a self-assessment diagnostic and 180-degree feedback survey as step 1. Then we analyse the results and make recommendations:
- At an organisational level – here are the true specific capability gaps (and strengths)
- At an individual level – here’s your personal diagnostic report, and we recommend you personally focus on these specific sub-skills (and keep leveraging these strengths)
Just like with prescribing antibiotics, surely a more scientifically based recommendation on how to build management skills is better than a broad-brush approach? The client gets better return on their investment, and the individual learner is more motivated to develop the skills that matter most to them. With management development, the organisation is usually not about to die, so let’s stick to option 2.
We are looking for a handful of client organisations to partner with us to help to refine our diagnostic tool further, to give you more targeted and specific data about the skills of your managers as a starting point. If you’d like to talk to us about being part of piloting and testing our diagnostic, we’d love to hear from you.