Senior Leaders: Your New Manager Development Efforts are Failing Your Firm

New manager development is hard work. The benefits to organizations that get it right include strengthened performance, improved engagement and retention, meaningful collaboration, and increased innovation. Oh, and the strengthened leadership pipeline is alright, too. I checked, and new managers are a key part of the front end of your firm’s leadership pipeline.

Unfortunately, many (read: most) organizations are mired in a broken model for new manager development, emphasizing one-and-done training and avoiding longer-range sustained development that blends coaching, mentoring, cohort collaboration, and even executive sponsorship. While a conscientious promoting manager is helpful, those individuals are often over-taxed and unable to dedicate the time essential for supporting new manager learning. As a result, too many new managers are left to flail and, if not fail, at least under-perform, wreaking havoc on performance, engagement, and retention.

Seven areas where I see organizations regularly falling short with new manager development efforts:

1. New managers continue to be drawn from the ranks of contributors who are good at their work with little consideration of what it takes to be good at managing—particularly in this era where the role differs from what most of us grew up with in our careers.

2. New manager development is outsourced to L&D or Human Resources and typically outsourced further to training mills. Promoting and senior managers don’t have skin in the game beyond a possible budgetary bite, and some hope that the training sticks. (Training is great if it’s part of a portfolio of development experiences, including coaching.)

3. Even if the one-and-done training is the most incredible training ever conceived and delivered for new managers, it falls short of creating a sustaining experience of exploration, experimentation, reflection, and true learning. From the research of Linda A. Hill and others, developing as a manager is a transformational experience with no shortcuts. There are definitely no shortcuts. It’s a journey. Make it a guided journey!

4. Coaching is rare for those new to managing and typically operating on the front lines—arguably where it’s most needed.

5. There’s typically no sponsor beyond the promoting manager for the newer manager. The lack of a sponsor to support, challenge, and open up new opportunities for the new manager/emerging leader stifles growth.

6. New manager development efforts typically lack what I describe as the Mayo-Clinic approach, where the new managers work with various specialists over their start-up period to help develop a rounded set of skills.

7. The new and promoting managers lack a framework to support coaching and experimentation and guide learning over time. This failure to have a unified view and toolset to guide their efforts practically guarantees flailing and increased odds of failing.

Five areas where you can strengthen new manager development dramatically

Like almost everything else in how we guide, grow, and lead our organizations, manager development requires a hefty dose of Thinking Differently. Unfortunately, thinking differently isn’t a strong suit in most organizations. Here are some starters:

1. Rethink what you truly want from the individuals you call managers. It’s a lot less about supervision and more about helping them develop as coaches, empowerers, and success facilitators. Redefine the role. Heck, consider renaming the role. (See my article via SmartBrief on Leadership: Toward a better model for leadership development.)

2. Provide a set of test-drive experiences where promoting and prospective managers get the feel for the work with close support and regular feedback and coaching. It’s a win for everyone if the prospective manager uncovers either a passion for the work of guiding and supporting others or opts to focus on developing as a contributor.

3. Put accountability where it needs to be for new manager development and success—squarely on the shoulders of the promoting manager and their senior manager. This involves teaching promoting managers how to support and coach their new managers and ensuring that the entire upline chain of managers is evaluated based on their results for this important work.

4. Give your L&D and H.R. colleagues a mandate and the resources to create and sponsor sustained learning and growth experiences for new managers. These programs must address the need new managers have for support during their foundational start-up period and blend sustained learning experiences, ample group and 1×1 coaching, a senior sponsor, and a cohort approach with access to a clinic model. (See the better model link above.)

5. Adopt a framework such as the Managers Operating System to guide learning, experimentation, continuous improvement, and scaling. This particular framework identifies the ten core “programs” that must interoperate for manager success at every level, incorporating role clarity, swift trust, flexible communication approaches, the need to provide context for the work, and others. Importantly, this framework solves the dilemma that Hill and others highlight: new managers often aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do.

The Bottom Line for Now:

In their fascinating and important new book, Power to the Middle, the authors—McKinsey or ex-McKinsey—make a powerful case for how poorly we’ve treated our manager class over the past decades. (There’s a certain irony that their firm and others like it led the charge to disinvest in the manager class for those decades.) The reality is that managers in the form that fits today’s world are critical enablers of success and catalysts for learning and innovation. If you’re the CEO or a top operating executive, pull your head out of the sand on this important part of your organization’s success. Evaluate your firm’s investment and outcomes in new manager development. Assess your organization’s efforts versus the areas of failure and ideas for strengthening highlighted in this article. And then make strengthening new manager development a full contact activity in your organization.