I’m opinionated on the challenges (and solutions) for new manager development. Here’s why: 

Why I Care About New Manager Development so Passionately

I know the potential of these individuals. 

As a corporate manager and then executive, I dedicated time and energy to selecting, coaching, and developing my new managers to start strong and scale successfully. In a 40-year career, dozens of individuals I promoted into their first role as managers are now running businesses, leading large organizations, and serving as senior executives, with many others serving in positions of great responsibility.

Most new managers are on a lonely journey

I work with hundreds of new managers every year, learn their stories, and hear their trials and tribulations. I coach many of them as well, and I work with them on a sustained basis as they navigate the treacherous transition from contributor to manager. Most of them have supportive, well-meaning promoting managers unfamiliar with developing new managers whose organizations offer little support for this vital work. 

Senior leaders haven’t owned new manager development—they delegate it.

I work with dozens of senior leaders yearly, striving to strengthen their teams and develop the next generation of leaders. The intentions are great, yet I hear their laments about weak talent pipelines and the formulaic and less-than-effective approaches they use in their organizations. They know manager development is broken yet they continue to delegate this critical work to other functions removed from operations. 

We’re failing, and it’s costing us dearly.

Finally, a part of my greater sense of professional purpose is helping solve the challenges of new manager development. After all, these individuals are the ones we need to create engagement, deliver quality results, and serve as critical enablers of change and adaptation in our world. We need the best and brightest to guide and lead our teams, empower and enable our team members, and help us navigate change. These individuals are the front-end of our leadership pipelines, and we cannot afford to screw this up any worse than the Gallup Engagement Numbers suggest. (Gallup: 2/3 of our workers are disengaged, and 70% of that disengagement is attributable to the manager.)

So, what do we do about the manager development problem? Start here with these five big ideas.

Five Big Areas You Can Start Strengthening New Manager Development

1. Start the mutual discovery work about managing long before the role is available. 

Let’s link arms and avoid spontaneous promotions from contributor to manager. These often sound like this: “So and so left, and you’re great at your job. I think you’ll make a good manager, and I need you to step into this role on Monday.” 

When I talk to experienced middle and senior managers, a considerable percentage of them describe the above as their experience. A good number reference the “Sink or Swim School of Manager Development” they attended. And while they all agree it was a horrible way to get started, they continue to perpetuate enrollment in this school. 

Instead, identify opportunities through your regular observation and one-on-ones to discuss the role and identify opportunities for low-risk exploration. Small-scale projects are ideal for this type of exploration. Observe, ask, and listen as they relate what they liked and where they struggled. Rinse and repeat. 

If they’re interested, continue to my next bullet: The 3 Whys of Managing.

2. Ask Three Times: Why do you want to manage? 

I lost track of the number of times I was informed by a solid contributor that they believed they were ready to manage. I love the enthusiasm for sure and would never stifle it. However, I will still make them work to convince themselves and me that they understand what they might be getting into in the role. I ask them, “Why do you want to manage?” I do it three times with a twist. 

Each time I ask the question, I give them an assignment to explore the role and come back with an answer. The first time might be interviewing some experienced managers about the realities of their roles and what they do and don’t like. I also encourage them to explore what others experienced with their start-up as managers. 

The next time might be to try a slightly more formalized experience, such as running a project. The twist is that they will ask everyone for feedback on the fly and then roll up what they learned. 

Finally, for the third initiative, I ask them to create a start-up plan outlining their first hundred days, what they hope to accomplish, what challenges they encounter, and what support they expect. While I ultimately add to this, it’s fascinating to have them think through the work. 

At the end of these three stages, I look for the candidate to share their findings with me and several other experienced managers in a presentation setting. Anecdotally, more than half of the individuals I send on this journey recognize the role is not suitable for them now. That’s a good thing for all of us. 

3. Help them think systemically about the work of managing successfully.

OK, that’s a fancy label. Let me explain.

In many years of developing and coaching new managers, it’s clear there’s a foundational set of behaviors they need to adopt to start strong and scale successfully. I call this the Managers Operating System (MOS). While perhaps an imperfect metaphor, the MOS contains ten core programs—sets of behaviors—that every manager must bring to life to build a healthy working environment.

Unfortunately, no new manager understands the need for an MOS and the supporting behaviors. In my case, it took me years of managing to identify most of these as necessary. I interacted with my team members, but I didn’t understand the need or method to build the working environment. Some of it came intuitively, and a lot of it didn’t. 

In my development work, individuals who focus on building and strengthening in all these areas are the ones who start strong and scale successfully. (See: Designing a Bug-Free Operating System for Great Managers.)

4. Create authentic development experiences—stop checking the box with one-and-done training.

If there’s one thing I rail at, it’s the reliance organizations and promoting managers and their organizations place on one-and-done manager training. You can’t learn to manage from a training course. You need time on the job, solid coaching, feedback, and outside perspectives. All of these must be present to create a quality managerial development experience.

The reliance on one-and-done training is an output of an enormous leadership development industry where billions are spent, yet results are abysmal. (See Jeffrey Pfeffer’s fabulous research-backed study on this very topic: Leadership BS.) It’s easy for organizations, HR and Learning Development professionals to source and check the box. And it doesn’t work.

OK, so in transparency, I offer manager development programs that do that. Call me biased. I think of it as passionate and committed because I put my credibility and income on the line to deliver value in that format. These multi-month sustained initiatives blend expert instruction, cohort-based learning, one-on-one coaching, feedback, and time in the workplace to put the ideas to work.

5. Hold yourself and your organization accountable for raising the quality bar on manager development.

At the end of the day, the miserable engagement numbers, high degrees of turnover, and weak leadership pipelines are largely the result of systematically ignoring the realities of new manager development. Few would argue with how important it is to get right, and then we delegate this critical work to functions that further outsource it. Start holding yourself accountable to getting this right, and if you are in a position to influence your organization’s approach, embed the commitment to quality manager development practices in your cultural DNA.

The Bottom Line for Now:

In every workshop program with new managers, I suggest that present in the group are future top leaders, CEOs, senior executives, and successful organizational and unit leaders and entrepreneurs. I speak with confidence gained from experience. And I engage with these individuals with an eye on the future, committed to giving them the guidance they need to start strong and scale successfully. You need to do the same. Anything less is just not acceptable.

Art's Signature

 

—

Invest in a high-quality manager development program—not one-and-done training. The New(er) Manager Development Program blends expert instruction, cohort-based learning, time in the workplace working on the approaches plus feedback and one-on-one coaching over four months to help your managers start strong and scale successfully. Drop me a note with questions. 

—