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When you look at your company’s employee roster and try to identify which people have management potential, are you having some trouble? You’re not alone. The Wall Street Journal recently reported in an article called, Leadership Training Gains Urgency Amid Stronger Economy, that U.S. organizations are stepping up their efforts to develop future leaders. The Journal said companies are facing a shortage of qualified managers because of past layoffs, training cutbacks and Baby Boomer retirements—even as the economy shows signs of rebounding and companies look at growth strategies.

 

The post-recession economy isn’t going to come roaring back—not for a while, anyway—so organizations can’t afford to take overly aggressive approaches to their growth. Unlike just a few years ago, when companies needed lots of people for their ambitious expansions, mediocre or downright lousy leaders could find camouflage in fair results, secure in the knowledge that something else would come along to distract their bosses’ attention. Today, companies don’t have that luxury—they cannot throw someone into the manager’s chair and go for a hopeful ride. They have to be sure that managers are equipped with the right combination of knowledge, skills, motivations and behaviors to impact bottom-line results. That takes managers who clearly understand and take accountability for the company’s vision and strategies and who have the tools and commitment to lead the charge.

 

In today’s competitive environment, managers must do more than “manage”—they must lead in the right direction. That means more than core technical competencies. That means understanding how their decisions affect the entire organization.

 

Yes, that means leadership training, and forward-thinking companies know it. In fact, according to the Journal, about half of the companies surveyed by a human resources consulting firm say they’re increasing their leadership development budgets this year—and half of those are increasing spending by more than 10 percent.

 

The way I see it, now is the perfect time to take advantage of the economic “reboot” and shift into growth mode the right way—by developing managerial talent within the organization with high-impact, business relevant training approaches that tie leadership behaviors to company results.

 

 

If the forecasts are correct and the economy indeed is recovering, we can expect some companies will pause briefly to catch their collective breath and then resume business as usual, as if the recession never happened. This is a bad idea. Critical work remains to be done.

 

Many employees – perhaps up to 60 percent of all North American workers, according to one survey – intend to leave their companies as the economy improves. They’re feeling empowered by the sense of opportunity that slowly replaces the clutch of job security during difficult times. Rightly or wrongly, they’ve grown disillusioned with their current employers because they’ve witnessed layoffs, frozen salaries and other painful cutbacks during the crisis. They distrust their organizations and their commitment is low. They believe they’re on their own and must watch out for their own best interests.

 

The April issue of Workforce Management magazine features an article titled “Managers Don’t Matter”  that attempts to debunk the belief that “people don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” The article says other factors, such as stress and compensation, are as important for retention as the manager-employee relationship. It also says, however, successful organizations have managers who can knit alienated employees into cohesive teams. One expert quoted says managers who help employees see how their individual efforts contribute to broader goals will increase the workers’ feelings of being in control.

 

Smart companies will act upon this information. They will work with employees to rebuild confidence and re-establish engagement by (1) acknowledging what they’ve all been through and (2) sharing their vision for the future. Needless to say, this requires an ability to communicate in ways that skeptical employees can take to heart. It also requires an ability to deliver such a critical message quickly – before these skeptical employees pack up and leave.

 

Many companies rely on our Discovery Maps® for this very purpose, citing not only their speed of use (usually one to three hours) but also their ability to immerse participants in elements of the message. Research says people are more receptive – or, in some cases, less skeptical – to ideas when they see themselves as an important piece of the puzzle.

 

 

Here’s another thought regarding the recent blog post in which we mentioned a recent magazine article that asserts managers may have less influence on an employee’s decision to leave a company than other factors, such as stress and compensation.

 

There’s plenty of workplace data saying the worker-manager relationship does, in fact, have the biggest influence on employee retention. Even the comments attached to that magazine story offer plenty of anecdotal evidence. We won’t take sides because, frankly, both viewpoints have considerable merit. If you don’t like/respect/value/trust your company, you’re not going to stick around. If you don’t like/respect/value/trust your manager, you’re not going to stick around.

 

Managers face direct scrutiny as frontline representatives of an organization, responsible for keeping employees engaged and getting the most from them. At today’s most successful companies, managers are more than paperwork administrators, they have responsibility as talent leaders for employee retention, motivation and productivity in a constantly changing business world.

 

In our observation, most managers aren’t prepared for that challenge. Often, managers are promoted into supervisory roles because they show an aptitude for their daily tasks, but they usually don’t come with the skill set or perspective necessary to make decisions with the company’s overall strategy in mind. Good managers, on the other hand, have the ability to (A) hire the right people, (B) retain and develop them, and (C) transition them into new job responsibilities – all relative to the company’s larger strategy. It’s not difficult to acquire these skills, but doing so requires commitment from any organization intent on weathering this stormy economy.

 

It sort of reminds me of a famous comment by football coach Bill Parcells, who felt he wasn’t supported by his bosses and decided to leave his job with the New England Patriots. “If they want you to cook the dinner,” he said at a news conference, “at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”

 

Being a manager today is sort of the same deal. Organizations that build for the future by expecting top performance from their managers should at least give those managers the ingredients necessary to make good decisions. When they do, they realize big payoffs.

Companies pay a lot of lip service to their “culture” but they usually do a lousy job of sharing exactly what that is with new employees. Your own company, for example, probably is pretty good about sharing the mission statement, offering job training and orientation, and maybe even setting up a “welcome aboard” lunch. Yes, those are nice, but they’re not nearly enough.

 

Every new employee really wants to know One Important Thing: What’s this company all about, anyway? Many other Big Questions follow: Where is this company going? How will it get there? What’s the definition of success? Who are we serving? What does this company believe in? And what do they want from me?

 

If those answers aren’t immediately apparent in this age of information on demand, you’re going to lose your new employee in short order – along with the considerable costs of hiring a replacement. The March 2010 issue of Talent Management magazine has a useful read about the importance of “acculturing” employees early in the on-boarding process. In short, on-boarding is not the same thing as orientation – it’s an ongoing communication effort.

 

We agree, although we take issue with the writer’s assertion that it can take “a year or more.” Sure, it might take that long if your culture strategies consist of company handbooks, lectures and banners stretched from the office rafters but the smarter bet is that it’ll never happen at all if you’re relying exclusively on them. There are better tools that deliver quicker results, such as the Discovery Maps that we develop with clients to help them communicate important messages to their employees. Frankly, I can think of no company message more important to an employee than one at the beginning that says, “Hey, here’s our deal …”

 

It all comes down to this: The faster you can get a new employee ingrained in company culture – to really understand the organization, its expectations and its values – the sooner you’ll see a return on your recruiting investment through peak performance.

I found it disturbing to read an article in yesterday’s St. Petersburg Times entitled “This was not our fault” by business columnist Robert Trigaux.

The caption was …”Finding folks to own up to our economic crisis is tough”. The article highlighted 20 people who contributed to the mess, although none of them have accepted much responsibility – if any.  US presidents, former banking and investment company CEO’s, heads of government agencies charged with oversight, real estate association directors and even our former Federal Reserve Chairman are among these 20 and many have said things like….

 

“It wasn’t my job”

“I wasn’t aware of any problems on my watch”

“Gee, I’m sorry. Can I go back to my limo and penthouse now?”

 

According to Trigaux, the more hearings that are held, “the more we end up with the same third-grade version of “it’s not my fault”.

As someone in the corporate HR world, I find it disheartening to think about how these high-profile “leaders” who shift blame and minimize their accountability will ultimately impact the leaders and managers in our own organizations.

It seems that those of us who design and implement  leadership development programs will have to work even harder to provide experiences – both in the classroom and on the job – that can help  counteract  public examples of poor leadership. We’ll need to expose leaders to models of behavior and best practices that demonstrate high standards, ethical decision-making and personal integrity.  

Simulations, case studies and behavior modeling  approaches in the classroom, as well as mentoring and coaching programs on the job , will be more important than ever.

In one of our discovery learning programs, Impact 5: The Game of Leadership Accountability,  for example, we use a simulated experience to help managers understand the criticality of living up to five leadership accountabilities that impact personal and organizational success.  In the simulation, learners are presented with ethical dilemmas, difficult personnel decisions, trade-offs of short and long term results, financial investment options and more, and have to decide how to handle them with integrity, honesty and fairness.  They also learn to assess situations from three perspectives – the impact on the bottom line, the impact on customers and the impact on employees and the organization.  Armed with models of behavior that they can use in real-life situations, and with reinforcement and follow up on the job, leaders can be better at judging situations and making appropriate choices.

The Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission made a final poignant comment to one of the financial CEO’s last week:

“Either you were pulling the levers or you were asleep at the switch. Leadership and responsibility matter”.

Yes, they do.