Blog : Leadership Accountability

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.

 

 

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.

I was interviewing the other day for an open position in our company and was reminded about how critical it is to do two things:

 Get the right people "on the bus" (A concept from Jim Collins' book "Good to Great") and use a disciplined and thorough approach to the interviewing and hiring process.

 We were down to two candidates and I was leaning toward one of them. Why?  I liked her and she would be reporting to me.

 Fortunately, we did several good things in our interviewing and hiring process;

I was glad we put the time and effort into this process. Both candidates tested well, but our group discussions allowed us to get well beyond impact and personality and our reference checks provided important information to add to the mix.

The bottom line is that we hired the right candidate -- not the one I was leaning toward. It took more time than we would have liked, but it was worth it.

We designed our program Mosaic®: The ART of Talent Leadership as a leadership development program to help managers embrace and stay ocused on their critical accountabilities to hire, retain and develop great employees for the organization. The program also arms learners with best practices around each of these accountabilities.  In the area of "attracting"  employees, learners explore the importance of three components of the process: sourcing, hiring and onboarding. When all three are done well, the right people get on the bus -- and are fully engaged from the start.

So, next on my list for our new hire?  Onboarding.