Can Training Fix Manager Transition Troubles? June 25, 2008 From the "Inside Training" e-Newsletter
By Margery Weinstein
You made them—and thought you trained them to be—managers, but as far they're concerned they're only responsible for their own work. That there's a team operating under them is forgotten a few days after their promotion. Hard to believe, given all the training talk about the importance of facilitating smooth transitions to manager. But that's the case, according to preliminary results from a five-year study by ConceptReserve of 2,600 managers at 149 Fortune 1000 and other large organizations across the U.S. and Eastern Canada. Here are some of the report's key findings:
• More than 86 percent of managers are not fully engaged in their roles. Most are still operating primarily as individual contributors or are stuck in transition to the manager role.
• "Our proprietary research reveals this leadership crisis among managers is more than 10 times worse than the 1970s and at least four times worse than the 1990s," says John Davis, chief executive officer of ConceptReserve, a training firm that specializes in manager transitions and employee engagement. "The hard reality is if managers do not make a timely transition to the manager role once they become managers, they will not make the kind of contribution their organization requires."
• In the study, a subset of 1,200 managers was asked to identify the challenges they face in making the transition to the manager role. The five most difficult transition challenges in order of frequency were: 1. Doing versus managing the work; 2. Managing former peers; 3. Letting go of being the expert; 4. Lack of time to get things done; and 5. Producing results versus developing and coaching people.
• "It became obvious most of their challenges were symptoms of much more fundamental issues," says Davis of the firm’s conversations with the manager subset. "This leads us to the fatal assumptions managers make that derail the transition to manager."
• The "fatal assumptions" identified were: 1. My individual contributor success will translate into management success; 2. It's out of my control—someone else can and should fix this; 3. Being the expert is the most important factor for my credibility; 4. It's the rational and logical approach or solution that counts; 5. The people I manage are just like me (in their thinking, approach, expectations, goals, and priorities); 6. Competent people do not need help.
• "Essentially, these assumptions and others like them describe the mind-set of most individual contributors," notes Davis. "It is that individual contributor mind-set or perspective that has to change for an individual to successfully complete the transition into the manager role."
Do you find the smoothness of your managerial transitions depends mostly on the quality of the people you've promoted? Join the discussion on Training Day.
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