In this HBR blog, Monique Valcour identifies some of the key success factors in top managers. To sum up her thoughts in one impactful statement, “If you’re not helping people develop, you’re not management material.”
So what does this mean? It means that because candidates value learning and development opportunities above any other aspect of a prospective job, a manager’s role is more critical than ever. Skilled managers attract top candidates, retain and challenge them, and drive performance. Poor managers do just the opposite. The firm not only misses out on potential talent, but it also costs them a lot of money due to employee turnover and subpar productivity.
As most of us have learned, the majority of learning and development (roughly 90%) happens on the job rather than in schooling (not to knock Goizueta!) or formal training programs. An effective manager can benefit you in many ways – from mentoring and challenging you to providing constructive feedback and helping facilitate conversations. In many ways, a mentor is someone you can look up to and model yourself after. Thus, your own management style will, in turn, help to shape the firm’s future leaders.
Below are some characteristics of effective managers:
-Invested in coaching
-Someone you can respect and learn from
-Takes interest in your career development
In conjunction, here are some tips to becoming an effective manager:
1) Be transparent
2) Share detailed information about firm’s ongoing operations
3) Support internal networking
4) Have frequent conversations about career goals and interests rather than just once a year during annual performance review (I have found this to be very helpful in my own relationship with my supervisor)
5) When planning the team’s work, ask employees how they can contribute and what they’d like to get out of the project (this gives them ownership and helps them buy into it more)
6) Establish open lines of communication and provide regular feedback
Having a poor manager/undesirable relationship with a direct supervisor tops the list as the number one reason employees quit their jobs. Therefore, continual teaching and development should be a non-negotiable in every manager’s repertoire.
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/if-youre-not-helping-people-develop-youre-not-management-material/
Sarah, I can not agree more on what you posted there. I experience bad management in my current job (might be that scientists are just bad managers) and it is sometimes really difficult to work in such an environment.
My lab could be run so much more successful but it lacks in communication and management skills and there is no real coaching whatsoever.