I’ve just been reviewing a case study on the outcomes of Effective Leadership consulting, training and support work we’ve been undertaking with one of our clients. There were key leadership problems described which echo what I’ve been hearing from many clients and prospective clients.
Similar problems have been highlighted in a recent report from the Center for Creative Leadership. They regard the gap between current leadership bench strength and future leadership demands as a serious liability for organisations.
Our client worked with us because the managers in her business unit were supervising rather than leading. This meant that managers spent the majority of their time behind their desks. Coaching was identified as a ‘result session’ focused on the ‘what did work/what didn’t work’ methodology, rather than any effective behavioural coaching to maximise team performance.
Contributing to these problems was an issue that appears across many industries. Managers had been promoted because they were technically good at their job, not because they had leadership potential. And there was little, if any, training given to help them to be a leader.
The core problem is that there is a lack of leadership capability in people managers that limits organisational productivity.
Interestingly, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) have concluded something similar in The Leadership Gap, a 2009 report on a study conducted over two years across 2,200 managers and three countries.
The leaders surveyed by CCL were asked to rate the importance of 20 research-derived leadership competencies, and the difference between what managers are actually demonstrating versus what they need to demonstrate to be maximally effective in the future.
The study found that the five most important future skills – leading people, strategic planning, inspiring commitment, managing change and developing employees – are amongst the weakest competencies for today’s leaders.
I’d argue that for first-level managers strategic planning, and to a lesser extent managing change, are lower importance competencies because they are less often called upon at that level of management. This means we can reasonably conclude that the three key competency gaps for managers are:
- leading people
- inspiring commitment
- developing employees
This aligns with our experience with a range of clients across the Asia-Pacific region. Yet organisations need to seriously address these three key competency gaps evident in their managers if they want to:
- increase productivity
- ensure a greater retention of key talent
- improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
- and maximise employee engagement
2 Comments
Good points. It is true that training of frontline managers has not been complete in many ways. Though the procedures of organizations are given a lot of time, the people aspects of building teams is often lacking. Frontline managers are very important to comapnies and also need investment.
Liz, you’ve also made a very good point. Off the cuff I can’t remember the source of the research, but an employee engagement research project with European companies pretty much concluded what you’ve identified. That frontline leaders tend to be good at the process aspects of their role, but not very good at the people engagment and leadership aspects.