The role of managers has been in many peoples’ thoughts lately. As a leader, I have spent a considerable amount of time on it this year, and it has led me to a personal observation, confirmed by discussions with leadership peers.
What senior leaders need managers to do, and how those managers do their jobs, have been transformed. The way we prepare them and change their worldviews, priorities, capabilities and actions is lagging far behind. The people we rely on to make transformations stick are now between a rock and a hard place in terms of being able to achieve their goals.
Through my association with Haier, I heard the story of how the China-based appliance multinational removed 10,000 middle managers. That’s a great soundbite but it obscures the bigger story about a clever redeployment of talent and what organisations need their managers to do in this day and age.
Moving managers closer to customers and encouraging them to act as facilitators of their team members’ success, rather than enforcers of compliance and micro-management, is what these new roles are all about.
I think leaders need to consider what they need now from their managers. What are the priorities, and what support and development do leaders need to provide for them to be successful? If Thailand faces a form of the Great Resignation that we keep hearing about, this will become especially important.
An example from my organisation is making line managers agents in building their people’s future careers. Like many organisations, we had some turnover in staff, which was higher among younger and newcomer staff. During the pandemic crisis, many managers were understandably goal-driven. Many did not have the mindsets and skill sets to understand that young staff needed more purpose, promise and guidance than ever before.
This was not the managers’ fault. My leaders and I had to step up and identify the role we now needed them to play. We had to quickly provide them with the training and tools to succeed in this new job demand.
A good place for leaders to start may be to gauge how much the frontline staff need their managers in order to do their jobs successfully. This will vary from organisation to organisation.
In my organisation, for example, my delivery team is very collegial. They naturally share and seek to do new things together. They need very little managerial oversight or day-to-day direction. Their managers are free to invest their efforts in more strategic and client-driven activities. In this case, our leaders need to equip them to understand clients and markets better and translate the data and insights into a useful direction for their people.
In some new sales teams, who are entering new areas for the organisation, the situation is naturally entirely different. These managers and teams are new to the area. The managers may be leading many new graduates. There is a great deal of creativity and enthusiasm. However, because everything is new, the priority is to grow knowledge and bench strength. The managers here are essential to the success of the team. They need to be much closer to the frontline staff and support and facilitate their success. They must help them to share insights quickly, to experiment and to pivot.
And there is the big challenge. Same company, very different needs. Do I build or fund separate development programmes for these two sets of managers? Do I give up on a unified leadership philosophy for the organisation? What are the pros and cons? Whatever we choose, I believe certain new management truths can guide us.
Break the manager mold: Many managers have inherited their idea of what management is. They have an outdated idea of how they need to manage from their experience or culture. But this is rapidly becoming obsolete and irrelevant. Leaders and managers must identify what is needed now. They must identify what they have in place that is reinforcing the old ways and remove it quickly.
This may mean bringing in new management or divisional academy approaches. It may mean creating management learning communities. It requires careful observation. But the current management mold must be broken.
Change who gets to be a manager (or what management is): Why do we punish our best performers by making them managers? Why do we do this without providing specific support for the new reality? If we don’t do this, we tend to promote those who want it most (and sometimes are least suited to it).
The single path up the corporate ladder has gone. Today, things change so quickly, and there are many paths to fulfilment. The nature of work is also changing. Managers need to be able to empower more autonomous and agile teams. They need to learn the skills to do this and the principles. They certainly need to develop more service leadership approaches. The implication is managerial candidates need different mindsets, values, and ways of working than before.
Develop human-centric managers: People are people, and so are managers. As Brian Kropp, chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice, puts it: “If you do not want your employees talking to you about their personal situations, their personal needs, and if you are not going to be there to support them, odds are you should not be a manager.” But are we preparing our managers to meet this new and undeniably important need?
Leaders expect our managers to take care of our people and business, but are we leaders taking care of our managers to make this possible?
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Talk to us about how SEAC can help your business during times of uncertainty at https://forms.gle/wf8upGdmwprxC6Ey9