"All Title and No Training" Don't let "Accidental Managers" Damage Morale

An article in Fortune, titled “Nearly All Bosses Are ‘Accidental’ with No Formal Training—and Research Shows It’s Leading One in Three Workers To Quit,” shares research conducted by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) revealing that many of those promoted into managerial positions are all title and no training. These startling findings revealed one in four people in the workforce have management responsibilities, yet very few have been trained to do their jobs. CMI’s research found that an incredible 82% of bosses are “accidental managers,” and what’s even scarier is that 25% of those are in senior leadership roles. This negatively effects employee morale, and a third of employees are quitting their jobs.

Employees in the survey who said their manager is ineffective feel seriously less satisfied, valued, and motivated in their jobs than those who described their managers as effective. In addition, 50% of employees who reported being unhappy with their manager said they plan to quit within the next year.

Employees are not the only ones with low morale. Many of these accidental managers were high-performing employees before being promoted without receiving any leadership training. According to CMI’s research, managers aren’t confident in their own leadership abilities with many struggling when it comes to dealing sensitively with the multiple issues facing their team members at work and in their home lives. 

Developing leaders

Does your organization have a leadership development program that helps attract and prepare key employees who have the potential to be great leaders of your company?

As growth guru Stan Slap says, “When your company says you want your employees to be leaders, what that really means is that you want their emotional commitment to your vision. A leader’s emotional commitment is about taking on the company’s success as a personal crusade.”

The key is to replicate that entrepreneurial spirit, instilling it into the leadership philosophy of the next generation of leaders who will rally their teams around the company’s cause. This is much easier said than done, but it remains the biggest differentiator in the most successful organizations. If your leaders are not infused with that energy, your employees never will be.

Building a great internal culture and leading the employee experience revolution starts with developing your high-potential employees into great leaders, making your existing leaders better, and creating an emerging talent pipeline for the next generation of exceptional leaders in your company.

Motivating the motivators

Emerging leaders need to be taught what success looks like. Leadership development starts with having great leaders modeling the behavior. Demonstrating success is inspiring others to achieve more than they thought possible, serving them so that they can, and celebrating them when they do. Leadership is about making other people better because of your influence.

“The emotional commitment of your leaders is what solves problems that are unsolvable, creates energy when all of the energy has been expended, and ignites emotional commitment in others, including your employee culture,” Slap says.

People first

New and existing leaders tend to focus heavily on results. Why? Because all their incentives are tied to them. Too many leaders had bad role models early on in their careers. The managers they worked for led by fear and intimidation, only focusing on productivity and top and bottom-line results, often at the expense of the teams they managed.

Those in leadership roles need to strike a balance between getting results and being understanding and empathetic with employees to get their buy-in emotionally and physically. While it can be difficult to plan and focus on leadership training when many are in a hiring crisis, now is the time for organizations to focus on developing great leaders. It is never too early to start preparing an employee who has leadership potential.

The single most important determinant of an individual’s performance and commitment to stay with an organization is the employee’s relationship with his or her immediate manager. As stated in a McKinsey & Company article, “The Boss Factor: Making the World a Better Place Through Workplace Relationships,” improving a worker’s job satisfaction can be the most important thing a leader can do. 

“Few managers realize what a dramatic impact—either positive or negative—they have on the world through their everyday behavior,” according to the article. “It is the responsibility of senior leaders to enlighten them and provide the organizational context that consistently fosters high-quality relationships between bosses and the people who report to them.”

“Human-centric”

Leaders and employees alike tend to thrive when a shared commitment to excellence is part of the job experience. In the digital revolution, human interaction, compassion, empathy, and communication skills become premium advantages. It’s time to consider an entirely different approach: building human-centric employee experiences by genuinely caring about your people. Get to know your employees. Humanize them, and humanize yourself.

John DiJulius III, author of The Customer Service Revolution, is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies, such as Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Contact him at 216-839-1430 or info@thedijuliusgroup.com.