What Causes Mediocre Managers?

I’ve always been passionate about the importance of high quality people managers. Unfortunately, throughout my career I frequently experienced mediocre managers that failed to motivate, develop, challenge and reward their employees. The result was entire teams of disengaged and frustrated colleagues. Disengaged employees make far more mistakes, have higher absenteeism and, according to one study, 73% are job searching. With enough mediocre managers, organizations reach a tipping point where mediocrity becomes the norm. The result is an artificial ceiling for an organization’s success. As Jack Welch said, “Weak managers are the killers of business; they are the job killers. You can’t manage self-confidence into people.”

By contrast, exceptional managers engage people and develop them to thrive. Employees with exceptional managers are 400% less likely to leave a job. Organization with engaged employees achieve 2.5x higher revenue. In short, quality of managers determines an organization’s success.

So, what causes this descent into mediocrity? I believe there are two reasons:

Flawed Manager Selection

Organizations tell very successful salespeople, engineers, accountants and others; “You are great at your job… I’m promoting you to management.” The reality is that traits that make a great manager are completely different from those that make a great individual contributor. Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the right candidate for a management job 82% of the time.

Lack of Training and Coaching

Many view a promotion to manager as a slight role shift. In reality, it is a completely new position. Without training and coaching, new managers often continue to focus on their previous job while ignoring their new management role. Outside the team, the new manager is often still viewed as a high performing individual contributor, while their reports silently suffer. The team becomes rudderless and performance and employee development stagnates. Pair this with The Peter Principle and you have an organization full of poor managers.

Leaders like to say, “People are our most important asset.” Managers are the custodians of these “assets.” They bear sole responsibility for motivating, developing, challenging and rewarding your entire organization.

The best way to build an organization full of exceptional managers is to select candidates with the traits and desire to recruit, develop and grow people. If the wrong people are in these roles, they need to be replaced. Once you have the right people in these roles, they need the training and coaching to develop the tools to become exceptional managers.

Talk to us to evaluate the quality of your managers and create a plan to improve their effectiveness. Our training and coaching helps managers understand their pivotal role in the success of your organization and gives them the foundation to become exceptional.