With countless articles, books and podcasts dedicated to tips on how to deal with bad bosses, strict micro-managers and toxic workplaces, it seems like the corporate world is plagued with bad managers.
That’s because management is a skill companies don’t often pay attention to until it’s too late. Employees typically become managers because they are good at performing their jobs. Companies reward them with leadership positions without considering whether they possess the right attributes (or leadership skills) to be effective managers.
This can lead to inefficient practices and high turnover rates. To avoid this fate, companies must give employees the training, experience and mentoring they need to develop good management and leadership skills.
| Management Skills | How to improve this skill |
| Clear communication and active listening | Prospective managers should have opportunities to lead presentations and allow the listeners to give feedback. The more they speak in public and take audience feedback into account, the better their communication and listening skills will be. |
| Delegating tasks | Employees should have the chance to be a project manager on an internal, low-stakes project with the supervision of a senior leader. |
| Coaching and mentoring | Before taking on any managerial role, employees can act as mentors to junior employees, or provide group coaching on skills that they’re experienced in. |
| Conflict resolution | Role-play scenarios allow employees to practice conflict resolution and decision-making in a low-skill environment. |
| Flexibility | Working with team members they don’t typically work with can expose employees to different personalities and encourage flexibility. |
| Strategic thinking | Attending meetings where senior leaders and managers are having strategic discussions and providing inputs where necessary. |
| Emotional intelligence | Mentoring and coaching a less-experienced employee can help prospective managers sharpen their emotional intelligence skills. |
| Organization | Encourage employees to sign up for committee positions or an ERG leadership role, where organizational skills are crucial to success. |
| Crisis management | Exposing employees to crisis management situations and soliciting their input can teach them invaluable skills in reacting to a crisis. |
| Problem-solving | One-on-one mentoring conversations discussing an employee’s approach to specific problems they’ve had to encounter at work that week. This will expose employees to different problem-solving techniques and they can learn what works and what doesn’t work well. |
Examples of management skills
Effective management skills are essential for guiding teams, driving productivity, and achieving business goals. Below are key examples that highlight the diverse abilities great managers use to lead with impact.
Clear communication & active listening
A key management skill (and perhaps most important) that managers need to have is the ability to communicate clearly and listen actively. A manager needs to provide a clear vision to their team and communicate effectively to ensure they’re on the right track to achieve the team’s objectives. That involves communicating clearly and concisely with as few misunderstandings as possible.
If misunderstandings arise, the onus is on the manager to comprehend the employee’s point of view and then deliver the message in a communication style that the employee understands. Doing this requires the manager to actively listen to the employee in a way that improves mutual understanding moving forward.
Delegating tasks
Going above and beyond an employee’s job responsibility may help an employee get promoted to manager, but once they become a manager, holding on to work becomes a recipe for exhaustion.
Good leaders need good delegation skills to do their jobs properly—assigning tasks and providing high-level inputs and help when necessary. As Global Head of People Leadership Development at Salesforce Jesse Sostrin wrote in a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, a manager needs to be “more essential, but less involved.” That doesn’t mean holding on to work but empowering and activating those around them.
Coaching and mentoring
Research by Gallup shows that a manager is responsible for 70% of a team’s engagement. Many managers use the top-down, command-and-control approach, but this doesn’t improve employee engagement, encourage innovation, or boost productivity. An effective manager digs deep into what motivates different team members, their strengths and weaknesses and coaches and mentors their team members in a way that aligns with each person individually.
Conflict resolution
Conflict is inevitable anytime a group of humans works together. It’s a manager’s job to do this while maintaining a positive work environment. It’s important to note that a good manager doesn’t avoid conflict but rather facilitates discussions and conversations between parties who might disagree with one another. A great manager should help those parties come to some form of mutual understanding.
Flexibility
A good manager doesn’t implement a one-size-fits-all solution. They understand that workers have different motivations, needs, and constantly changing life circumstances. Effective leaders consider the unique situations of the entire team when communicating and managing specific employees. As the events of 2020 have shown, managers also need to be able to adapt to the changing realities of work-life, home life and all that lies in between.
Strategic thinking
While the role of an individual contributor is to perform their specific roles, managers need to look at things from a big-picture point of view before making informed decisions. This is a crucial mindset shift that employees need to adopt before they step into a leadership and management role.
Emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills
Good managers understand what motivates employees, as well as what might trigger their stress and struggle, to get the best performance out of them. This requires emotional intelligence, an important skill that employees need to cultivate before they lead a team. Often referred to as EQ, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your emotions, as well as those you work with.
There are 4 ‘core competencies’ of emotional intelligence, according to an article by Harvard Business School. Those competencies are as follows:
- Self-awareness—Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, as well as the impact of your emotions and behavior on yourself and others
- Self-management—The ability to regulate your emotions in stressful situations and find pragmatic solutions in a crisis
- Social awareness—Understanding relationship dynamics and identifying how different personalities and experiences interact at work
- Relationship management—Your ability to coach, mentor, and guide your team and also facilitate conflict resolution where necessary.
Organization & Prioritization
Managers are often responsible for the deadlines and results of their team, which requires a high level of organization and time management. Companies can encourage prospective managers to hone this skill by getting involved in committees or taking on an ERG leadership role. This will give them a taste of the organizational skills that great managers need to possess. That’s because managers are not only responsible for their own workload but also that of their team’s. A manager needs to assess urgency and prioritize work accordingly, ensuring that they (and their team) complete the work on time and that it’s up to the organization’s standards.
Crisis management
Good managers need to be able to stay calm in a crisis and guide their team towards a pragmatic solution. They have to act as the anchor that steadies their team members, apply logic and reason and find creative solutions—often when their own emotions are high. That’s why organizations need to expose potential managers to crisis management scenarios before they have to be responsible for one—this might be in a role-play scenario, or soliciting their inputs in actual crisis situations.
Problem-solving
Every manager will have to experience putting out fires at some point in their professional life, which means that they have to be quick at solving problems. While individual contributors might be exposed to some of this in their day-to-day jobs, they likely won’t experience it on the same scale as managers. Companies need to find ways to train an individual contributor’s problem-solving muscle before they become managers—whether that’s through role plays, or regularly dissecting how they would tackle problems with their supervisor.
How to develop good management skills
Companies who want their employees to develop management skills before they become managers need to prioritize the following:
Training
Mastering any skill starts with training. Companies can benefit from setting up a formal training program around what it takes to be a great manager and making it available to every employee, regardless of whether or not they have managerial ambitions. That way, employees know what to expect if they get promoted to a managerial role. As a bonus, research by SHRM shows that 76 percent of employees say they’re more likely to stay with a company that provides continuous training.
Experience
The next step after training is providing opportunities for these employees to translate their knowledge into hands-on experience. There are many aspects of management that an employee can practice in a low-stakes environment, whether that’s facilitating a team meeting or leading an internal project.
Mentoring
As companies are providing training and experience, they need to develop their employees to maximize their chance of retaining them and encourage them to want to be managers. Pairing employees together to learn from one another through mentoring can be an effective way to do this.
How can mentoring enhance management and leadership skills?
The primary way mentoring can transform employees to become effective managers is by providing them with continuous opportunities to connect with others, while honing a wide range of skills. Examples of how mentoring can elevate management skills include:
Building and fostering relationships
Mentoring provides an opportunity for employees to build and foster professional relationships. Whether through learning a specific skill in mentoring circles program, or a more traditional one-on-one buddy program for new hires, mentoring allows employees to get out of their silos and network with people at different stages career-wise, or from another department altogether.
Growing industry knowledge through employee training and development
A mentoring program that focuses on career development can ensure an employee is always learning—and even upskilling—as necessary. In these instances, flash mentoring can be extremely helpful because it allows employees to learn technical skills and conceptual skills on an as-needed basis.
Bolstering critical thinking
Making progress in any endeavor means not being stagnant. Mentoring can expose employees to opportunities that hone their critical thinking skills, allowing them to learn new ways of doing things.
Building confidence
A manager will inevitably face challenges like dealing with unfamiliar circumstances and making big decisions that can significantly impact a team or the company. Mentoring can give high-potential employees a chance to test themselves in challenging situations, which will inevitably build their confidence in their decision-making capabilities.
Motivating employees and handling conflict resolution
Mentoring can help employees understand what it’s like to be a leader and handle conflict in a low-stakes environment while bolstering their human or interpersonal skills. Part of a company’s leadership development program may involve the mentee taking on an internal project that requires them to liaise with different departments and employees from other teams.
Learning new time management skills
Finally, transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager will inevitably mean juggling multiple responsibilities at once. Mentoring can help employees improve their time management skills, whether that’s completing a task provided by their mentor or working on a stretch assignment, alongside the remainder of their day-to-day work.
Fast-track management training and development with mentoring
Implementing a mentoring program can help equip your employees with management skills long before they become managers.
Chronus can help your company design a mentoring strategy that enables your employees to cultivate their management skills at any stage of the employee journey. With AI-powered mentoring technology, you can be confident in effective mentor/mentee matching that produces productive relationships and impactful results.
A bad manager is costly to your company. Don’t wait until you see the consequences of one to do something about it. Start ensuring you’re developing the managers of tomorrow, with the proper management skills today.
