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America's Leadership Crisis: Where Have All the Managers Gone?
June 05, 2008
Research shows that while managers at Fortune 1000 organizations are positioned to be industry forerunners, these "supervisors" rarely ever make the full transition into effectively engaged leaders.
By Stacy Straczynski
With a recession looming and normal recruiting frenzies slowing to a crawl, Fortune 1000 organizations are looking to retain their top talent. Their preferred approach to this challenge is to promote internally, with the intent of minimizing time, training and money.
But a new study released by ConceptReserve—a Centennial, Colo.-based training firm specializing in manager transitions and employee engagement—reveals that these organizations should be doing more to help these previous front-line employees blossom into effective managers. Indeed, it appears the majority is slipping through the cracks.
Stuck in the Middle
According to the ConceptReserve study, up to 48% of managers are still acting as individual contributors, rather than team leaders and wide-scope business thinkers. Additionally, 27% of Fortune 1000 leaders believe their management-level employees are stuck somewhere in the transition, enacting their management roles but hindered due to their continuation of individual non-management tasks.
"That there's an issue with transition is no surprise to anyone," says John Davis, CEO of ConceptReserve. "It's a pretty pertinent issue." And it's one that isn't new to the business world. The study's concept was initiated years ago, says Davis, right after Harvard Business School’s Dalton and Thompson conducted their study on how leaders at large-scale organizations are created and contribute to the overall structure. "It was realized in the early 90s that this transition thing was an issue and we began to produce some documents on the subject," Davis says. "That's how the whole thing got started."
The research is a compilation of two major studies. The first—and arguably the most compelling—is a recently completed five-year study of 149 large-scale North American corporations, which sought to examine existing manager transitions. The data is comprised of objective assessments from over 2,600 managers and the qualitative data from 1,200 (the latter obtained from focus groups that tested managers on their ability to assess business challenges). Additionally, a two-year study was conducted to discover how many Fortune 1000 organizational leaders felt their managers had successfully transitioned, as a means to benchmark the qualities of a typical leader.
"We've been intrigued with the data since day one and made a conscious decision to see what's really going on," Davis says.
Fatal Assumptions
So what's the issue? Why is the position of manager increasingly becoming nothing more than a title, rather than a means of action?
Ultimately, the study found it's a psychological issue. The root of the matter lies in the basic fatal assumptions managers make—those ideals many believe define what a manager is and does, but do not accurately identify the proper needed action. The study lists these assumptions as:
1. My individual contributor success will translate into management success.
2. It's out of my control—someone else can and should fix this.
3. Being the expert is the most important factor for my credibility.
4. It's the rational and logical approach to a solution that counts.
5. The people I manage are just like me (in their thinking, approach, expectations, goals and priorities).
6. Competent people do not need help.
"Essentially, these assumptions and others like them describe the mindset of most individual contributors," the report reads. "It is that individual contributor mindset or perspective that has to change for an individual to be able to successfully complete the transition into the manager role." Managers, on the other hand, must have wider scope, and take into account the goals of the group and lead the team to action by fostering the individual contributors' efforts. According to Davis, this describes the fully transitioned manager.
Managing Misconceptions
But unfortunately these necessary psychological shifts don't automatically occur, Davis notes. The studies found that the average manager takes three to five years to make the managerial transition, and those who get "stuck" can remain so for up to 20 years or more.
"Just because a person should be in a certain stage doesn't mean that they are working in that stage," Davis says. "That was the big 'Aha' moment for us. It's not a matter of experience—it's more a matter of needing some 'hooks' to hang the experience on."
So, how can business leaders get their struggling managers unstuck? Davis suggests that Fortune 1000 leaders take a double-sided approach to dealing with management inefficiencies:
1. Give the right type of work. The types of assignments that you ask your managers to be responsible for play a large role in how they envision their position and how they approach their tasks. "If you continually give your managers individual assignments, you are reinforcing Stage 2 [the individual contributor with a limited business scope]," Davis says. "By assigning broader projects, you'll encourage your managers to take the lead and transition." Try giving projects that require your managers to reach out to other departments, collaborate on ideas with other leaders and encourages them to think outside the box.
2. Erase the "expert" ideal. The research continually found that the top challenge for managers is a conflict between doing versus delegating the work. And it's not an issue that a few classes of skills training can fix. "Skills training won't work well here because it's not a delegation issue," says Davis. "All the managers have all told us that they understand delegation and its principles—it's not about not knowing how to delegate."
"The problem is that they have issues in letting go of the work," he continues. "They are captivated by being the expert and reaping the intrinsic rewards to that title." Upper executives need to help their managers understand that being the manager does not mean they are designated as the experts, Davis explains. They must challenge assumption No. 3 [Being the expert is the most important factor for my credibility] and help their management team to make that psychological shift in the way they think. Until that shift is made, no amount of managerial training will do much good.
Making Manager Status
Albert Einstein once said, "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." Similarly, says Davis, it's up to executives to determine the assumptions their management team is making and figure out how to shift that thought process.
"Being a manager means that you must think differently on the simplest level," he says. "You must think more broadly about business relationships beyond their individual expertise. It's imperative for executives to provide both a shift in thinking and the reinforcement of proper responsibility and action."
"Managers need to be ready to understand why they need to let these fatal assumptions go, but also that it's the right thing to do."
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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