When I became a manager I had no idea what I was doing or what it truly meant to be a leader. Over the years I had developed a lot of skill and confidence as a frontline worker, but that confidence and ability did not transition over when I became a manager. Although my company had developed an onboarding program for new employees to ease them into their new role and get them acclimatized to the culture, an onboarding program for managers did not exist.
There was not a lot of support in learning how to be a manager. Sink or swim and trial by fire are some of the metaphors that come to mind when I reflect on how I learned to be a manager. There was no denying I was struggling when I almost ran over a pedestrian on my way home, because I was absorbed in thought about how I was going to manage another day of chaos. I think everyone would agree that isn’t the best way to learn. Especially, when managers are seen as the linchpin to organizational success and employee engagement.
I remember as a manager attending mandatory leadership conferences my organization coordinated for every manager to attend. Usually, the central theme of every conference was emotional intelligence. They would hand out posters with leadership buzz words and phrases that we could post on our office walls and doors. As if somehow that would make me a more capable and emotionally intelligent leader. How can a manager, new and experienced alike, develop her emotional intelligence if she is overworked and overburdened?
High paced, pressure cooker work environments are not conducive to learning, because they offer no time to reflect on experiences that will help a manager improve her performance. In essence, organizations are better at killing emotional intelligence that nurturing it as an essential competency in their managers.
But how does someone learn to become a competent and confident manager? I was fortunate enough in my career to have worked for some amazing managers that were inspiring leaders, but how did they become that way? Is being a strong manager and a confident leader something you are born with? Is it a competency that can be learned? Is management and leadership synonymous? Does being a strong leader automatically make you a capable manager?
To uncover the answers to my questions I decided to go back to school to pursue a PhD while I was still working full-time. I guess you can say I am a glutton for punishment, but I do have a passion for research and there is something to say about evidence-based data that is not solely based on one person’s experience.
What Does the Research Say?
There is not a lot of research on how organizations develop their managers. Studies on human resource management are abundant in the literature, but few have examined the way organizations develop their managers and the impact it has on their performance. This gap is surprising considering the most recent 2017 Training Industry Report, which reported training expenditures amounted to $90.6 billion.
The managers in my research told me that approximately 10% of how they learned to do their job came from training and the other 90% they figured out by doing the job. This is not only true for managerial development, but in general. Yet, many organizations spend a high amount of their budget on sending their staff to attend training courses.
I am not saying we shut down post-secondary institutions and deplete our training budgets, but in order for knowledge gained from a course to be transferred to the workplace, further learning and practice must occur so that newly acquired knowledge can be ready for use in a range of workplace contexts[.
To assume that managers will figure out on their own how to support their own workplace learning is not realistic. In today’s workplace managers are overburdened with obligations. This results in being overworked and conducting many tasks superficially.
The resulting chaotic nature of a manager’s work environment makes the job very complex and challenging. The philosophy of ‘learn as you go’ becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate, because managers are required to balance the immediate demands of the organization against the needs of their employees.
Organizations need to create a climate for managers where continuous learning is not only supported, but is embedded in workplace culture as well.
A critical element in learning is self-reflection. Reflection is needed to improve performance. How can someone improve their performance if they do not have time to reflect on how what worked well and what did not? But more on this in a second…
One of my goals after completing my PhD was to turn my thesis into a book that would be a call to action for organizations in implementing workplace learning strategies that would support managerial learning and leadership development.
After a year hiatus, I have finally begun writing my book. In an effort to garner interest and to receive well thought out and meaningful feedback, I will be posting adapted excerpts from my book as articles on LinkedIn. “Death of the Emotionally Intelligent Leader” is my first article in the series. Now back to self-reflection…
In order to practice what I preach, I will be writing my articles in a format that will give you the gift of time to reflect and engage in a conversation with yourself to help you uncover your beliefs about management, leadership, and learning. Our opinions and beliefs about leadership and learning influence how we develop people in our organizations.
Before reading my next article, which will focus on examining our personal biases about leadership, I want you to answer the four questions listed below. Write down the first thing that comes to your mind. Go with your gut. Answer the questions based on what you have experienced and learned. You may have figured it out that I will be asking reflective questions in each article.
I hope you find my articles meaningful and useful in cultivating your workplace learning strategies.
Time to Reflect:
1. In your own words describe what being a manager is?
2. In your own words describe what being a leader is?
3. How does someone learn to be a manager?
4. How does someone learn to be a leader?
