Can High-Performing Employees Learn Good Leadership?
In a recent classroom discussion, a student asked whether high-performing technical employees can learn leadership skills? The discussion focused on how high-performing technical employees advance from the employee pool to management. Let's first define what a high-performing employee is.
The Hartford says that a high-performing employee has the following traits:
1) Attention to quality in their production
2) Continually looking to improve skillsets
3) Self Directed performance
4) Cool under pressure
So when you have a high-performing employee, management typically notices and selects them for lower-level management positions. But the high-performing employee might be technically working at a high level, but would the employee have enough people management skills?
What skillsets does a manager need to be effective? Richard Daft states that middle management needs to increase human and conceptual skills because those skills are typically lacking. The lack comes from the fact that these high-performing employees are focused solely on being technical experts. There is little time to develop human and conceptual skill sets. When they elevate to middle management, technical skillsets must give way to human and conceptual skills. However, what has the possibility of happening is the new manager focus so much on new skillsets that their technical skills drop. As new managers rise through the ranks, they become less engaged with their technical skills, lose proficiency, and become isolated.
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Employee skillset ratios after moving into a management position.
To succeed, mid-level managers must keep their technical skills high while bolstering their human and conceptual skills. The graph should look like this:
Managers who lack interpersonal skills can scaffold them later through continuing education. A good example is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who bolstered his people skills when his natural tendency was to be a technical manager.
What employee skillset ratios should be when moving into a management position.
How do you gain human and conceptual skills?
As an employee moves up the management ladder, the ratio of the technical skills human skills, and conceptual skills change. But the ratios should remain close with an overall increase in human and conceptual skills. Managers who want to increase their human skills will work on communication, coaching, teamwork, and building positive relationships with their employees. Managers can learn soft skills through various corporate training and leadership conferences. As the Daft textbook states, companies would rather spend money on training good employees instead of losing them to other companies. So companies have an incentive to provide learning opportunities to eager managers.
Corporate management training is often the first type offered to new managers. Companies might offer courses once a year or every two to three years. The benefit of a corporate management training system is that training companies can tailor the curriculum to the company's mission and values. A private or university management training system is often inflexible and agnostic due to the variety of students the training might attract. A corporate training curriculum might offer leadership, effective team communication, project management, conflict resolution, effective time management, emotional intelligence, and unconscious bias training. These topics will increase the conceptual and human skills of an unseasoned manager.
But, how does a manager continue to grow once the training is over? What is the assessment process for that manager, and what does the corporate mentorship program look like?
Post-training support is where companies fail recently minted managers. The lack of a mentorship program that pairs experienced and non-experienced managers are often the missing pieces to managers' development. The mid-level manager supervisor usually assesses them on departmental or group performance, and the metrics are very much productivity-driven. However, critical evaluation of leadership and team management might take a minor position on the other metrics when it comes time for the yearly review. A mentorship program with senior-level management can help further develop the manager's human and conceptual skillsets based on the company's mission statement.
Finally, new managers can seek leadership and conceptual skills through a university degree or professional certifications. An MBA (Master of Business Administration) is a traditional way of gaining management skillsets. If the company lacks a formal training program, these programs are sometimes subsidized. Certifications like PMI (Project Management Institute) offer practical coursework on effectively running and managing special projects. However, certificates target specific skillsets and lack the overall picture of how to be an effective manager.
More importantly, culture is a crucial part of manager development. The company's culture must be supportive and allow for the growth and envelopment of the new manager. Without that culture, the company will have a difficult time with management turnover and burnout.
https://whatfix.com/blog/corporate-training-programs/
Leadership is a consistently evolving practice, like meditation, baseball, driving, etc. But it requires practice and the correct mindset. Mindset is cultivated by corporate culture and mission. But the drive for improvement must come from the new manager. Without that drive, then no amount of external influence can help the manager succeed. But external factors can influence and cultivate that drive, thus leading to a more rewarding managerial and leadership experience. Look for the people that inspire and nurture the joy of learning.
Dr. Mike Testa