careers, even experienced managers can fall short of expectations when it comes to successfully navigating the more culture-related aspects of the job. External vs. internal hires Can you improve the chances of a manager’s success by bringing in an outsider or are you better off promoting from within? “To pluck a leader from one organization and bring them to another does not necessarily mean they will be equally successful,” says Milan Yager, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations in Alexandria, Va. In fact, research suggests that an outsider’s performance often drops in a new organization. Why? “Sometimes what made these leaders stars was related to the environment they worked in,” Yager explains. Of course, promoting current employees into managerial roles also can present challenges. “The danger of hiring from inside the organization is that the person will come to the job with alliances, prejudices and baggage harmful to the overall group and mission,” Yager says. Dattner offers a similar perspective: “The good news and the bad news is that people (being promoted from within) are familiar with you. Any sort of problems or issues that occurred in your old role might follow you to the new role.” For an employee being promoted into management for the first time, another challenge can be getting co- 36 | BedTimes | April 2010 workers to change their perception of the person from that of an individual contributor to a leader. Linda Henman, president of Henman Performance Group in Chesterfield, Mo., and author of The Magnetic Boss, says that companies often fail to properly train their own employees when moving them into management positions. “They come to the erroneous conclusion that the person already knows, after having been with the organization, the lay of the land, the clients and all of that. They overlook the really significant part of that sort of promotion—that you’ll be asking that person to manage people who were once peers.” That shift, Henman says, “is one of the most complicated aspects of promoting internally.” Even experienced managers coming from the outside need training to be successful at your company. “I think that one of the arguments for the importance of training is that, no matter what, that person hasn’t ever had this particular job in your particular company. So even if someone is very experienced in management, often that person needs to learn the culture, the products, the customers and the players at your company,” Henman says. “There’s just so much that a new person has to learn and the faster you can give that information to them, the faster that person can get up to high performance levels.” Best practices In the end, training managers to be effective, whether they are new to management or new to the company, is critical for increasing the odds that the transition will be successful. “So many people are tossed into management without a safety net,” Matuson says. “Companies assume that because you have the traits that may indicate that you’d make a great manager that also means you already have the skills.” Training obviously represents an investment—of both money and time. “Many organizations don’t see the value of pulling people out in order to have them participate in different types of training programs,” Matuson says. “It’s an investment and some companies view this as ‘nice to have’ rather than as a necessity.” Henman agrees: “I had a client ask me, ‘What if we spend all this money and get these people ready and they leave?’ My response was ‘What if you don’t and they stay?’ ” But even companies with small budgets can take steps to train managers. “Some companies think, ‘If we can’t do a training program, we can’t do anything.’ That’s far from the truth,” Matuson says. There are myriad ways to boost new managers’ skills, including: ➤ Bringing in management experts, perhaps over lunch, to talk to new managers ➤ Providing books or articles then reading and discussing them as a group ➤ Inviting an outside facilitator for a roundtable discussion of various management issues ➤ Pointing new managers to online resources. If you plan on promoting several people, you can structure group training programs, Henman says. When she’s worked with companies that have promoted—or anticipated promoting—a number of individuals, many used joint training to help provide a common language and strengthen the cultural alignment of new managers. One mistake companies make is assuming that one-size-fits-all when it comes to training. Training needs to be tied not only to the needs and culture of your company, but also to the needs of each individual manager. “Everyone needs to get what they need, when they need it,” Matuson says. Employers should assess a new manager’s skills, identify gaps and then design training to fill in those gaps. A way to bridge the gap between individual and group training is through mentoring or coaching. Mentors provide new managers with both a resource and role model. While a manager’s boss will play an important role in his development, Henman advises against having that boss serve as a formal mentor. Instead, she recommends selecting “somebody who has been successful in a manage- www.sleepproducts.org/bedtimes
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