March 21, 2016
Are good managers born or made?
Presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article published with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Managing requires setting aside doing the work of the firm in favor of empowering others to do the work. But can anyone, with enough desire and proper training, become a manager?
The easiest approach, and some might say the most meritocratic, is to give the management role to the best performer in the role below — a management theory popularly known as the Peter Principle. “The problem is that … the competitiveness to win that often makes [an individual] the best performer is directly at odds with the requirements of managing other people and trying to get them to succeed,” Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources, points out. “As in sports, where a lot of our lessons for business seem to come from, the best individual performers don’t necessarily make the best coaches.”
Among other capabilities needed to make a good manager, Michael Useem, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management, lists “a willingness to work with ambiguity, uncertainty and unpredictability. If you want everything to be at right angles, that’s probably not the mindset you want if you plan to work through others.”
Virginia J. Vanderslice, president of Praxis Consulting and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Organizational Dynamics program, believes leadership can be learned, but a person needs to have “a personal, deep level of self confidence.” She adds, “And by that I don’t mean, ‘Hey, I can beat my chest because I’m so good.’ I mean real self-confidence — a deep sense of personal security. If someone doesn’t have that, they are not going to be invested in others because they are too worried about themselves.”
Mr. Cappelli believes that, while people can learn to be good managers, they have to be predisposed to working with and through others. He adds, “If we don’t do training — and business is much less inclined to do so these days — and we appoint the best individual performers, we are bound to have problems.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What complications have you encountered in promoting staff to management roles? What capabilities does a good retail manager (store, regional, etc.) need that may be different than other industries?
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The sad truth is that not everyone is “wired” to manage. All the training and situational experience in the world cannot make someone into something they are not meant to be. I will never be a lawyer. It just ain’t gonna happen. And other fantastic people will become exceptional staff, however many of them will just not thrive as managers of people.
Good points. The best salesperson is often the one retailers look to promote which is a fallacy as I wrote in this post, What’s Important To Train A Retail Manager. You have to prepare them with training for what the job entails — the soft skills.
Many retailers should remove the title of manager and just make it “taskmaster,” as the required skills of management — making the employees’ day first, knowing what to couch to improve performance, knowing how to reprimand and be a true “brand ambassador” — has devolved into who can give a clipboard to someone and monitor that the tasks and transfers are done by the end of the day with only two-person coverage.
Managing people is not an easy thing that comes naturally, although some folks have some natural instincts to lead and others can learn how to do the job quite well. To me, managing people effectively requires several years of training, and I was blessed to have a father who showed me how to manage employees at a very young age. Learning your trade from the ground up is critical. How can you expect others to do the job properly without ever having done it yourself the right way? A sense of expectations and fairness is also to me something that can make or break a business, and if you do not make your department heads accountable, how are you going to expect results?
A great manager must give their employees the tools to make good decision without constantly having to ask how to solve a customer question or return. Also, training the staff to sell is vital for growth and, for me, customer service must be top notch and without compromise, or the rest of the skills mean nothing. One other thing I was taught is that if you are going to lead people, get out there in the trenches and work side by side with them. Rotate through every department as needed to set the example on how to treat your customers and build some good will with your employees. This goes a long way to gain the respect needed, and it also helps to boost morale — employees know that you care enough to help them out by working along their side.
This article sounds a lot like the “Peter Principle” revisited.
Dr. Laurence J. Peter published his book “The Peter Principle” in 1968. He described how the selection of a candidate for a position is most often based on the candidate’s performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. The Peter Principle has often been misquoted as “People rise to their level of incompetence” based upon past performance.
Key skills of coaching, leadership and talent development are not nearly as easy to measure as sales or filing timely reports. The result is that there is often a very poor fit of talent and skillsets for what will be required to be a successful manager that must achieve results through others.
Gallup has a proven system and legacy of being able to select the profiles that will best fit management roles in a given organization. Retailers would do well to start with a copy of the Gallup book “Soar with your Strengths.”
Training works a whole lot better when you have someone with both the talent and orientation that will make them successful as a manager.
It is all too easy to find high levels of incompetence running multi-million dollar stores. Store managers are selected for reasons that often supersede ability and talent. This is largely due to the demands of government tax incentives, burdening commerce laws and public demands. These misguided incentives are what executives choose to engage as a priority over the needs of the business. A simple measuring tool to determine a candidate’s ability to address the needs of the business and the open management position should suffice but never does. The company executives often point to deficiencies in the education system and government interference instead of identifying needs and creating a system that finds, educates and supports any and all legitimate candidates.
This problem exists simply because the executive level is largely populated with incompetence as well. The proof for this problem is supported by the millions of gallons of red ink in modern day financial reports and overpopulated bankruptcy courts. And for those not able to sift through the mountain range of information found in these examples just look at the large number of empty stores and warehouses out there.
Promoting a successful floor salesperson to manager may be the biggest mistake a retailer can make. Why? Because there are innate skills that effective managers have that not all salespeople possess.
Look for the following qualities in the person before jumping to the conclusion that anyone can manage: 1.) organizational skills; 2.) communication skills; 3.) leadership and motivational ability; 4.) tolerance and patience; 5.) self-discipline and self-awareness; 6.) balance of self-confidence and humbleness; and 7.) genuineness in taking care of customers. Using these filters, it is easy to spot individuals promoted as part of a Peter Principle approach and those who are truly effective managers.
It amazes me when a company promotes a top sales person to manager. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the top sales people are doing what they do best. If they are cut out for management, all the better. But a manager has a different personality than a sales person. Companies that do a good job promoting from within do a good job of accessing personalities and abilities. The best sales person doesn’t make the best manager. It goes for any position.
Good managers do know and understand the jobs and responsibilities of the people who work for them. That helps with empathy and understanding. They also understand accountability, coaching, trust and empowerment.
We’ve been asking this question since around 375 BC. As least we’re not asking for the difference between managers and leaders — this time. Here’s another way to ask the question if we must: “Is management something you ‘are’ or something you ‘do’?” There is not likely to be an answer that makes us say, “OK, now let’s move on.”
First, IF there were a definitive answer, what would we do with it? Let’s say managers are “born.” Will the retail sector work on a manager DNA profile so as to select the genetic best? Or if they are “made,” will retail rethink what they call training? Heck, there are many graduates from elite business schools who make lousy managers.
Truth is it’s all of the above and more. Opportunity for example. There are many gifted mathematicians, inventors and scientists who will never discover that potential because they’ll not so much as spend a day in school.
And just to muddy the conversation further, I’ll add that one can be an excellent manager in situation A and a lousy one in situation B. I enthusiastically refer readers to Dr. Peter Robertson’s book “Always Change a Winning Team” where he offers the insight that managers/leaders who are brilliant at helping you start the company are rarely capable of helping you build it and are almost certainly not the ones who will help you re-invent it. You need to find the right manager for each stage of your organization’s life cycle, in other words.
I think the capabilities needed to be a good manager do not vary much between industries. The one difference for retail would be the visual merchandise aspect, which isn’t a consideration in industrial applications.
When I look at my best performers, I’m not thinking necessarily my best salesperson, which would often be a disastrous choice for management. Rather I see that my best performers have a good vision of what needs to be done, are proactive, ask good questions and challenge the status quo to make improvements to the business.
I consistently promote from within and find these top performers typically make excellent managers.
Having helped hundreds of companies build better hiring systems we have learned that the worst promotion a company can make is promoting the best employee for the wrong reasons. Yes they are great at their job and deserve some kind of recognition or new challenges and a chance to grow. But if you promote them for the wrong reasons you are setting the organization up for failure. You end up with someone who does not have the right skill set or temperament and end up losing one of your best producers.
You are better off talking to the potential manager and having the conversation about if the move is right for them and the organization or about what kind of additional opportunities you can give them.
A very interesting article. Managing is not the easiest task, nor should it be the most difficult. Learning about management starts at an early age. Many times the student does not know he or she is being taught. Such things as respect, listening (as well as hearing) and the other person’s (customer) needs to be heard without interruption are all equally important.
I do not believe managers are born in any way. But I do believe parents can teach children important life lessons enabling them to be better at managing if the lessons are absorbed. Managing should be to make those one manages better thus enabling them to become managers too. One moves up the ladder by having those below them supporting the move.
Not only must an aspiring manager be willing to learn, be “teachable,” and be at ease with shifting conditions, they must be “aspiring.” What I mean is that not everyone wants to manage other people. Through one of several means, the hiring manager must be able to ascertain the interest level as well as innate skills of the person considered for a promotion to manage others.
We all know those who “interview well” and others may confuse their desire to make more money with becoming a manager. One way to sort through these variables is through personality testing. I have successfully used the DISC system to better understand the core traits and personality characteristics of people in my organization. There are other systems available and each organization can make their own selection.
I have seen DISC used successfully to better understand the capacity and interest of persons in having contact with people, working in structured environments and being able to self-motivate. Some tool of this nature is worth a try.
Retailers often confuse performance with promotability. They are quite different. Performance is demonstrating use of skills required to do your current job at or above standard expectations. Promotability refers to demonstrating skills for the next level job or responsibility.
When the boss is not available, does a current associate become the informal leader? Do others go to them for advice in that situation? Are they able to see the bigger picture or goal and rally others in working toward it? That often indicates not only a high potential candidate for promotion but will give you a sense of their willingness to step into a larger role.
All manager candidates can be taught key skills but not all managers will execute them the same. Retailers need to know what their acceptable range is for managers. Promoting your best salesperson to manager has been mistake repeated many times.