The plight of the modern manager has become common cultural currency. There are plenty of movies, sitcoms and books that are centred on the pressures of modern office life – the stress of dealing with myriad objectives, the endless box-ticking demanded by the board, the ineffectiveness of colleagues.
However, ongoing research at Roffey Park has shown that despite becoming a cultural cliché, the vast majority of managers are reluctant to address their issues. This means there is a whole host of common hidden concerns that plagues many management level employees.
The top three managerial concerns
The concerns fall into three broad categories: staff capability, personal capability and leadership and direction. Staff capability refers to the issues and concerns generated by your team. Typically, these are at the most pressing when other team members cannot deliver on their objectives. When colleagues fail to perform, it often falls on the manager to pick up the slack. After all, it’s frequently easier to just do the job yourself rather than point out that someone isn’t pulling their weight.
There are a number of reasons why a manager might not draw attention to the shortcomings of other colleagues. Firstly, it can be embarrassing and we’re naturally reticent to highlight the shortcomings of others. Secondly, it can undermine the confidence of the person in question and thus, demotivate them. Thirdly, it can affect our popularity; we all want to be liked and so avoid confrontation. Most importantly, however, it requires confidence and the skills to voice such concerns.
This leads into the next area that prompts managers to repress their concerns: personal capabilities. Our research reports that 85% of respondents feel stressed at work with 59% of them citing workload as the chief source of workplace stress. There is also a strong sense that it is unacceptable for those in management positions to feel pressurised by their workload. Managers are simply expected to “get on with it”. However, there is a constant stream of objectives to be met. At an organisational level, new initiatives are introduced regularly, but rarely are existing commitments reduced or removed so it is little wonder managers feel the pinch.
Organisational politics is also a major cause of stress for 52% of respondents and anyone who has worked in an office environment will doubtless recognise how frustrating and distracting conflicts with colleagues can be. This brings us to leadership and direction, perhaps the most important area from an organisational perspective. Our research has shown that, despite the importance of enlightened leadership and clear direction, many managers feel insecure in their grasp of the subjects. They are plagued by questions, most common among them being:
• Have I chosen the right direction and strategy?
• Does it match the organisational objectives?
• Are my team and colleagues buying into it – and if they are, is that commitment out of duty or because they share the vision?
Such insecurity can cripple a manager’s effectiveness and yet many are reluctant to air these internal issues. Some of the same culprits are to blame as before: a lack of confidence, an unwillingness to be seen as weak, and crucially insufficient time and space to explore strategic issues and formulate a clear direction – which leaves us with a few final questions:
• How can a modern, forward-thinking organisation address these issues for managers?
• How can we tease them into the open without adversely affecting team or individual performance?
• And how can we move forward in a way that will meet organisational, operational and strategic goals?
Helping managers succeed
For most organisations, partnering with an external third party can be the most effective way of addressing these issues. Trust is the key component here. A third-party leadership development programme provides an open forum where concerns can be aired and addressed in a candid, neutral environment.
It is important for organisations to invest in learning and development for managers that heightens self-awareness through use of personality profiling and 360-degree feedback, increases ability to engage with and influence others through models of assertiveness, enables greater presence, self-confidence, and impact through active role plays (often with professional actors) and develops the resilience, emotional intelligence and flexibility to deal with the ambiguity of organisational life through a range of challenging experiential learning exercises and individual attention with professional coaches.
At the skill level, responsible organisations should ensure that their managers have the performance management skills to deliver objectives with and through their people. Through using models of leadership, managers are able to understand their direct reports as individuals, helping them to assess their readiness for work tasks and are then given guidelines in how to delegate and supervise such activities in a way that gets the best results from each team member. One size does not fit all. This will give managers the flexibility to know when to give more instructions and closer supervision and when to be more hands off without adversely affecting team or individual performance.
With more individualised delegation from the start, managers can feel better equipped to give ongoing feedback and nudge colleagues to improve their performance. This avoids the situation where underperformance drags on and managers feel reluctant to tackle it head on.
Finally, organisations can use leadership development interventions as a way to foster a greater sense of teamwork and togetherness and promote the understanding and sharing of top-level organisational vision. Managers can be encouraged to explore how their own values and aspirations fit with the organisation’s values and goals. Once they are clear on their personal commitment to the wider organisational vision, they are given the challenge of presenting their vision for their local team or department giving clear line of sight to strategic goals.
This way, organisations can help participants transform from being someone preoccupied by internalised issues to a leader with a clear, achievable plan of action in possession of the skill set needed to resolve the problems at hand.
If organisations fail to address these issues and let them fester, they run the risk of employees hitting untenable stress levels. Strategic objectives will go unmet and employees will exist in a stagnating state without appropriately developed skills. At the end of the day, under-delivery and underperformance have significant organisational consequences.
If you are serious about addressing the internal issues your managers are facing, even if you are unaware they exist, you would do well to explore the possible solutions now.
Jo Hennessy
Director of research and international development
Roffey Park
www.roffeypark.com/sp
