Should Management Skill Training Be Ditched in Today’s Climate?

Management Skill Training Today

It seems there’s been some controversy over government funding to support management and leadership skills training recently which I find interesting.

As MD of a business and someone absolutely excited and committed to building businesses where being profitable, highly successful and great places to work co-exist, I find the whole debate fascinating! One post I read recently talked of the outcry in some media that job centres were spending good money on training staff, rather than on channeling that money into finding work for the unemployed which is, of course, their prime objective.

My view?

Well, as with most media stories, there is an element of hype in order to maximise their own profits; but even when you strip away the hype, there is still a risk, (and, I believe, a dangerous one at that) that we become polarised towards abandoning all but the compulsory development of our people (health and safety, practical skills and so on) and drop the so called “soft-skills” training.

Run a quick search on “you tube” for “bad bosses” or “bully bosses” and you’ll be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of video postings, and sometimes shocked at the level of frustration and intense dislike poor people managers can evoke! And whilst ever these employees feel the way they do, their energy, their focus and their performance at work will almost certainly reduce your chances as a business or a manager of hitting or exceeding your targets.

If such frustration and negative energy was going on in my business I’d be concerned.

Ask most managers today what they’re struggling most with – and they’ll tell you it’s trying to motivate people, managing organizational change in the midst of making some redundant, cutting back hours or bonuses, and piling on pressure to hit increasingly overwhelming targets. I bet those managers at the job centre are struggling to keep themselves motivated, never mind their staff, in the face of overwhelming pressures.

Outstanding managers know how to minimise problems, keep people “on-side” and still maintain higher than average levels of staff engagement and commitment – and throwing out all opportunities for them to hone such critical influencing skills only serves to add to their frustration as well as their staff’s.

Management Skill Training: What To Do When Money is Tight?

This isn’t about spending recklessly – or what you don’t have. what it IS about, is, in my view two things:

1. Get better at assessing the return on your management skills training investment.

   Let’s face it, how “woolly” are we sometimes in terms of assessing the value of most training interventions? Filling in a “happy sheet” shouldn’t cut it at any time – but in this economic climate it’s crazy not to assess your return on investment.
   Just because you may not be sure how to, doesn’t mean it’s not possible, or it shouldn’t be done. Get sharper at this.
   Ask your managers what they find the most challenging; initiate training to meet their needs, then assess!
   Get staff more used to agreeing specific action plans from training they’ve attended and more used to being able to demonstrate how they’ve applied the learning and with what results.In my experience, this is sadly lacking in too many organisations.

Management Skill Training of ANY description is a complete waste of money and time if behaviours or attitudes don’t change, and if you don’t measure its effectiveness.
I wonder if the job centres built any real accountability into the training programme their managers attended?

2. Look for funding support.

   There’s a number of ways to access training support from a variety of sources, if you look around. Ask your local Business Link or Chamber; find out more about Train to Gain. Get creative about how you use resources – both external and internal.
   Instead of coming from the mindset which says “we have no money for training managers”, which is a “dead end” statement, ask yourself:
   How can we continue to support and develop our manager’s people skills, despite the recession and a lack of budget?

As MD of my own company, I know I must stay profitable or I go under – but I also know I can’t run my business on my own – and without the support, engagement, creativity and loyalty of my staff I’ll face problems which will will only add to the risk of business failure.

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For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources:

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Management Skill Training – Can You Not Afford To?

OK, so I have a vested interest. Yes, I am a trainer and coach – and yes, I increasingly find myself helping managers hone their people and management skills. But when I started out in coaching and providing management skill training I hadn’t particularly decided that was to be my focus.

My focus on people skills developed because the problems, issues and challenges which people presented me with were all challenges caused by lack of confidence or skill in dealing with people. I found managers struggling with apathetic staff; with “difficult” staff; with de-motivated staff; with underperforming staff; with appraising staff, with recruiting the right staff; with how best to develop their staff and even with unsupportive line managers of their own!

I could go on! I guess you get the picture?

I conduct surveys with all the managers I work with, whether they attend workshops, or as part of a 1-1 coaching and training programme for managers; and what’s clear is a huge proportion feel they would appreciate more help with the people side of management – and they are only too aware of the implications of poor people management. After all, most of them can tell you a story of a “nightmare” line manager they’ve had in the past and what the results of that were!

People and Management Skill Training - CIPD Report

A recent CIPD/ACAS report in June this year simply reinforced what I am finding in my own practice. As we find ourselves in the rather quiet period over the summer break, I’d like to share some of their findings because this is I think, quite a good time to reflect on and plan your strategy for the final quarter of 2009.

You’re busy, so for ease, I’ll bullet some of the main points from the report which particularly struck a chord with me.

• 80% of UK managers have been asked to do things at work for which they feel they should have been given some training beforehand. (Skillsoft survey, 2008)
• 78% of UK employees identified line management as the job function in most need of additional training (Skillsoft)
• The UK spends less per manager on management development than any other European country (Leitch review 2006)
• Half of training and development at work is now initiated by line managers, as opposed to HR or training departments. (CIPD – Who learns at work? 2008)
• 44% of employees say their line manager rarely or never coaches them (CIPD 2009)
• 33% of employees say their line manager never discusses their management skill training and development needs (CIPD 2009)

What are the implications of all this? Does it really matter? Does it make a difference to the outcome if a line manager is feeling uncertain how best to tackle some of the most common people issues?

Ruth Spellman, CEO of the Chartered Management Institute says this about management training:
“If you think it’s expensive to have really competent people, try incompetent.”

How much does it cost you in wasted time dealing with conflict? (OPP Research , 2008, shows an average of 12 days a year are spent dealing with conflict in the workplace – more than time lost to absence).

How much does it cost you in time and money dealing with disciplinary or grievance procedures?

How much does it cost you to find, hire and re-train new staff because valuable, experienced staff are leaving?

Study after study shows a huge proportion of employees leave bosses, not companies.
What’s heartening for me is that in my experience, as with all employees, managers want to do a good job. They want to be able to encourage a culture where people communicate well, where they give of their discretionary effort, where they are committed, loyal and enthusiastic, and where they have fun, learn and produce good results.

But with the exception of a very few, naturally talented and skilled communicators (and even these will tell you there is always room for improvement!), most managers come to the role with little or no understanding of basic human psychology and how to successfully and consistently apply techniques which will ensure they get the best out of themselves and others.

So as we head for the final quarter of 2009, what are you doing to support and develop the most critical roles in your organisation?

Money may be tight – but rather than simply take the simplest, and least creative route of putting all management skill training and management training resources development “on hold”, why not take the time in these quieter summer weeks to ask a more creative question:

“How can we still support and develop our managers despite financial pressures?”

You may not be able to justify the “bells and whistles” programme you had planned – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways you can still give some support. There’s a book called “Guerrilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levinson, which gives brilliant ways of marketing on a shoestring. Perhaps it’s time to write a book called “Guerrilla training for managers!”

As a coach, I know it’s more about asking the right questions, to help you come up with better answers! So ask yourself what you can do to support your managers in the next 3 months and see what you come up with!

After all – you might actually find you save a bob or two!

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For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources:

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Why Managers with Great Soft Skills are Essential in Hard Times

We are in a “credit crunch”. Times are hard. It isn’t the first time; and it won’t be the last.

People tighten their belts and do their best to weather the storm, and businesses focus an even more critical eye on their spending. Often, one of the first things to come under scrutiny is soft skill training and development, and decisions are made to put anything other than “essential” training on hold. “Soft skills management”, (also referred to as “people skills” or "interpersonal communication skill") is often seen as the “fluffy bunny” stuff of development, and as a result is the first to be dropped. But how effective is this strategy in reality? Is motivational humor enough to motivate employees?

This article exposes some common “myths” around soft skills and explains why, in the scramble to reduce our spending, going for the “obvious” targets may not be as effective a strategy as you think.

Soft Skill Training Definition

Why do we call “soft skills” by that name, and what does it conjure up for you exactly? What images or words do you associate with this frequently used term?

For me it conjures up some kind of “fluffy bunny”, soft, gentle, rather vague term, designed to encompass abilities which are not so easily measured, and certainly less tangible than, let’s say your ability to rewire a home, use power-point, or know your products inside out. There’s something almost apologetic about “soft skills management” too; after all these are also often referred to as “people skills” or "interpersonal communication skill" – and we’re all, well, people aren’t we? That being the case, these “skills” will be an innate part of our being already, so there’s no real need to spend much resource on developing them.

Soft Skill Training: Issues which arise when soft skills are missing

Over many years, working 1-2-1 or in workshops with managers and teams I am struck by how often the following issues come up:

• The team just don’t pull together.
• There are 1 or 2 individuals who are extremely difficult to manage or work alongside, and this creates tension in the team.
• Communication, either internally, or externally with clients or customers, is poor.
• One or two individuals are underperforming, either taking many absences, not completing work on time, or resisting doing certain parts of their role, and others are getting fed up of having to “carry them.”
• Changes in the wider organisation are affecting morale.
• Team members feeling there’s a lack of leadership, of fairness, of support or development, or of valuing what they do – with the result they just “do what they need to, to keep out of trouble” They’re not passionate or enthusiastic about their work – this is “just a job” which pays the bills.

Credit crunch or not – if you think these VERY common symptoms aren’t damaging your bottom line – think again! I bet I could find at least some of these in your business right now!
And these symptoms are caused, not because you haven’t given these people the training they need to do their job – they are the result of less than effective people skills!

The Role of the Manager

The dynamics of the working relationships in a team can make the difference between hitting, or missing your targets – between profit and loss – between survival in a credit crunch and real difficulties.

And the central figure in that dynamic, the individual who can make or break the team’s ability to function, is the manager.

A quick look at some figures, for those of you who really like to see the hard facts!

Gallup research looked at a retailer with over 30,000 employees and over 300 stores. This retailer took great care to ensure each store provided the customer with a consistent shopping experience, whichever store they visited. Using 12 questions which asked workers to rate how they felt about their role, then looking at the answers and the actual results in that store or team within a store, what they found was astonishing, and significant.

They found, that where employees scored more highly in terms of their satisfaction with the “culture” in the team, the hard line sales figures were significantly, and consistently better than those stores where the cultures were hindered by things such as lack of trust, poor morale and little enthusiasm. They found the highest scoring stores were on average:

• 4.56% over sales budget for the year.
  This translated into $104 million of sales
  If the company could transform the poorer stores, this would increase their total sales by 2.6%
• 14% over profit budget
  The bottom stores missed their profit goals by a full 30%
• Retaining staff by an average of 12 staff more per year than their counterparts in the bottom 25% of the survey
  This translated into the top stores retaining 1000 more staff over the year.
  Estimating the average store employee salary, and the cost of finding, hiring and training the new employees, the overall cost to the company was $27million.
  How would you like to shave some of that “cost” off your bottom line?

So – next time you’re thinking of cutting your training budget to strip out the “nice to have” things like “soft skills training” – perhaps you might think again?
Even if you scale down such training for everyone, finding a way to ensure your managers are highly skilled people managers is one of the most worthwhile investments you will EVER make.

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For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources:

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