Why You'll Never Be Hired as a Manager
That headline was intended to get your attention.
But, truth of the matter, you will not get hired as a first-time manager.
No company is going to take a bet on your “potential.”
· I bet she’s great at communicating
· I bet she’s great at scheduling
· I bet he knows how to coach others to their full potential
If you wish to be a manager of others, you’ll first need to create a managerial role for yourself, where you currently are. Once you have “earned” the title of manager, you’ll be able to use that as leverage to move into other managerial roles, in other organizations.
Here are three tips to getting promoted into a managerial position:
1 Pick your head up from your desk / cubicle
You won’t get promoted if those who have the power to promote you don’t know your name or don’t know who you are by sight. You may be wonderful at your job, but being a manager involves working intimately with others, so if you don’t pick your head up from your work and demonstrate that you interact well with others, you won’t be seen as “management material.”
Anytime you are away from your desk (coming in to work, leaving a the end of the day, walking to the restroom) be sure to say hello to two or three people along the way. Smile. Make eye contact. Act like you own the place. Something as simple as this will translate to, “She’s a good communicator.”
2 Look for opportunities to do more than is expected.
If you do your job – even if you are extraordinary - you are no more extraordinary than anyone else who is also “just doing their job.” Managers show initiative, they plan, they forecast, they solve problems proactively. Show that you have initiative by thinking about something in your work (or the workplace) that irritates you or seems cumbersome, and how you might approach it differently. Offer to “fix” the problem. Approach your boss and say, “I’ve been thinking about XYZ and, with your permission, I want to try an experiment to … speed it up, reduce the errors, more easily fact-check,” etc.
You want your manager on your side, so that if a position opens up in another area and they are asked “do you have anyone in your department that you’d recommend?” they will think of you because you show initiative
And that brings us to my last tip -
3 Think laterally
You have a 70/30 chance of getting your boss’ job (30% in your favor). Unless your boss is promoted or leaves the company, don’t expect that you will move up in the ranks. In fact, if they think you are gunning for their job it may make them wary of being your “cheerleader.” Instead, be aware of what’s happening in your organization overall. If you see or hear about an upcoming opening, ask your manager if they would suggest your name for the role. Tell them how much you’d enjoy working side-by-side with them as a peer. Be willing to venture into the unknown (aka a new department) in order to get your first managerial role.
Finally, if you are hoping for an internal promotion but don’t get it for some reason, be congratulatory and supportive of the person who DID get it. Continue your good work as discussed in tips 1 and 2 and you’ll stand out as a team player of the organization, not as an individual who is out for his/her own self interests. When you demonstrate that you put the organization’s needs before your own, you stand out as managerial material.
Succession Planning? Start Here.
Many organizations are facing an impending loss ofleadership as the last of the Boomers are getting ready to leave the workforce.With the start of a new decade upon us, now is the time to plan for the next generationof leaders. But where to start? If your company does not have a leadershipdevelopment program in place, or if you haven’t really given much thought to howyour company will make an orderly transfer of leadership responsibility, 2020is the year to focus on this critical planning.
Below, I’ve outlined the first three steps in successionplanning. So as not to get overwhelmed, address them slowly over the next sixto twelve months and your organization will be ready to smoothly transfer thereins of leadership as the Boomers in your company begin to retire.
Step 1 - Consider who is next in line for leadership
The outcome of this step is to determine where you want toconcentrate your leadership development efforts in order to achieve the most ROI.Do you want to concentrate your efforts on those who have been with yourorganization the longest and therefore understand its inner workings andculture? Or do you want to concentrate on younger generations who are lookingfor professional development as a primaryperk of employment and who may be with your organization longer, as aresult?
To gain better insight, take a look at who you presently employand what generational cohort they belong to. Currently there are fourgenerations in the workforce, the Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials and Gen Z whoare just entering the workforce. It is logical to assume that Gen X, being thenext generation after the Boomers, would be next in line to lead in yourorganization, but there aren’tenough of them. In addition, in a recent study conducted by TheConference Board, of data collected from over 25,000 leaders acrossindustries, it was determined that Gen X have been stymied from moving up thecorporate ladder by Boomers who have stayed on the job longer than previousgenerations. What this means is that there are a number of generations in yourworkforce who have not been indoctrinated into leadership development orleadership roles.
Determining where to apply development efforts is a criticalfirst step in determining your company’s leadership pipeline.
Step 2 - Determine What Skills Your Future Leaders Need
Once you determine who you’ll want to develop (as anaside, I advocate developing everyone as if they were going to be afuture leader; a rising tide lifts all boats, after all) you’ll need to identifywhat skills they will need to support your organization in the future.
To accomplish this, there are three sources of data you’llwant to collect and consider:
1 Look at the jobdescriptions of each of your current leadership roles to determine what skills areidentified as necessary in today’s environment. This is just a baseline, as weknow that today’s business environment is accelerating and changing at a pacenever experienced before and what your organization needs today may not be whatit needs tomorrow. Be sure to identify leadership skills and behaviors, such asmanaging a team of five or fiscal responsibility, and not job tasks such asmonthly reporting. If possible, “read between the lines.” For instance the taskof “standardize procedures to improve efficiency” really means having theleadership abilities of analyzing, forecasting, and planning.
2 Pay attention to what industry experts and yourprofessional association are doing in the realm of the “future of work” andwhat is predicted for your industry. Some of the current concerns includeartificial intelligence and robotics, consumer pressures (suchas related to the environment), and changing buying habits – all of whichwill require your company to adapt. What do you need to start training yourfuture leaders for, today?
3 Hold one-on-one interviews and ask your current leaderswhat prepared them for the role they hold today. Most often you’ll learn thatformal development is not credited as much as mentorship, on the job learning,and a wide array of experiences. Theseinsights will help you to decide the best course of leadership development, foryour organization, going forward. For example, you could put four future-leaders through an off-site leadership development program or you might chooseto institute a job rotation program for everyone at your company. The twooptions might cost the same amount, but will return vastly different results. You’ll want to thoughtfully consider howpeople truly learn leadership in your organization.
Note: Be very concerned if the majority of responsesare, “I learned it at my previous job,” because that means you are doingnothing to develop leaders in your organization and are instead relying onother companies to develop them and hoping you can then hire them away. That“strategy” puts your company in a very precarious position; the topic ofanother article entirely.
Step 3 – Consider How You Will Develop Leadership Skills
Once you have identified the skills that should be developedin your future leaders, you’ll need to determine how to get them those skills. Creating a formalized leadership developmentprogram is a time consuming and arduous process – which is why most companiesforego it and instead cross their fingers and hope their future leaders will“appear” when needed.
Sending people out for leadership development can be cost-prohibitive and because of that, the number of individuals that get developed is generally far fewer than is needed by any organization. A smart option for most companies is to mete leadership development out to everyone, through easy-to-implement activities such as reading groups or lunch-and-learns, and on-the-job projects such as a multi-discipline initiative. Over time, small and consistent development opportunities will build the leadership skills your organization needs and alleviate succession planning concerns.
Once you have considered and acted upon these first three steps in succession planning, you’ll be well on your way to ensuring that your company has a leadership pipeline capable of continuing excellent work despite a rapidly changing business environment.
Note: This article was first published by Training Industry Magazine.
Twelve Weeks to Becoming the Manager of the Most Kick-ass Department in Your Company
As organizational development consultants, we are often tasked with creating activities or events that "move an organization forward." Clients ask us to solve problems related to communication, teamwork, poor workmanship, lack of commitment or accountability, and many other issues which stymie output and frustrate individuals.
Every organization is different, of course, but if you are a manager who would like to elevate your profile and your department's reputation, here is an activity that anyone can use to achieve both. All you need to do is commit to one hour per week for three months and follow the process below.
Week 1
This works better if your team is co-located. There is something to be said for looking your colleagues in the eye.) Bring together your team and have each person stand, state their name, their role, and declare how their role interacts with or is enmeshed with another person in attendance and their role. Repeat until everyone has spoken.Be aware: This will be an uncomfortable struggle at first, but by week 6 people will easily rattle off their inter-dependencies and accountabilities.
Weeks 2 - 6
At subsequent weekly 1-hour meetings add one-more-individual to the interdependency declaration. In other words, in week 1 each speaker must choose one other individual and declare how their role interacts with or is enmeshed with that person’s role. In week 2 they'll need to choose two other individuals. In week 3, they'll choose three other individuals, and so on. Slowly your department will begin to recognize how they are dependent on one another. This process works because it is visual, verbal, requires people to think to make the association, and is repeated week after week.
Weeks 4 - 6
Once people have the routine of choosing co-workers and declaring how they work together, "step it up" by having them add something about the other role that is frustrating, confusing or that they always wondered about. This might sound like, "I'm Susan Jones. I schedule the demo-rooms for the sales group. Sean Rhodes is one of my internal customers; he frequently meets with prospective clients in the demo rooms. Sean, I've wondered how far in advance you schedule meetings with prospects that need a demo. Is it usually the same-week or do you have more notice?"
What Susan is really getting at is, "I am tired of Sean always yelling at me that he has a client arriving within the hour and no where to put them." But perhaps Susan doesn't realize that Sean gets little advance notice himself. Or perhaps she just made Sean aware that he needs to schedule the demo rooms with more notice than he has been giving.
Further conversation can happen after your 1-hour meeting, allowing Susan and Sean to come to a solution so that neither of them regularly feels frustrated by the other (without your meeting, and this process, the chance of this conversation happening at all is slim and perhaps the whole "issue" would lead to a major blow-up down the road).
Weeks 7 - 12
Time to step it up again. Now that you've got your team regularly focusing on the way they work with and are dependent upon one another, start bringing in "guests" from other departments (directly upstream and downstream are easiest at the start). Stretch their knowledge of and accountability for other roles and departments. The same process is used, but now each speaker must include someone (the guest) outside your immediate group.
Let's assume you invited a mechanic from the maintenance group. This might sound like, "I'm Susan Jones. I schedule the demo-rooms for the sales group. I also issue a monthly report to maintenance for each machine, which logs how many hours each machine was used during the month."
Susan may or may not know that the hours-used report allows maintenance to conduct preventative maintenance on the demo-machines which are otherwise out-of-sight, out-of-mind for them. Preventative maintenance ensures that a salesperson isn't embarrassed by a demo-machine that fails during a client presentation. If Susan doesn't know that's what her report is used for, she'll learn it during your monthly meeting (by asking "I've often wondered what that report is used for,") and will understand the value and utility of it.
If Susan does know and declares the purpose of her report, the rest of the group will come to learn that this maintenance occurs unbeknownst to them in order to ensure the sales group has the equipment they need to be successful.
In addition to your current group of workers becoming more knowledgeable about, and accountable to, their co-workers and the larger organization, this is a great process for bringing new hires into the fold. They will quickly understand the work processes and outputs of your department and how they are interrelated, which is crucial to doing their own job well and knowing who to ask for help.
In just 12 short weeks you'll have the most highly functioning department in your organization, guaranteed.
Drop us a line and tell us how it went. And don't be stingy! When other managers ask how you created such a high-functioning team - share the process, like we just did for you.