Managers are made, even if it’s sometimes by accident

Most of us have been “Managed” by someone at some point. Good managers motivate us, guide us, support us, make us more productive and help us develop as employees. If we do things wrong, they will obviously set us straight, but a good manager can be the difference between a job being engaging and rewarding, and it being truly awful. With research suggesting that around 50% of employees leave jobs because of a bad manager, the importance of having good managers in a business cannot be overstated.

Management isn’t something that comes naturally to most people though, and there is a consensus that “good managers are made, not born.” That is why people study for management qualifications, some businesses have “management training schemes,” and there are more self-help books available on “how to be a good manager” than you could ever hope (or want) to read.

And yet, because “good managers are made, not born” many of us will spend part of our working life being managed by someone who isn’t particularly good at managing because they have never learnt how to do it. But let’s pause for a moment before we lay all the blame for poor management at the door of those poor managers. It’s often not their fault as we tend to have a culture in the UK where businesses frequently create “Accidental Managers;” a term used by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) to describe people who are promoted or recruited into management roles, with little or no preparation, support, or training.

These Accidental Managers are the engineers, sales staff, accountants, and administrators who are good at their jobs, and help the business they work for succeed. Their good work and ability are then rewarded by their employers with promotion to a management position, but the fact that they are often ill prepared for, and poorly equipped to succeed in, their new role, is all too often overlooked. They struggle, must rely on their own experience of being managed, and businesses sometimes find they have lost a star “doer,” and gained a mediocre manager. It’s a common scenario and the CMI estimates that around 2.4 million of the 3.4 million managers (71%) in the UK fall into the “accidental manager” category; people promoted because they were good at what they did but who find themselves with the challenging task of managing other people without really knowing how to.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Research by the CMI found that organisations who invest in management and leadership development programs see an average increase in organisational performance of 23%, and a 32% increase in the performance of their staff.

At K Bater Consultancy this is something we know all too well as we work with small and medium sized businesses across the UK to design and implement management training and mentoring programs. Our clients know the importance of training, developing, and supporting staff before and after they take on a management roles. By doing so, we are helping create good managers, regardless of whether they are accidental, or not.

About K Bater Consultancy

K Bater Consultancy provides human resource support, advice, and solutions to small and medium sized businesses across the UK.

Its founder and principal, Kelly Bater, has more than 20 years’ experience advising and supporting small and medium sized businesses with all aspects of human resource management, is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and has a Post Graduate Diploma in HR Management.

To find out more about how K Bater Consultancy can help your business, contact Kelly today on 07500 939255 or via email at kelly@kbaterhr.com