Why new managers fail - and how to fix it
We’ve all seen it happen. A star performer is promoted into their first management job and… they are terrible at it.
And what is worse, their underperformance affects the rest of the team, who struggle to cope with a manager who blows hot and cold, won’t leave them alone to get on with the job they have been doing for years, or won’t resolve issues as they arise. Before long, team members start to talk about leaving because their new manager just can’t seem to manage.
All that promise. All that hope. Extinguished.
I work with accidental managers, and I am here to tell you that they all fail for pretty much the same reasons.
The good news is, these reasons are not difficult to put right.
The bad news is, the person who is likely to be responsible for putting them right (their own boss) might, just might, be making all the same mistakes, for the same reasons, in their own job!
Let’s have a look at the most common reasons for management failure, and how you, as a business owner, can prevent them from happening to your newly promoted manager.
The job isn’t clearly defined or understood
Let’s face it, most job descriptions barely scratch the surface of what a job really involves. The day-to-day minutiae of decisions and activities that will take up most of the manager’s time are covered by a single phrase or sentence, giving no real sense of what the job might be like in practice.
So while you (the business owner) might be very clear what you think your employee should do, how well do you think they understand their job?
I’ve asked hundreds of managers over the year to explain to me exactly where their job starts and ends, and every single one of them leaves that discussion with a page-full of questions to clarify with their manager.
Imagine trying to handle a poor performance issue if you don’t know whether you have the power to give a warning or not? Or you don’t know what the company procedure is for poor performance management? Or if you’re not clear on your own manager’s expectations about your team’s performance levels?
And yet we expect new managers to understand what is expected of them from a job description and a few objectives. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?
As a business owner, you can't assume they understand what you want them to do. Instead, ask your newly promoted manager to talk you through how they intend to deal with a particular issue, or project, and use this as an opportunity to identify what they think their role is, and educate them on what you expect from them. Push them to take that extra step that they didn’t realise they were authorised to take. And pull them back from making decisions that fall within your own remit.
And remember. One conversation isn’t going to be enough – this needs to be an ongoing way of talking about performance.
Expected results, and company priorities, aren’t clearly set out
Knowing where to focus your efforts is probably the thing that most new managers get wrong. Everything is new, and different – even if they have worked in the team for several years.
When faced with 73 gazillion things to do on the to do list, what do you think a new manager is most likely to focus on?
I’ll tell you.
They’re most likely to focus on the thing that they already know how to do. Probably something they did in their old day job. Because that is the easiest thing, and they will think they are at least doing something productive.
But that is unlikely to be the thing the company, or their own manager, would consider their top priority. And so the belief starts to grow that the new manager isn’t up to the job.
New managers need support, particularly in the first few months, to understand what tasks they need to prioritise. This needs to come from their own manager, so that both are clear what is most important, and what is not important.
Company processes don’t work as they should - or at all
There’s a lot of management time wasted trying to adapt to, or circumvent company processes that sound good on paper but don’t work because the computer system isn’t up to scratch or colleagues aren’t doing the jobs they should be doing.
Lots of new managers end up running around plugging the gaps caused by processes that aren’t fit for purpose.
And then when they come to HR issues, they find that the HR processes they need don’t exist, or they are too generic or were written for a different company and don’t solve the problem that the manager now faces.
So if you have recently recruited a new manager, ask them what processes they have found already that don’t work as they should. You could make it one of their objectives to find issues to fix and come up with plans to put them right.
And recruiting a new layer of management is an ideal time to ask an HR professional like me to review your HR policies and procedures to make sure they are right for your new business structure.
Your support and openness to identifying and improving the way your company works, to make your manager’s job easier, will have a huge impact on their success and your company’s profitability.
They don’t have enough face to face time with their own manager
If you ask any manager, they will tell you that they speak to their team members every day. But these are typically ad hoc, unplanned conversations about work in progress that are over in a few minutes.
What ALL employees need, is proper, one to one face-time with their own manager. On a regular basis, and in the diary so they – and you - can plan for it. And with a written record, that you can both refer to later. As a reminder of what was discussed and agreed, and as a record that issues have been raised and support has been put in place, just in case matters need to be escalated in future.
How long should you spend on one to one time with your employees? Well, I answered this in the most searched for and read blog post I have ever written. Do have a read yourself – the answer will shock you, I guarantee!
Reacting is more exciting than planning
Most managers don’t realise it, but they are hooked on adrenaline. That rush when something breaks down, goes wrong or causes some other kind of problem is what keeps the job interesting. The manager can don their superhero cape and race in to save the world (or today’s order, at the very least).
When you look at the day-to-day challenges they react to, most of them could be avoided or at least minimised with a bit of forward planning.
But planning isn’t exciting.
It’s worthy, and it probably adds more value in terms of productivity and profit, than all the fire-fighting. But we tend not to notice it, or to assume that if a manager is sitting at their desk or in a meeting they are not really working.
We recognise and reward managers for busyness, or for achieving goals, but the time saved by solving a long-standing problem that occurs two or three times a week is quickly forgotten.
So think about what you notice and reward when it comes to management behaviour. Do you praise the reactive fire-fiighting or do you encourage the proactive planning? And is that how it comes across to the person you manage?
They don’t understand how to get the best from others
Inexperienced managers tend to assume that what worked for them will work for everyone else. So if they worked long hours and put themselves forward for projects to develop their own skills, they will assume that’s what everyone else wants to do.
But we are all motivated by different things, and those things can change at different points in our lives. So the incentives and rewards that work for one employee might not work for others.
New managers need to get confident about using different motivators for different employees. But most of them will be nervous about equal opportunities or discrimination claims if they treat people differently.
So explain to your new manager about all the different options available to enhance motivation and commitment. Things like flexible working opportunities, bonuses, development opportunities, working from home, gym membership, or bacon butties on a Friday morning, for example.
Encourage them to come up with their own ideas, and help them to understand how treating people differently can enhance fairness and equality within the workplace.
Lack of self-awareness
Self-awareness means understanding what makes you tick.
It involves knowing your personality traits, your strengths and weaknesses, and how these affect the way you feel, behave or react in different situations.
It also enables you to recognise when you don’t like a particular team member (which is more common than you might think) and to take appropriate steps to moderate your behaviour when you have to deal with that person. Or to understand that your strong reaction to particular mistakes at work might be out of proportion to the severity of the mistake, and to consider different ways of addressing such mistakes.
The ability to reflect on your own behaviour and performance are hallmarks of good managers and leaders, but many workplaces do not encourage this type of self-review. We’re often too busy looking forwards to want to bother with what has already happened, but it is through self-reflection that managers can quickly identify and address behaviours and actions that need to be moderated or further developed.
Asking managers to reflect on what went well, what could have been better, and what they have learned or would do differently next time is a simple but effective way of encouraging this type of reflection.
Lack of emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence isn’t about being all pink and fluffy. But it is about recognising how you are feeling, and how that might affect your actions. And in turn, how your actions might affect other people.
It’s also about recognising how other people might be feeling, and how their mood might affect their behaviour.
These skills don’t come naturally to everyone, and if you don’t have them you probably don’t see the value of them either. But they are what separates good managers from not so good managers.
When you have emotional intelligence, you know that there is a time and a place for jokes, or off the cuff remarks and gestures. And that if you time them wrong, they might be taken in a way completely different to what you intended.
You also recognise that sometimes you might not be feeling on top form yourself. You know that if you are stressed, or you haven’t slept very well, you might be better to limit interacting with other people in case you say or do something you later regret.
Being able to do this, while also remaining available so that people aren’t afraid to tell you about urgent problems that you DO need to know about immediately, are not skills we are all born with.
You can help a new manager develop their emotional intelligence by observing their interactions with their team. Can you spot, and give constructive feedback, when their mood has affected their behaviour, or where they have misjudged their team members' moods?
They lack confidence in having difficult conversations
Most of us, I suspect, would rather avoid difficult conversations. But when you are a manager, they are part of the job. And if you continually avoid them, you are not really managing at all.
We all have a different perception of what a “difficult” conversation is, but in my book it’s any discussion in which you need to tell the other person something you believe they are not going to want to hear.
In the world of people management that might typically include discussions about:
Attendance
Performance
New responsibilities or changes to working hours
Conflict within the team
Restructures
Redundancies
Disciplinaries
Grievances
But, depending on your experience as a manager, a difficult conversation might also be about:
Having to say “no” to a holiday request
Talking to someone about their maternity leave plans
Asking someone to work overtime
Explaining why no pay increase is being awarded this year
Telling someone they weren’t successful in a job application.
In fact, just about any conversation you have with a team member has the potential to be difficult, because you can’t be sure how the employee will react.
You can help a new manager by encouraging them to practice a conversation with you, before they tackle their team member. Help them to think about how they might prepare for the conversation, what they might say, how the team member might react, and how they want the individual to feel at the end of it.
Moving forwards...
I’ve trained or coached over 1000 managers during my 30+ years’ working with people managers. And every single one of them struggled with at least one of the challenges I’ve described above. But these are all areas that managers can learn and improve in, given the time and the right help and encouragement to succeed.
I hope this has given you some insight, and some simple steps you can take to help your new manager show the same potential they demonstrated when you decided to promote or recruit them.
But if you don’t have the time, or the skills to coach them yourself, then my Accidental Manager coaching programme might be just the thing you are looking for. The link takes you to a blog article that tells you everything there is to know about the programme, and who it is suitable for.
If you already know you are interested in coaching, give me a call on 0790 2903086 or fill in my contact form to book an appointment. You can also put an appointment in my diary on the contact page.
Share this post: