Melissa Miller is the cofounder and COO of The Mintable.
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Across organizations of all types, manager training is broken.
To start, many managers don’t get any training at all. According to a 2018 study by West Monroe, a digital consulting firm, 59% of managers who supervise one to two people and 41% who supervise three to five people “receive no managerial training at all.”
A lack of formal, consistent manager training can lead to poor experiences for managers and the employees who report to them. Consider this: The West Monroe study also found that without “formal training in place, new managers turn to mimicking their previous bosses. Forty-two percent of new managers developed their management style through observing a previous manager, rather than through formalized training.” Emulating former managers carries risks, as former managers didn’t necessarily get everything right—after all, they likely weren’t trained themselves.
Of course, bad management doesn’t go unnoticed by employees. In a 2020 Society for Human Resource Management survey, 84% of American workers noted that “poorly trained people managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress.” Over time, many employees with bad managers might opt to leave. According to 2019 data from DDI, a consulting firm focused on human resources and leadership development, 57% of respondents had “left a job because of their manager.”
Companies need to get manager training right to increase employee retention and create happier, more productive work environments.
Key Reasons Why Manager Training Is Currently Broken
To get manager training right, company stakeholders must understand why it’s broken.
First, manager training tends to be highly inconsistent. Companies might offer manager training sessions as one-off events, which does not set the stage well for long-term knowledge retention and practical skills application. It can also make it hard to develop a common management vocabulary within the organization. If companies do offer manager training with some level of consistency, I’ve observed that it can be at far-apart intervals. For example, they might provide manager training every six months. This cadence means that someone promoted to a managerial position a month after one of these training sessions will have to wait several months to get trained. That delay in learning managerial best practices could result in lost trust and decreased productivity on that team.
Additionally, training cannot be a check-the-box activity. Applying the training is more important than the training itself. Learning something without applying it does not bode well for behavioral changes. Managers need to quickly apply that training in the workplace to retain what they’ve learned. It can be hard to have the practices in place that facilitate managers regularly using the knowledge and skills they’ve learned. Company leaders should encourage managers to apply what they’ve learned and carve out opportunities to make that practical application possible. This accountability to actual behavior change is key for training to work.
Application of new knowledge and skills aside, in some situations, managers who receive training don’t have much or anything practical to apply. Unfortunately, manager training is sometimes centered on theory, not practice. And while theory is undoubtedly helpful, theory alone is not enough. Managers often don’t have the time to translate theory into practice. Managers need to learn the practical applications of management theories.
The Fundamentals Of A Strong Approach To Manager Training
Company leaders who want to implement strong manager training initiatives should identify what foundational skills and knowledge they want their managers to learn. Then, they can work with either external vendors or in-house stakeholders to create practice-based (rather than primarily theory-based), sustainable and regularly-occurring training programs. That way, company leaders can build and maintain a common vocabulary and understanding of best practices.
Company leaders should also measure the efficacy of their manager training programs, so they can make adjustments as needed. To do so, leaders should start by letting managers know which areas they’d like to see improvements in, such as employee retention rates, employee satisfaction scores and employee net promoter scores (including how satisfied managers are with their roles). Over time, those metrics will help clue leaders in to what extent their manager training programs are working. If managers at a company aren’t, say, getting higher satisfaction scores from their direct reports over time, that might be a signal that it’s time to revamp the training program. I am a huge fan of the phrase, “That which gets measured, gets done.”
Ultimately, People Can Be Trained To Become Great Managers
The soft skills that account for great management, such as listening, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution, come more naturally to some people than others. But that doesn’t mean that these soft skills can’t be taught. Soft skills need to be taught and practiced just like any other skill. People can be trained to enhance their soft skills and become great managers.
At the core, manager training is about nurturing behavioral changes. By investing in manager training and ensuring that managers consistently apply what they learn, company leaders can create happier, healthier workforces.
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