Are Your Managers Effective?

By Candace Fisher, SPHR, Director, Organizational Development/Certified Coach
Published November 29, 2022

When managers and leaders operate effectively, teams and individual employees thrive. When they don’t, organizations suffer. But quite often, management assumes that those who are good at doing the job will make great supervisors and managers. Bad assumption. Just because someone has great technical, hands-on job skills does not mean that they have great – or even good – communication, conflict resolution, goal setting, or leadership skills. For most individuals, leadership and good management skills are not inborn. Organizations need to take the time and invest the resources to develop supervisors and managers. 

Those resources can include training via online or in-person resources. You can send them for management and leadership training or you can bring it in-house to your organization. But don’t expect any single training session to be a “magic bullet.” The training must be encouraged and reinforced over time. 

Another resource can be coaching or mentoring. A boss can provide great coaching to the supervisor or manager by identifying needs and helping them learn and accomplish job-specific and overall career goals. There are also professional coaches who can help your managers and executives overcome obstacles and rise to their position – or to the next level. A mentor, a senior professional other than the individual’s direct supervisor, from within your organization or your industry can provide perspective, insight, and information to help an individual grow professionally.

So, where do you begin in this process of coaching and developing managers and leaders to be more effective in their roles and promote success? One way is by conducting a 360 survey. One such tool, CheckPoint 360°™, is a feedback survey that helps evaluate the effectiveness of managers and leaders and provides a personalized approach for developing leadership skills and improving job performance. Organizations can use feedback from the survey to identify talents, talent gaps, and focus areas to build personalized development plans. It also helps determine alignment opportunities between the leader and the organizational strategy. By providing meaningful insights, the survey encourages a culture of high-performance that drives results from the top down. 

For more information about 360 tools, or any services to help develop the management talent in your organization, contact a member of HR Source’s Organizational Development team at info@hrsource.org or 800-448-4584.