Why Your Best Employees Don't Deserve To Be ManagersLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Why Your Best Employees Don't Deserve To Be Managers article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
After all, the skill set required to practice a specific profession -- whether it's plumbing, hairdressing, engineering, selling, teaching, accounting or whatever -- is entirely different from the skill set required to manage people. Yet organizations persist in promoting 'doers' into management roles. These promotions come with better-sounding titles, more money, more perquisites, more prestige and... more responsibility. And they involve doing less -- perhaps none -- of the 'technical' work that the manager did previously, and more (or all) of the work of managing others. In one sense it's logical -- a manager who used to do the work himself or herself should understand what his staff need to do the work now. And yes, there are many managers who are just as good, if not better, at managing others as they are performing the actual work. In fact, many managers prefer to manage rather than do. But, as indicated above, there's no reason to assume that a good doer will make automatically make a good manager! Now, this isn't to say that a pyramidal organizational structure -- where the many are managed by the few -- is necessarily a bad thing. As a delegation or management structure it works fine for many companies. But when getting more pay and other rewards is contingent on becoming a manager, it's inevitable that people will try to get, and will get, promoted into management roles -- regardless of whether they have the talent or passion to manage. The result? Plenty of unhappy and ineffective managers. Plenty of frustrated people working for ineffective managers. And an organization that isn't performing at its optimum. Doesn't it make more sense for people to do the work they enjoy and are good at? To reward them for getting better and better at that work, rather than only paying them more if they step 'up' to management... where they may generate less value for the organization? Isn't a top salesman better off staying in the field selling... than floundering in the office, struggling to organize and motivate his staff? Doesn't a terrific teacher do more for her students, herself and the school by staying in the classroom, than spending her time doing paperwork and trying to manage other teachers? Fortunately, some organizations have seen the light. They do tie greater rewards to greater responsibilities and greater performances within the same role. In fact, some companies, like investment banks, are renown for paying traders and sales people much, much more than the people who manage them, simply because, in the eyes of the bank, the traders and sales people generate more value. Of course, as a 'manager's advocate' I would never suggest that managers shouldn't be compensated well, especially given the challenges of managing people. But to be as productive and profitable as possible, organizations should tie greater pay and rewards to greater responsibilities and performances, whatever the role. That way, they'll have people doing and being their best. So if you're responsible for 'promoting' people, I urge you to think twice before promoting your best people into management roles... and out of the jobs they love and do well at. Instead, consider whether you can enlarge, or give them more challenges in, their current role? Or, if they've performed exceptionally well, can you give them a bonus or some other special reward to recognize their efforts?
Of course, if you work for someone else, you may be limited in terms of what you can do... but if that's the case, and you're committed to staying with your current employer... it may be time to start a revolution! |
More Articles:1. Eight Skills of Highly Successful Consultants By Kevin Eikenberry With deference to Dr. Covey and his very popular Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (all habits that will make us better consultants!), here are eight skills that all of us as consultants can work on to improve. This article will start with three overarching skills, then describe five more specific skills to consider in your ongoing development. One way to look at your total skill set as a consultant (internal or external), is to consider your relative strengths in the three major porti… 2. Why We Judge By Alicia Smith Judgment is the process of forming an opinion of something by making a comparison. While judgment can play an important role in decisions we must make to live productively, sometimes the thoughts we hold are what prevent us from having what we most desire.Judgments are based on thoughts we hold about people and things. These thoughts are the filters through which we view our world. The limiting beliefs that we hold about ourselves, about what we can or cannot do, are judgments.Judgments can… 3. Leaping Asset Management Hurdles By Donna Johnson Edwards I attended ECPweb's Software and Asset Management Summit '04 at The University of Chicago to deliver a workshop on software auditing and compliance. It was a great opportunity for me to talk with other industry professionals as well as to speak with IT and asset managers tasked with implementing asset management (AM) and compliance programs.As I reflect back on my conversations, I realize that certain hurdles to achieving AM program success are common in just about every company, regardless of… 4. Learning Disability # 6 – Experience; Help or Hinder? By Graeme Nichol Isn’t it always interesting to hear somebody say “yeah, we tried that, it didn’t work…” When it was tried; what were the conditions surrounding the business? How was it implemented? How were staff trained? Most questions are never answered with any clarity and real understanding. No real analysis of the changes failure or success was ever done. Meaning that an opportunity to learn was lost.We all learn by our experiences, from walking to riding bicycles, trial and error and a few bruises and s… |
||||
