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. Data Delivers Credibility By Robert F. Abbott Over the past couple of days I've been setting up visitor counters, so people in another organization can accurately count the number of people who visit their event.They got the idea (and the counters) from an association I belong to, and they, too, are learning how data delivers credibility.I'm always impressed by how much respect I get when speaking or writing with specific, solid numbers. For example, when I talk about the number of visitors who came through the gates of my association's e… 2. The Two Most Powerful Words in Business By Sandra Sims There’s a series of television commercials currently running for a bank rewards program. It features people who find an unusual way to get out of awkward situations.My favorite is the one where a man and woman are sitting in a fine restaurant when the lady brings up “the talk.” Ladies, you know the one, the “where is this relationship going” speech. The woman in the commercial comes right to the point, “When are we getting married?”The poor guy gets the “deer in the headlights” look on his fac… 3. CFOs Need To Know the Fallacies Behind "Business as Usual" in relation to Human Resources Practices What are your people worth? 'PEOPLE ARE OUR MOST IMPORTANT ASSET.' How many times have you heard that? More important, how many times upon hearing it have you nodded politely and then changed the subject to something more, ah, important? Human resources receives far more lip service than respect, but economic factors factors are making HR the subject of some truly substantive executive discussions-and expenditures. Human resources as a lowly cost center The Human resource department is traditio… 4. Mission and Vision Statements - Foundational to Successful Change Successful leaders and organizations are vision driven rather than problem driven. Some management tools fail to affect any change; but here is one that will, if properly implemented.Mission and Vision Statements have been crafted by organizations for years. The attention to mission and vision is warranted, as studies indicate that organizations that have Mission and Vision Statements quite simply outperform those that do not.Here are a few varied snapshots from the e-book Mission and Vision Sta… |
||||
