One of my favorite podcasts is Wayne Turmel's The Cranky Middle Manager and one of my favorite blogs is Evil HR Lady.  So imagine my delight when Evil HR Lady was interviewed on Wayne's podcast. Here's a tidbit from the summary of that podcast

"in her opinion, most managers are lazy and they stink at giving feedback."

Actually, that's not all they're not so good at.  Most middle managers really aren't very good at being responsible for the performance of a group.  Here's why.

Reason number one.  We promote the wrong people.

Most of the people we promote are good workers.  They're great at selling or analyzing data or keeping accounts or making the lathes run efficiently.  But in order to be a good manager, they need three things that we really can't teach them.

Managers need to be willing to make a decision.  Workers come up to the manager and ask, "What should we do?" The manager needs to decide.

We can teach the manager how to make better decisions.  We can assure that he or she understands enough about the work to make good decisions.  But we can't teach the manager to be willing to make a decision. So he or she better be willing before we promote.

Managers need to be willing to confront people.  A big part of the job is talking to people about their behavior and performance.  That's confrontation by anyone's definition.

We can teach the manager techniques for handling confrontation in ways that increase the odds of success. But we can't train the manager to be willing to do the uncomfortable work of confrontation.  So he or she better be willing to do that before we promote.

Managers need to be willing to help people succeed.  Every manager has two objectives: accomplish the mission and care for the people.  Helping people succeed is part of caring for people.

We can teach the manager techniques for helping people grow and develop.  But we can't train the manager to see the job of helping people succeed as vital to the overall job of manager. So he or she better be willing to do that before we promote.

Reason number two that we have so many managers doing lousy management work is that managers get little to no training in how to be good managers.  In most companies it's sink or swim, figure it out for yourself. 

Actually it's worse than that.  It's sink and take your whole team down with you, or swim. 

Good managerial and supervisory performance is vital because managers are the people with the greatest impact on both productivity and morale.  An investment in supervisory skills training should translate into an increase in engagement that goes direct to the bottom line and the retention figures. 

Reason number three that we have so many managers doing lousy management work is that we think you learn leadership and supervisory skills from a book or a class.  Wrong.  Very, perniciously wrong.

Leadership is an apprentice trade. A manager learns 80 to 90 percent of it on the job. He or she learns by talking with peers and mentors, trying things out, and getting feedback. If your company wants to help your managers get better, help them structure their own learning.

Here's the bottom line.  Evil HR Lady is right.  Lots of managers are doing an awful job of managing.  But it's not their fault.  Some of them shouldn't be in management jobs, and the rest probably didn't get any training or development support.

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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