Management-Issues reports on a study of corporate training conducted by Novations. Among the findings is the following.

"Nine out of 10 first-line managers will receive training this year."

That's all well and good, but it doesn't tell us what kind of training they're getting or how much. The Wall Street Journal has reported that only 7 percent of corporate training budgets are devoted to first-line managers. A significant portion of that is devoted to administrivia. 

Dig a little deeper on studies like this one and you find that what is described as "training" is often little more than sitting in a room listening to someone drone on about policies and procedures. At some companies that's all the "training" that managers get.

The policies and procedures and fill-out-the-form-this-way stuff can be handled with job aids or on an intranet or both.  Learning to be a good boss is a different matter altogether.

It's also quite a challenge. Paul Terry of Novations points out that, "By a large margin, training professionals recognize the challenge of moving individuals into a managerial role."

They may recognize it, but there are an awful lot of companies out there who aren't doing anything helpful about it.  There are some companies, like Caterpillar, with highly focused supervisory skills training. But they're the exception.

In one company I'm familiar with, supervisory skills training consists of giving a new supervisor a copy of a current hot management book. He or she is expected to "discuss it with your manager."

In another company, new managers don't even get that. "We expect them to know how to manage before we promote them," an HR person told me. She didn't say how they were supposed to learn.

And they need to learn. You don't come out of the womb knowing how to be a boss. You need specific training in how to do the boss job and then lifelong skills development to keep getting better at it.

The first skills training for a new supervisor should include discussions and exercises to clarify the new boss role. There should be instruction in basic principles of supervision involving case discussions, and role practice.

The role practice should concentrate on the areas new supervisors find difficult: giving clear instructions, analyzing performance issues, and talking to people about their performance. Naturally, I think my book, Performance Talk, can be helpful there.

The basic training should also include identifying role models and laying out a personal development program. That sets things up for when the new boss goes back to the job.

Once the new supervisor gets back on the job, he or she should be able to get help from experienced supervisors.  In the first few months, the new supervisor should develop the habit of critiquing their own performance.

Since leadership is an apprentice trade, the supervisor should have opportunities to discuss supervision issues and situations with peers and more experienced supervisors.  Some of this can be handled with online discussion, much like Xerox uses for its service technicians.

There's no way to put what needs to be learned by a new boss into a single training course.  Too much learning has to happen on the job and over a lifetime for that.  But that's no excuse for today's sorry state of supervisory skills training.

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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