Supervision in Crisis
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HR Morning says there's bad news for supervisors in a recent report from Right Management. Here's an excerpt from a post titled: "Do your workers trust their supervisors?"
"Some ominous news for your managers: Only one in five employees say they have confidence in their supervisors’ judgment."
Tom Gould at HR morning wonders if the cause is the economic downturn. If he's right, then things will turn around with the economy. But I don't think he's right.
The problem is rooted in the fact that most big companies do an awful job of selecting, training, supporting, and evaluating supervisors. Even worse, they've been getting away with it for decades.
But those days may be over. That's ominous news for companies.
For years, companies have been taking the easy route to choosing, training and supporting supervisors. By doing that they've chose, perhaps unconsciously, to be far less productive and competitive than they could be.
There hasn't been a supervision "crisis" that focused attention and spurred companies to action. Accountants, who love toting up the billions lost by worker use of social media, have never bothered to even attempt to measure the lost dollars from crappy supervision. Besides, it seems like there have always been people lining up for a "promotion" to management.
That may be changing. Those same young workers, who are pushing you for more balance in their life, are looking at a promotion to supervision or management and evaluating it as a bad bargain.
The biggest reason is the job itself. They see that their boss doesn't get much support or help. He or she didn't get much (if any) training. The hours are long. The stress is high.
As a result, lots of Gen Y folks are saying, "Thanks, but no thanks" when their company offers that once-coveted "promotion" to being a boss. They don't see anything in the job to light up their intrinsic motivation but they see lots of reasons to avoid the stress.
Boss's Bottom Line
A boss's job can be incredibly rewarding. If you love what you do, demonstrate to your team members and others why you love it. If you don't love it, evaluate whether you should be doing something else.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Wally
You make a fine point about the reluctance of Gen Y employees to take on supervisory positions. I'm involved in a study on just that issue within nursing. From our interviews with younger nurses, the unit manager position looks unattractive from many angles. They are not confident that they will receive sufficient training and are certain they will lack senior management support in such a position. It looks like a lot more work without the option of being paid overtime for those many extra hours. And so much of the work is going to meetings and so little is related to patient care.
Really, the world ought to be able to do a better job. But long-term failures on this scale in a major economic sector point to a system breakdown.
So much talk about leadership; so little effective action.
All the best,
Michael
www.workengagement.com/crew
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Thanks so much Michael. Your comment adds a good example to the post. I was sure I had seen a study on this issue, but I couldn't dredge it up from my files.
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Great thought-provoker Wally. One of the questions I ask my clients is the one you speak of - "Do you love what you do?". If they say no, it can account for a whole lot of issues they may be having. Most common? They continue to do much of the work they did pre-managing/supervising because thats what they really love. Therefore, delegation lags, development of their staff lags, and staff frustration abounds. I'm pretty sure this has an effect on the bottom line
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You make a good point, Mary Jo. The person who's uncomfortable in the supervisor role or doing the controlled confrontation and coaching that supervisor's do will fall back on what he or she does well, mainly the individual contributor work they did before.
According to an article in Workforce Management from 2007: "Today’s managers are also individual contributors and they spend more of their time doing their "real" jobs—technical aspects of their positions—than they actually spend managing their employees." So there's plenty of place to hide.
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I agree the recession is a red herring and a poor excuse for the chain reaction you've outlined. Crappy leaders/managers have in turn appointed crappy supervisors. The path to management is filled with all the wrong measurements, things like number of years on the job, technical skill at making whatever widget is being produced. You are right to point out training as a key factor - HR and org development have to bear some of the responsibility. There is so little time spent on teaching supervisors how to do exactly that. A refresher course on running performance appraisals doesn't count as leadership training.
I echo Michael's comment, "so much talk about leadership; so little action."
As you know, I am always intrigued by the connection between work, home and schools. I think often about the chicken and egg conundrum here.
When the only path to status and increased earnings is the supervisory one, you can't blame them for wanting it, even if they do it badly. I strongly hope Gen Y reject it as the house of cards it is, until we can fix it. When we learn to measure the right things, we'll have a chance of not just talk of leadership, but leadership itself.
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Thanks for coming by and adding to the discussion, Chrysula. You're absolutely right about the conundrum. As long as "management" is the only path to pay, prestige, and preferment, people will sign up for it, even if they think they won't be good at it.
Relative to Gen Y, though, I think there's an interesting dynamic going on. The Generation Y thinks feedback is important and they expect it from supervisors who often are most uncomfortable with the feedback part of the job. In my surveys of class members on what aspect of the job they hated most, "talking to team members about performance" was always number one on the list.
I think we're heading for something of a perfect storm here. We have team members who are willing to work hard, but expect feedback. Their boss hates feedback and hasn't received training to help do it even passably well. Result: younger workers looking for somewhere else to work.
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Another great post Wally!
The root cause of people not wanting to move up to supervisory positions lies in the organizational culture. Awful hard to want to be the boss if you've spent the last 10 years feeling sorry for the people ahead of you on the ladder...
If you find folks are turning down promotion, you need to find out why? And guess what? You might not like the answer!
Thanks,
Landon Creasy
http://landoncreasy.wordpress.com/
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You make a good point, Landon. People turning down "promotions" can be symptom of things that need changing. Thanks.
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Wally -
Great post! We've seen the same thing at my company. We've addressed it by "rebranding" the manager's role, and backing it up with better selection and training. It's helped.
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Thanks for sharing that, Dan. I like the idea of accompanying the substantive changes in selection and support with re-branding. And I'm glad it's working.
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Is that true about younger workers not wanting management positions? I mean, point taken about it not being a great job, but isn't it better to supervise than be supervised if you don't have confidence in your supervisor?
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It's important to note that the "don't want to be the boss" finding is based on self-reports by respondents of what they "would" do. We simply don't know yet if this generation will act differently on this issue. Their current position might not stand up to the practical reality you noted or to the lure of greater money and prestige.
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Unfortunately, promotion decisions are often based on self-interest rather than business reasons: See my post, "It actually is personal."
Add lack of training and financial measurement to that mix and the survey results are not surprising.
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Yes, indeed, perceived self-interest does take hold. And it's more likely to happen in the absence of reasonable alternatives to promotion as a way to more money and prestige.
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