Redefining Role of Corporate Business Managers:

Part Coach-Part Mentor

Sunday, 12 June 2011

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Synopsis: Role of corporate business managers is challenging; full of stress, ups and downs but it can be rewarding too if you have right people management skills. Various researches and surveys show us that 85% of people fail not because they don't have the knowledge or technical skills but because they lack people management skills. In an era of knowledge work force and fast pace of change continuous learning environment is a necessity hence role of corporate managers also double up as a part coach and part mentor.
Author: Dharmendra Gupta In continuation of earlier blog this time I decided to take a closer look at the people management skills of our todays corporate managers and pen down my thoughts on what skills a corporate manager must have. The skills mentioned in this blog are not necessarily possessed by me but they are the one which I think are important and I strive to achieve them. In my opinion and understanding irrespective of functional domain todays corporate manager should:

1.

FOSTER AN ENVIRONMENT OF COMPLIMENTARY SKILL DEVELOPMENT

The skill of Mentoring, Coaching and harboring sustainable continuous learning environment for his team is a must for corporate managers. Fostering an environment of complementary skills development not the competing skill development is critical to his own growth. Obviously this demand puts up pressure of focused self learning and developing the insight into the skills gaps of the self and team, and areas of work for improvement for the self and the team.

2.

CREATE COLLABORATIVE TEAMS; COLLABORATION IS EVERYTHING

The most important barriers of team success is lack of mutual trust which results in depleted or no collaboration. Primary role of corporate managers is to create conditions of mutual trust within team members with the help of transparency of
Coaching Skills a must for corporate Managers

information availability and clear accountabilities. This mutual trust should be a long lasting trust and should not diminish as soon as you come out from the situation frame. Any ambiguity in accountabilities and environment of low trust will push many processes which are undefined slip in the white spaces between individuals of team.

3. DECIDE PREEMPTIVE CLEAR CUT GOALS

Creating a mechanism on deciding what is important and what are the problems and gain true heartfelt agreement from stakeholders is another soft skill required by corporate managers. Set up clear cut Goals and milestones for the team to achieve and role of individuals to achieve the same. (Refer to Presentation on Setting up Goals). Obviously when you try to gain agreement on range of issues for deciding what is important there will be some disagreement too. But how your team handles disagreements

gives you an idea of trust level and culture of the team. Without this trust even smaller issues will become do or die questions and with trust even grave questions will be solved without any great concerns.

4.

CONTINUOUSLY STRIVE TO IMPROVE SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES

Create basic stability and then build effective systems and processes. Strive continuously to improve systems and processes. Same approach and same processes will lead to same identical results. You cannot expect a different result from the same approach and same process

5.

ALIGN, SUSTAIN AND E QUIP

Align, Sustain and equip his reporting team. Once you have your defined goals in
Continuous Learning is a necessity

place there must be a broad alignment in your team about the ways to reach them and on in-between milestones. Alignment means common understanding of their own role in achieving the same. The second would be establishing clear methods of tracking implementation & measurement of efforts. Continuous push and guidance to find out what is stopping team and individuals to move forward, praising timely for good work, timely actions and making sure that team has all the required support and resources it needs to get success is also the prime responsibility of a corporate manager.

6.

PRE-EMPT CONFLICT THROUGH RESOLUTION

The ability to manage temperaments and conflicts in a productive manner and preventing larger conflicts in the team. Conflicts when well managed and within the limits of professional disagreement lead to positive pressure development in the team and can generate more creative ideas then in conflict free passive teams. I have always maintained in my meetings that if there is no disagreement, questions or clarifications sought by your presentation audience than you must assume in yourself that you have failed to create engagement on the topic. Conflicts and disagreements actually brings in engagement. So managers should embrace difference of opinions.

7.

LISTEN PROACTIVELY
Allow people to express their point of view. Help them with your intelligent questions to let them express better. Do not interfere and interpret in between from your own approach. Instead help them shape their approach. Instead help them shape their approach. From the above people management related skill the most important is Mentoring, Coaching and harboring sustainable continuous learning environment. But in most of the corporate companies coaching and mentoring the direct reports is one of the least priority action items on corporate managers agenda. In a survey report by Mckinsey released in August 2009

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF FRONTLINE MANAGERS & HOW COMPANIES MANAGE THE FRONTLINE TODAY

Fostering Collaboration is a prime responsibility of Corporate Managers

re-affirmed that 50%-60% managers time is spent on non managerial tasks and 30%-60% on administrative work and meetings and only 10% on coaching and managing others. According to Mckinsey in most corporate the role of managers is limited to relaying information from management to workers. Such managers keep an eye on things, enforce plans and policies, report organizational results and quickly escalate issues or problems. In other words, a frontline manager is meant to communicate decisions, not to make them; to ensure compliance with policies, not to use judgment or discretion and to oversee the implementation of improvements, not to contribute ideas or even implement improvements. Thus making the system less productive, less agile and less profitable.

In most corporate very small amount of time is being spent by corporate managers on value creation work like coaching future mangers and helping their teams to do the work effectively and upgrading systems and processes to avoid errors and increase effectiveness.. Most of their time is spent in administrative tasks, attending meetings, report making, manage things that have gone wrong, and reworking on management.

What should corporate manager must do then?

Take team meetings every day before the start of the day. Use the time to build mutual trust, sharing inspirational videos, informations like industry case studies, whitepapers, technical training videos, presentations and other learning resources. Share stories to drive desired changes in behavior and attitudes, build project collaboration guidelines, develop skills and etiquettes, provide insights in to ongoing projects. Provide hands on training on soft skills like Enterprise information management, computer application skills, internet based applications skills etc. Develop leadership and presentation skills of team members, set collective expectations, create mechanism of tracking team performance and daily priorities. Must praise good works, identify and resolve team problems & develop perspectives etc. I have observed that there is an inherent deep seated unwillingness in people as well as in organization to change. To be successful managers must make their teams mentally ready for acquiring new skills, focus on changing attitudes and bring in desired behavior changes. For this the learning environment need to fit with the nature of work, work styles and capabilities of its team. Without commitment to change and fostering of such learning environment, teams have very little chance to be successful enough and make any significant impact. Its hard to manage and even harder to get the consensus built for such practices inside corporate and execution is a big challenge to put people across the table consistently on time. But believe me its very important to have a daily dose of learning and purpose of the day before the start of the day. Find time to go to each person desk twice a day and ask about the tasks, problems they are facing and collectively brainstorm to solve those problems in close collaboration and in process coach them and practice yourself on how to arrive at solutions. Setup clear goals and objectives for the team to achieve. Build clarity around those goals and align your team towards those goals. Build well thought systems and processes tuned with the new times and ensure continuous improvements in them till they reach a level where it gives desired results. Document your processes clearly and without assumptions. Set clear accountabilities (Key Responsibilities of your team members) and performance measurement and reward system (Key Performance Indicators). Set up a super strong pool of information resources and mechanism to build that up. Information is knowledge and knowledge is empowerment. Empowerment derives actions that bring results and change. Bring the change and manage it well without disturbing the basic stability of the system. Even though the corporate today put lot of stress on training and development but most of the time they organized frequent 1-2 days of full day third party organized learning sessions. These lengthy sessions do not bring the desired results or change in behavior and participants do not retain the knowledge gained they come back to their normal behavior a week or 10 days after such trainings. Hence such training fails to make any impact. Answer to all this is to train corporate managers to become coach and allow them to bring themselves up and focus on team building, skill development and actual work. There are many other things which are expected out of a corporate manager and the above thoughts are focused from team management and people management perspectives in line with my earlier blog on Future Skills and Technologies for Future managers. The degree of importance for people management skill will rise manifold for our future managers. Hence the agendas will not be very different from what is listed above but the degree and speed of implementations and depth of implementation shall change by great extent for our future managers. Looking forward to your suggestions and feedback todays corporate managers. Write to me at dharmendrag.1974@gmail.com Thanks & Regards Dharmendra Gupta Mobile; +91 9958005780 Residence :+91 124 4385493 We cannot do today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow - Nelson Jackson.
Team Meetings are important