Managing Managers
Kiranmayee P
Performance Appraisal - Workshop
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Coverage
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Strategies to manage your managers
 Elements of Management
 The Learning Curve
 Leadership Skills
 Measuring your Managers
 Conflict Management
 Engaging your Managers
 Situational Management
 Failure or Success
Performance Appraisal - Workshop
Going Forward.
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Abstract
Managing Managers
"Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet."—
Henry Mintzber, McGill University.
People are promoted into the management pipeline due to many factors, but is the
“rite to passage” easy and effective. The management pipeline is a mixed
cauldron today. Are we acquiring skills as we move up the pipeline or we missing
them while traversing the passages? Managing managers is very similar to
managing anyone else-building a great team, aligning with goals and
expectations, monitoring and engaging the employees. The key difference is that
now you are overseeing management as opposed to overseeing individual
contribution. This learning session will highlight the concept of managing
managers; how to manage the manager’s management, engaging your managers
and situational management.
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A Captain’s story
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Introduction
70-80% - Workforce reports to a frontline manager
- The rest report upward
The Ken Blanchard Companies found that managers who
are effective at employee management produce better
business results, including:
1. 50% less staff turnover
2. 10 to 30% higher customer satisfaction ratings
3. 40% higher employee commitment ratings
4. 200% higher net profits
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Introduction
Managing individual contributors is the common path to
management.
You get promoted, you are managing managers instead of
managing individual contributors.
Some things remain the same, but your focus shifts from
day-to-day activities to the future vision.
Is the transition
easy?
there are no easy answers or
techniques that will make you
successful.
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Strategies to manage your managers
 Set the guidelines to embrace the vision, mission, and
core beliefs and values
 Set short term goals and long term goals
 Set straight-forward and measurable goals (SMART)
aligning to the business organization
 Document the details and communicate
 Create an environment
for innovation and
creativity
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Strategies to manage your managers
 Emphasize their role play with a clear image as the
business succeeds
 Involve them in strategic planning
 Make them accountable for
strategy implementation and
execution
 Training towards contribution
to long level thinking and
planning
 Positive attitude
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Elements of Management
 Empower your managers to make decisions
 Do not micromanage
 Trust and not control
 Don’t Assume
 Ask about their expectations
and needs
 Make work easy
 Reward Failure,
Punish Inaction
 Focus on results
 “Walk the Talk” and model
good practices
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The Learning Curve
 For managers to succeed,
they need time to learn
 Once the learning is complete
 they need to be held
responsible and accountable
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Leadership Skills
 Managing your managers requires good leadership
skills
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Leadership Skills
Managing – individuals
Leading – managers
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Measuring your managers
 Assess qualitative measures of skills like business
development, strategic thinking, and leadership
 Set parameters for authority and responsibility
 Measure progress to plan and results
 achieving target revenues (if any) ?
 are your managers operating on budget ?
 engaging their staff and empowering them ?
 Emphasize on accountability at all levels
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Measuring your managers
 Empowerment and Accountability are keys to performance –
success and failures
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Measuring your managers
 Get to know your managers teams
 3600 feedback
 Feedback as an ongoing
occurrence
 Skip-level meetings with team
members
 Influence others – both up (your leaders), across
(your peers), and down (your managers and their
teams)
 Telltale signs of bad management, such as missed
deadlines or unusually high absenteeism or turnover
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Measuring your managers
 Appreciate managers milestones
 Robust Management Information
System
 Regular high-level status reports
 Should not be a chore and chaos
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Measuring your managers
 Set bi-weekly meetings with your managers as a team –
enables sharing situational experiences and BKMs
 Supplement with quarterly meetings – bigger picture of
budget, product development, team development, longrange planning
 Delegate – growth paths
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Conflict Management
 Be a coach and not a referee- facilitate problem-solving
 Use challenges or conflicts in the team to coach
managers
 How to deal with conflict
 Personally
 Professionally
 Productively
 Be transparent when dealing with conflicts
 Coach and mentor them to create an engaged and highperforming work force
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Engaging your managers
The Corporate Leadership Council™ - conducts an
employee engagement survey
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Situational Management
Situation 1: A manager loads an employee with tasks that
aren’t a part of the work description
Katharyn (disclaimer: no resemblance to any person, the main
character in this very real situation) had a team of 8 people
with varied skills set and potential to complete a given task.
The team was like a well-oiled machine and things were very
smooth. The energy levels were very high, the enthusiasm was
great. A new project was assigned to this team. Katharyn at
best of times was great in taking up new projects and see them
to closure but she had too many things to handle. She wanted
to delegate this new project to one of the team members and
she chose Jonathan.
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Contd.
Situational Management
Situation 1: A manager loads an employee with tasks that
aren’t a part of the work description
Why did she choose him and what were her reasons? He was a
very good team player and one of the best in the job but this
particular project was not a part of his expertise. He was piled
with this project and more. He strived to complete the initial
tasks but always stumbled; his confidence levels started seeing
a dip, he felt alienated with the rest of the team (where he saw
acceptance before, now he felt censure, or was it his
perception?), he was not comfortable in his own skin, he was
feeling overwhelmed and could not sustain the interest in the
job. The team dynamics were changing, the rest of the team
saw favoritism while Katharyn saw potential, career growth of
an individual.
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Situational Management
Situation 1: A manager loads an employee with tasks
that aren’t a part of the work description
In one of the status meetings with her boss, Katharyn
spoke about her team and its dynamics; her boss walked
her through the analysis of the situation without her
realizing it and found a solution to the problem. Katharyn
now assigned herself as the project lead and let Jonathan
do what he does best. It should be said that it took a lot of
time for the team to get back their worth in themselves.
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Failure or Success
Without these stepping stones, it won’t matter how or
who you manage
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Going Forward…
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• Email – [email protected]
• LinkedIn – [email protected]
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Thank You
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