It is a common occurrence that I hear from business owners that they feel disappointed about their managers. That many times they have to follow up or intervene as their managers do not really take fully responsibility of what needs to be done. Many times this is manifested by having managers and their teams show inconsistency in current performance and in meeting business goals and lack of confidence by the manager in their own abilities and his or her ability in leading their team to success. Why is this?

Research keeps indicating that the reasons for the failure of managers are grounded in the so called leadership skills. Let me try to be more specific.

• Lack Self-Awareness: Coupling research with what I see on the ground from my daily interaction with various businesses, managers are not struggling because they lack the right technical skills. They fail as way too frequently they are unaware of their own strengths. They lack self-awareness. Self awareness i.e. knowing who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are is the top skill in emotional intelligence. When such self-awareness is missing we then get the classical signs of lack of self-confidence and of wanting to control everything creating huge inefficiency. Many times the culture generated in that team becomes toxic. Hence why such managers become defensive in response to constructive feedback and prefer not to delegate tasks, even when someone from the team has the experience, skills and time to do a better job. They also end up needing to seek approval from business owners or seniors for decisions they should be able to make independently.

• Lack of Empathy: The value of manager-led empathy cannot be overstated, and it has become even more important in recent years. Managers are responsible to ensure that they build an empathetic team environment. Research keeps indicating that a lack of team empathy increases the risk of manager failure by 3.7 times. A culture of empathy is important as this is a two-way street. Empathy is not only needed from the manager towards the team members but also the other way round. Many times I see managers suffering from not investing in building this empathy culture as then team members either show unwillingness or inability to adjust to their manager’s working style or team members feel that the responsibility to get the job done and achieve team goals rests solely with the manager.

• Unproductive manager-employee relationships
  Research keeps showing that team members value having interactions with their managers as long as they can derive value from it. To do so things have to be structured. Hence having scheduled meetings is better than constant adhoc & unplanned interactions. They are prefer being guided but then given the space to drive certain interactions rather than always operating in a situation where the manager is always setting the agenda and leading conversations. Further, the focus would better be on what output was achieved rather than how that output was achieved.

• When Goals are not clear for all
  Employees today are inundated with change. Disruptions are the order of the day. This means that a managers role, within such a turbulent background, is extremely important in helping the team align work to broader organisational or individual career goals. When this alignment does not happen the results are that employee goals that are unambitious or inappropriate for their level and many times employees end not knowing exactly where they and the organisation are heading.

In the upcoming Family Business Conference, we will share results of extensive research done amongst 160 different family business. One of the areas this research touched upon is the perspective these family business have on skills training. The 2nd most important element that was rated by such family businesses was that “Training for our employees on Interpersonal Skills related to Leadership, Communications and Teamwork is as important, if not more important, than technical skills training”. However we also found some 10% of family businesses that do not believe this to be important. Click HERE to register for this conference. It will be insightful and worth your time as a family business owner and leader.