The Risks of Not Training Your People Managers
The importance of training your people managers should seem obvious. And yet, a recent survey shows that 1 in 4 managers have never actually received management training. The number who are trained regularly is even smaller. When managers lack the confidence and skills to lead, it negatively impacts them, their team, and colleagues. Not to mention your business, and your customers! Here are some of the risks that not training your people managers has across your company.
Risks for Managers
The people harmed most by a lack of training are your managers themselves. Without training, your people managers will find themselves completely out of their depth. They may avoid personnel issues because they lack confidence in their ability to solve them.
This is especially true for those who have recently been promoted. They need to navigate the discomfort of managing friends and colleagues they’ve been working alongside for years. New managers need effective training to be able to handle these dynamics.
Without this training, they will bury their heads in the sand. Performance issues will be ignored, in the hope that they will disappear. They will struggle to delegate tasks to their team - so they'll try and do everything themselves.
This kind of stress also has a huge personal impact. They will become completely overwhelmed and burnt out trying to juggle so many tasks at once.
All because they weren't given the knowledge they needed to perform their duties. The worst-case scenario here? Your people managers will make mistakes, and you will continuously lose staff – both your managers and their employees.
Risks for Employees
It isn’t just your people managers themselves that will suffer from a lack of training.
The repercussions on their team will be huge.We all know the challenge of working with a manager who doesn’t motivate or inspire you. A manager with no training will struggle to communicate with their team or provide feedback.
The old saying applies:
“People don’t leave jobs – they leave managers”
Think again about delegation. If employees aren’t trusted with their responsibilities, how can they trust that their manager is committed to their professional development?
The lack of trust goes both ways. By not training your people managers, more of your staff become disengaged, unhappy, and less productive.
All this frustration, tension, and upset leads to high levels of stress, absence, and turnover. Three things any successful business does not want to be known for!
