In the business world, the word manager is often associated with the idea of promotion or career advancement. It’s the position to which we aspire after having steadily risen through the ranks; it is a clear symbol of professional success. But being a manager is more than just a title or a sign of recognition or reward. These days the scope of the responsibilities associated with managers is becoming increasingly vague and the role just seems more and more misunderstood and undervalued. The consequences of this are dangerous to both managers and their staff. Let’s take a look back over the reality of the profession of manager and how its performance can be rationally measured.
Manager is a genuine profession not the fulfilment of an ambition
Often seen as the crowning glory of a prestigious career, the manager role has now become a kind of ‘well-deserved reward’ rather than a true profession in itself. Yet other professions are just as essential to the correct running of a business, take experts as an example. But there is no escaping the fact that experts are far less well paid or respected than managers. This unbalance can be explained by the fact that the manager’s role is quite simply misunderstood.
By continually treating the manager position as the crowning glory of an employee’s career within a company, this essential profession has become transformed and separated from its true meaning. In the end what we get is an incorrect definition of the manager role, how management performance should be evaluated and the profiles that are actually selected for the role. Now that businesses must reinvent the role of the manager, it is important to define precisely what their missions should and should not be.
Everything a manager should not be
It is true that the manager role should be understood in terms of its relationship to the staff under its responsibility, but it is very dangerous for companies to consider this role as being no more than that of a referee. Far too often, companies expect managers to simply function as a watchdog for the employees under their guidance. As a result we see far too many managers reduced to handing tasks out to their team members, checking the quality of their work, disciplining the bad eggs and rewarding those that meet their objectives. This ‘project manager’ profile, somewhat like a works foreman of old, is the complete opposite of the skills and qualities truly expected of a manager.
The 3 fundamental qualities of a real manager
They are their team’s guide; responsible for the successful integration of staff into the company as well as the development of their careers, and for this a manager must possess three essential qualities:
1. Encourage a feeling of belonging amongst staff
One of the characteristics of a good manager is the ability to unite their staff around a shared project and the company’s general objectives. To manage successfully it is essential to be able to receive new recruits and create working conditions in which staff will want to stay and thus keep staff turnover under control. The employees under their responsibility must develop a feeling of belonging to a group, a project and a larger objective in which they will play an essential role. Feeding the firm belief that their role goes well beyond mere economic objectives will help them to feel connected to their missions. The manager’s primary mission should therefore be to create and strengthen team cohesion and consolidate the company culture.
2. Boost team pride
Successfully maintaining their team’s feeling of belonging and pride will come from the manager’s human qualities. These soft skills will have a major impact on staff well-being in the workplace as well as their determination to achieve the level of performance they all want to reach. Pride is a powerful emotion that drives employees to invest in their work and makes them want to progress and acquire new skills. Pride may not be as popular as salaries as the driving force for motivation but, as soon as it pervades the team, it allows the manager to work on the fundamental subjects that need to be improved and opens up access to great potential. Without pride, employees are far less stimulated and motivated to take on challenges.
3. Manage staff skill development
In addition to these two human qualities, a manager must be able to support their staff through their career development by facilitating skill acquisition. Their capacities must include being able to set up the most suited strategies for each individual, getting the best out of each profile and effectively resolving weaknesses. Employees must feel supported and see real advances in their career, skills and progress within the company. By operating on the same level as each of their team-members, a manager becomes a kind of teacher who guides staff towards the achievement of shared and individual objectives and therefore contributes to their professional fulfilment.
Incentive compensation for managers: choosing the right KPI
Incentive compensation for managers is rarely based on the most suited KPIs. In reality, the selected performance indicators have more to do with the profile of their team than that of the manager in question. However, choosing the right KPIs would allow the definition of the manager’s incentive compensation to focus on the manager’s performance and not that of their team.
Rewarding a manager for the success of their team is nonsense when you consider the realities of the job. This approach is likely to encourage the manager to do the work themselves rather than guide their staff towards achieving and exceeding their defined objectives. And in addition to leading them away from their primary mission, such KPI selections make no sense since the employees will already be receiving their own incentive compensation for the same achievements.
In reality, KPIs should be selected in terms of the fundamental qualities that each manager needs to possess. A manager will fail in their mission if they cannot successfully integrate their staff into the company, help them to develop a sense of pride in their know-how and increase their skills. Because this would mean that the achievement and repetition of staff performance is impossible.
Evidently, the selected evaluation criteria need to be measurable. They need to be appreciated in the light of internal satisfaction survey results, skill reference listings and other tools that can be used as internal evaluation scales. If correctly calibrated, these KPIs will be able to contribute to a perfectly adapted incentive compensation for this valuable profession.
A manager is not an assessor, coach or project manager, their main job is to guarantee the job satisfaction, team cohesion and overall performance of their staff. By redefining this profession, that has unfortunately become very nebulous in recent times, using appropriate performance criteria the company will be able to contribute to the well-being of its staff, strengthen overall performance and make the manager role attractive once more.
