Managers Need Training Also

If you follow my blog, you know I beat the drum of training, training, and more training. Adequately trained managers make for excellent managers. First, they will love what they do on a day-to-day basis and secondly, they will improve the bottom line of the organization.

Times are tight right now. When a company’s budget gets tight, one of the first things to get cut is training. Executives rarely see the value in ensuring their employees have the most up-to-date information and know the latest techniques. What would happen if a company’s managers were not properly trained to manage their employees? This would cause chaos throughout the entire company.

When I speak of training, I’m not only talking about ensuring that rank-and-file employees are trained. I’m talking about everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the cook in the kitchen or the person working in the mailroom. No one is above learning something new. If we aren’t constantly learning then we aren’t improving ourselves.

Just because someone has the title of “Manager” doesn’t mean they can manage people. The fact that many managers lack the adequate skills to manage people is a reflection on upper management. Does it reflect upper management’s attitude towards training or their attitude towards promoting and/or hiring people to managerial positions? Regardless, the outcome is the same.

Hiring/promoting managers that lack the adequate skills to perform their duties says that executives have a misguided perception of managers. As I stated earlier, I understand that budgets are tight right now. However, training managers is more than worth its weight in gold – managers are the glue that hold an organization together.

Managers are responsible for communicating information from the executive level down to the employees. They are also responsible for communicating the needs of the employees to the executive level. They are called mid-level managers because they are in the middle of the organization. Managers are as important to an organization as the ice cream is to an ice cream sandwich. Without the ice cream in the middle it’s not a sandwich. This is how vital managers are in every organization.

Few fully grasp the enormous responsibility a manager has. Here is a list of some of the skills a manager should possess: time management, ability to delegate, good communication (verbal and written), decision-making, and leadership. This list of managerial skills provides more skills and an explanation on the importance of each skill.

Executives should not discount the importance of ensuring mid-level managers have all the tools they need to be superb managers. Once again, an ice cream sandwich without the ice cream isn’t an ice cream sandwich. Likewise, an organization without properly trained managers is ineffective and unproductive.