5 Challenges New Managers Face and How to Overcome Them
Video transcript included for your convenience.
We have identified 5. We call them the 5 fatal flaws of management which is more than just an alliteration but what we found is regardless of whether you’re a franchise owner, a sales or marketing leader, or business owner, maybe you’re a supervisor anyone who manages – all managers have these 5 fatal flaws.
Let me highlight them for you.
#1- Unclear or inconsistent communication
#2 – Failure to manage and acknowledge change
#3 – Not assessing the readiness level of your team members or having the managerial courage to take corrective action
#4 – Failure to set clear goals and expectations
#5 – Poor time management.
Now whenever I do speaking engagements or consulting engagements and I ask by a show of hands, how many of those are alive and well in your organization? Hands go up.
We found most of the time people who go into management don’t go into management because they demonstrated skill or expressed an interest (in management). They were good at their job and then they got promoted into this role or they were good at a lower-level corporate job and they bought a franchise. It doesn’t matter, how they got there. What we have to really understand is: if I’m going to be successful, I’ve got to understand how to communicate with my team and that includes listening, not just being able to talk; it includes all the different forms of communication: email, phone calls, face-to-face, webinars, etc.
When I look at change, the only thing that’s constant today in business is change and what you see is there are reasons why people don’t accept change. They just try to cover their eyes and cover their ears and hope it goes away. Well it’s not. And hope is not a strategy.
We have to be able to have people embrace change and lead their team through it.
Another key is assessing readiness level. Readiness is made up 2 things: skill and will. Does your employee know how and do they want to? Want to is far more important than know how because you can train them on the know how.
We’ve created a variety of programs and templates in all types of delivery methods to help managers reach their full potential. The way they reach their full potential is being able to create and optimize their own management process because it is a process; it’s not just a wake up and see how things go.
You need a process that is repeatable, consistent, treats everyone fairly (not equally but fairly) and where the team understands what’s going on so that you’re now able to manage your team effectively.
To manage your team effectively they have to reach their full potential.
Here’s an example that’s a good one the end with – a lot of companies give goals from the top down. What I’ve always like to be able to do is to have goals work from the bottom up so if I’m going to manage a sales team, I’d ask each person:
How much do you want to earn this year?
How much do you have to sell to make sure you earn that?
First thing I want to know is do they understand the comp plan and do they know how to leverage it?
When you roll up all the responses, in 35 years of sales management as well as client management, I’ve yet to have that number not be at least 20% more than the business needs to be successful.
It’s a bottom up approach.
If you want to be successful in business today you have to avoid these 5 fatal flaws in management.
