• Home |
• About Us |
• Our Clients |
• Our Team |
• Contact Us |
• Testimonials

Is the key to Successful Management just plain old Management Training?

Attending management training courses and seminars to learn about how the likes of well known business and sports personalities from Greg Dyke to Martin Johnson have successfully managed and lead their teams and organisations can be useful. However, they will not necessarily help you to improve your skills and be a successful manager. While a great deal can be learned from others, if you wish to be truly successful then it is equally important to focus on developing and correcting your own weaknesses.

For example, it is probably easier to understand how your own behaviour and approach can demotivate your team and to do something about it, rather than learning a totally new approach, which incidentally might not fit with your natural style. In extreme cases others may see you as ‘faking it’ as your behaviour is not true to yourself.

Frequently managers de-motivate their employees by failing to understand the basics of human motivation. The most common failings are:

• Acting without integrity, by failing to do the things that have been promised.
• Being too aggressive and task orientated, disregarding individuals needs and work-life balance.
• Over controlling peoples work and taking away their personal responsibility.
• Making unfair decisions about work routines, pay and reward.
• Failing to engage people creatively by asking them to do meaningless work.
• Being incomplete or inconsistent in communications.
• Failing to get the involvement of others when making decisions that affect them.
• Continually being in ‘tell’ mode and not listening to others.

The role of management training should be to help managers to understand how their behaviour can de-motivate others, rather than simply showing them new role models to mimic. Management training should provide facilities for constructive feedback, and make room for, informal discussions, and peer coaching to help participants to change their behaviour.