The Morale Funnel
In Response to “The Lost Art of Management”
I have a response to the article, The Lost Art of Management by Alex Chuang. When I read this article I said YAY!!! to myself. I have so often in the past been at the place that thinks if you are good at your job, you should be promoted and you will be good at managing others who are in that same job.
And like Alex Chuang, I think that’s a fallacy. It’s not a good assumption to make, and the risks to your business are very high.
But that leaves companies with some significant problems to solve:
• What career growth can they provide to those who are great at their jobs but terrible at managing others?
• Should it be a requirement that everyone who wants to get promoted in an organization has to become good at leading? (I’ve seen companies answer yes to this question and utterly fail because they weren’t prepared to also give those people the tools they needed to succeed. Answer carefully for your company.)
• How will they find the people who are great managers? Or how will they develop those people?
I also agree with Alex’s list of qualities that a good manager/leader possesses, though I would add a #7 and #8:
7. Your job is not to be a friend to your employees. Your job is to empower and enable your employees to achieve their goals. This means that sometimes you will have to challenge them to leave their comfort zone, and it means that sometimes they will grumble about that. The ones who truly want to succeed, however, will appreciate that you challenge them and enjoy the accomplishments you push them toward.
8. Not everyone is going to want to get promoted. Some of your employees will want to find their comfort zone and hunker down. These are the employees who stay in the same position for a long time. You find their strengths — usually that they’ve seen a LOT of what comes with the position they are in — and you find a way to get them to share that knowledge with the newer employees who come into the position. You find a way to give them mentorship roles, because they have a ton of experience to offer.
So, what do you do with a manager who isn’t effective? Can you change their behavior, once you’ve identified that they are lowering morale in your company?
Can you afford to ignore the problem?
Develop great leaders within your company, and demand that those who are already in leadership positions are effective. It should be approached like any other business objective, though it often gets de-prioritized because it isn’t attributed to direct revenue. How much time does your company spend analyzing sales / customer funnels to grow business? Does your company also spend time and effort considering a Morale Funnel? (Never heard of it? I may have just made it up. Tell all your friends.)
Where in your sales funnel does high morale on your team help you convert people who are aware of your company into to loyal, engaged customers? If you don’t know, find out. Soon.
