My latest research project arose after a conversation I had with Minette Norman, one of the co-authors of The Psychological Safety Playbook.  I had commented that her book would be a great resource for any new manager, since the ability to foster psychological safety was key to managerial success.  When I was first promoted to management, I was given no training at all.  I didn’t really understand what the job entailed, other than the most surface facets of it.  I had to learn the hard way, by making lots of mistakes.  I could have used a book like that thirty years ago.

This line of thinking started me wondering what other things new managers would benefit from knowing.  I decided to contact some good people managers I knew, and ask them this question:  What do you know about managing people now that you wish you had known when you first started out?

My plan was to talk to five or six people and write an article, but the answers I received were so wide-ranging that I knew I’d have to increase my sample size.  I asked my social networks and interviewees to recommend other managers I should speak with.  By the time I was done, I had completed almost forty interviews. I spoke to managers in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region (but mostly North America), and in industries ranging from mining to printing to aerospace (but mostly software). 

One thing I learned right off was how rare it was for new people managers to get any training – almost everyone I spoke to, like me, was just left to figure out the job for themselves.  I put out an informal poll on LinkedIn asking managers if they had received training, and only a tiny minority had.  Confirming this, a friend pointed me to a survey of 3910 managers conducted in the United States by CareerBuilder, in which 58% said that they had received no training at all.

Managing people is a challenging job that requires so-called “soft skills”: active listening, empathy, the ability to foster psychological safety, emotional regulation, communication, conflict resolution, and relationship-building among others.  But managers are rarely selected on the basis of having those skills.  All too often, management positions are given as a reward for unrelated job skills – a promotion for being the best programmer or the best accountant.  This creates a double-whammy of depriving the team of their best individual contributor, while simultaneously creating a manager who may not have the skills for the job – and no training to help acquire them.

Sometimes people don’t even want to become managers, but feel they must because it is the only option open to them to advance their careers.  Two of my interviewees told me that they had been coerced into management.  (“If you don’t take the position, we’re going to have to promote Awful Henry instead”).  Some of my interviewees came to regret becoming managers and found a way to get themselves demoted back into the individual contributor job they loved.

After completing my interviews, I analysed all the transcripts, coming up with almost 100 answers to the “what do you wish you had known” question, then tried to map them out in a few different ways.  What was most striking to me in my analysis was the gaps.  No one told me that they wished they had known more about budgeting or planning or legal acumen or risk management or salary negotiation.  What these managers wished they had known when they started was how to create healthy relationships –with their staff, with the team as a whole, with their peers, with their bosses, with job candidates, and with themselves.  And one more thing:  many wished that they had really understood what management actually entailed, because their preconceived notions were wrong.

If I were to build chapter headings for my data, they would look like this:

Chapter 1:  Management Misconceptions:  Everything television told you about being a manager was wrong

Chapter 2:  Manager mental health – you don't have to hold up the world

Chapter 3:  Building great relationships with your staff (individually) including giving feedback

Chapter 4:  Setting up your team for success with trust, clarity and psychological safety

Chapter 5:  Understanding that everyone on your team is different

Chapter 6:  Resilience:  Everything changes and that’s okay

I'm going to dig into each of these items in future articles, and share more of what managers told me.

The vital importance of people skills (also called "soft skills" or "emotional intelligence") for managers is not a new idea.  Business researchers have been publishing papers on this for decades, and there have been any number of business books on the topic, and yet these skills are not valued as they should be.  This is in part because they are harder to quantify, but also because emotional/relationship skills are coded feminine in western culture.  (This may also explain why the 2015 State of the American Manager report by Gallup, a study of 2.5 million manager-led teams, found that female managers were better on average at driving engagement in their teams.)  In some toxic organizations these kinds of skills are seen as a weakness that allows employees to take advantage.

Since these “relationship skills” are not valued, there is no training in them for new managers, and they are not considered when senior staff are figuring out which managers to promote to higher roles.  If senior leaders took the simple step of observing relationship skill outcomes – say, by measuring the psychological safety and engagement in a manager’s team – it might stop some terrible managers from being promoted to levels where they can do a lot more damage.

Luckily, even without training, many people rise to the challenge, pick up the skills they need along the way with help from books, peers, mentors, and hard experience, and become excellent managers.  But businesses don't make it easy for them.

Many companies are already taking steps to break the systems that lead to poor candidates being promoted.  One tactic is the creation of parallel management and technical career tracks.  These tracks allow a skilled individual contributor to move up to positions of greater impact and influence in their existing roles, without having to become a manager.  Companies with parallel career tracks don’t have to convert their best technical people into potentially lousy managers.  Instead, they can reward their high performers with more responsibility and pay, and find people with the right skills and desire for management roles.  And – hopefully – support those potential and new managers with training, rather than leaving them to figure the job out by themselves.

More from John  (or follow his RSS Feed )

Psychological Safety Gaps - How leaders are getting it wrong

How do I know if my team is Psychologically Safe? - This scorecard might be for you

Toxic Legacy - Why losing your toxic employees is only the first step

Why don't people participate in meetings?    or, Why can't I get a word in edgewise?

Holding a Mirror to Corporate Values - Figuring out what the actual core values of your company are

Whose Opinion Matters? - How culture can make or break your decision making

Micromanagement and Psychological Safety - How a toxic management style impacts team health

The Authentic Team - The problem with bringing your whole self to work

Five Feedback Fails - When your feedback style needs feedback