Ask Andi: We have a manager struggling to get a new employee up to speed. We may fail this new employee by letting the manager make training mistakes at the employee’s expense. But we don’t want to step in and undercut his authority. What should we do? P.S. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen new employees under this manager fail.
Thoughts of the day: So you’re struggling to manage the manager? Managers manage so let them manage. Turnover due to a struggling manager can be costly. Many managers lack training on how to make the transition to management. Identify the kinds of mistakes your manager is making. Set up a structure to work with the manager on what she has to learn.
Manager struggling to manage
Make sure both you and the manager recognize the cost of turnover. Training eats up profits as the manager is diverted from making her full contribution while the employee learns the job, does things inefficiently, and makes mistakes that have to be corrected. Repeating training basics with another employee, because the last one didn’t cut it, just prolongs the agony.
One set of mistakes that early-stage managers make is to set the bar too high – expecting too much too soon, and not delegating enough. These mistakes go hand in hand. The employee is asked to do something, makes a mistake, and the manager, who wasn’t comfortable delegating, pulls back and stops delegating.
Teach your struggling manager that something less than perfection is okay! Focus on making progress.
- mistakes are okay – it’s how people learn.
- stay out of the problem and let the employee fix the mess that he or she just created – so that more learning takes place.
- teach each employee it’s not okay to keep repeating mistakes – progress has to be made.
Set up a structure to keep managers on track
Discuss with the manager that there’s a difference between being someone’s friend and being their manager. It can be a tricky balance for inexperienced managers. They need to know about what motivates the people working for them, without getting caught up in the personal drama.
Check on the manager’s basic communication skills. Managers need to be able to provide corrective feedback in a way that the employee can hear it and act upon it.
Set up a structure for the manager:
- training plan for the employee to follow: expectations for the new employee, what the employee should be asked to do, and how fast should he/she should learn to do new things.
- weekly reviews between manager and new employee: what went right, what went wrong, what to try next.
- the weekly meeting between you and the manager: what the employee did well, where improvement is needed. Ask for facts and specific examples. Agree on what to do next.
Why struggling managers fail
Hearing what is happening in the manager-employee meeting can be crucial to evaluating where training problems may be coming from. Periodically sit in on meetings the manager is having with her new employee. Just be careful not to get in the way, or appear to take over from the manager. If you have things to add, make notes and share them afterward with the manager – don’t interrupt during the meeting with the employee.
Talk with your manager about her responsibility for insuring the employee succeeds. She can have one hiring failure, maybe a second one. But if employees are failing time after time, that’s probably the manager’s problem, not the employees’. That’s something the manager has to fix if she wants to continue to grow in your company.
Suggest classes and books. Layout a training plan for the manager. Make it clear she has as much to learn as the new employee does, in order for both of them to succeed.
