Leadership Management International - Bad bosses hold back the future according to the ILM

The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) recently released research showing that almost 400,000 18 to 24 year old workers feel that their manager is holding them back, and over a quarter (27%) of them said they would leave if poor management continued.

Looking at the development of future potential, the report also reveals that people who have negative experiences of managers are half as likely to want to become managers in the future compared to those who get on well with their managers. Kim Parish, Chief Executive of the ILM, points out ‘It’s imperative that we develop our young talent because they have no qualms about moving on. Young people will leave organisations if they experience poor management and that, combined with the increasing trend for portfolio careers, means that businesses risk losing the talent they have put so much time, money and effort into recruiting and developing.’

This is not a new development though, as a little bit of searching will reveal. A YouGov survey of 1700 adults, commissioned by the government-funded organisation Investors in People, recently stated that ‘employees want managers to do more to help them’, and in 2001, a study of some 20,000 exit interviews revealed that the number one reason for people leaving jobs was “poor supervisory behaviour”. It’s all about bad bosses and the cost to the companies suffering from this effect is phenomenal.

Consider the cost of recruitment – the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) calculated that the direct and indirect costs of recruitment are over £4K for professionals and over £5K for managers, but this could be just the tip of the iceberg. A study by an online recruitment company suggested that the actual cost of getting a graduate recruit into your business could be as much as £30K! Couple this with the fact that poorly supported employees are unlikely to be performing to their potential, and that any knowledge they bring will often leave with them if they decide to move on, and the resulting figure does not even bear thinking about!

The solution to this enormous money pit is a simple one though – make the managers better! Recruitment costs are only an issue if you need to recruit, and productivity challenges are alleviated to a large degree with a happier, better managed, more motivated workforce.

Successful leaders are made, not born. We learn from our own experiences, so if we’ve suffered poor management in the past, we’re more likely to learn that style than to have a more positive approach. The key to developing leaders and managers is often as simple as helping them to understand that their success relies on working with people to get the results they need.
Learning how to exercise authority, for example, is a big change for some people; especially if they’ve been promoted from within. Of course, managers are often promoted because they are exceptional at what they were doing (I.e. the best salesperson becomes the next manager), leading to a gulf between skills and requirements which needs to be bridged to enable top performance. ‘Just calling someone a manager – promoting them to perform a management role – is not enough. To succeed in that role they need the skills to engage, motivate and develop their staff.’ says Parish.

Delegation is another key challenge. The art of giving responsibility and authority to complete a task – is often seen as a dark art and feared accordingly. If managers don’t learn how to delegate they keep tasks to themselves leading to an underperforming, de-motivated team with little opportunity for team members to feel valued, or to perform to their potential. Helping people to understand the benefits of delegation, for both the manager and the report, can yield huge dividends.

We must always remember that the people in our organisations are a key ingredient, and we have a responsibility to our organisations to ensure they are adequately prepared for the jobs we are asking them to do. Developing people takes time and costs money, but project the costs now against the costs of an unproductive workforce and higher staff turnover in the future, and the cost of helping people achieve more pales in significance.

Mark Bell - LMI

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