Unlock mid-mgt potential
In their McKinsey August 2020 article, Unlocking the potential of frontline managers, Aaron De Smet, Monica Mcgurk and Marc Vinson present the realities.
🔦 The reality of the front line
To unlock a team’s abilities, a manager at any level must spend a significant amount of time on two activities: helping the team understand the company’s direction and its implications for team members and coaching for performance. Little of either occurs on the front line today. Across industries, frontline managers spend 30 to 60 percent of their time on administrative work and meetings, and 10 to 50 percent on nonmanagerial tasks. They spend only 10 to 40 percent actually managing frontline employees by, for example, coaching them directly.
👌 Time better spent
At best-practice companies, frontline managers allocate 60 to 70 percent of their time to the floor, much of it in high-quality individual coaching. Such companies also empower their managers to make decisions and act on opportunities. The bottom-line benefit is significant, but to obtain it companies must fundamentally redefine what they expect from frontline managers and redesign the work that those managers and their subordinates do.
🌈In my 21 years of coaching executives, I recommend how simply leaders can empower their managers to coach their people.
- Clarify your expectations that they need to coach their people. Possibly set targets.
- Help them develop their coaching skills. They don’t need to get certified on everything. Instead provide focus on the 2 most important coaching skills and make it simple, effective and focused.
- How to give effective feedback
- Delegate
- Measure progress vs the set targets
Unlock your mid managers and their people’s potential.
