Your Frontline Managers Need These Critical Skills

41 North Business School

Your Frontline Managers Need These Critical Skills

Frontline managers are the managerial glue of a business, responsible for many critical day-to-day operations. They’re often an organization’s largest population of leaders.

They’re the supervisors of individual contributors, and may be first-level or first-time managers, often newly promoted into their first leadership role. Or, they’re functional leaders who don’t have any formal direct reports, but are responsible for the work of others through influence. Such leaders may also be hoping or preparing to move into a first-level manager role in the future.

They’re also usually the least experienced tier of managers in a company.

Organizations face big challenges when trying to make these managers more effective. And the price of an ineffective manager can be very high and pervasive. A survey on what contributes to “bad days at work” showed these 5 factors as the top reasons for employees having a bad day:

A lack of help and support from my boss (40%)
Negative co-workers (39%)
Lack of praise or recognition for the work I do (37%)
Uncertainty about the workplace’s vision or strategy (37%)
Busy-ness or high workload (36%)

All 5 factors are almost entirely a function of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the immediate manager.

And with the ever-flattening digital world, frontline managers now have greater responsibility than ever before. Since these frontline managers may go on to middle- and even upper-management jobs, it’s little wonder that 50% of all managers in organizations are rated as ineffective.

What Do Frontline Managers Need to Succeed?

Our research has found that in order to succeed, frontline managers must possess 6 key skills:

Self-awareness: Managers who remain aware of their strengths and preferences and who understand their own weaknesses, quirks, and development needs are better equipped to make day-to-day decisions and interact effectively with others who have different personalities.
Learning agility: Seeking out diverse experiences, quickly applying lessons learned to new challenges, and being able to integrate experiences and adapt to the environment allows managers to swiftly recognize, analyze, and address new problems.
Communication skills: Skilled managers can listen, speak, and write clearly and consistently, communicating for maximum impact with people at all levels in the organization, including team members, superiors, peers, and others. It’s especially important to effectively communicate goals and expectations.
Political savvy: Relating well to people, developing strong working relationships with managers and superiors, managing internal stakeholders, and navigating organizational politics to achieve goals is a key competency for managers.
Motivating others: The most successful managers are able to inspire commitment, recognize and reward the contributions of others, and guide direct reports to complete work, especially when goals are unclear. This may include motivating others to exceed expectations or put in extra effort — without monetary incentives.
Influencing outcomes: Effective managers are able to accomplish goals by affecting the actions, decisions, and thinking of others, persuading them effectively to gain cooperation and get things done to achieve desired outcomes.

Frontline managers are often scattered across multiple locations, so organizations have traditionally been forced to compromise between quality, cost, and flexibility when considering leadership development solutions for this large audience. Digital solutions are the obvious choice to develop new managers because they are cost-effective, and they can be engaging and impactful, too.

Source: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/your-frontline-managers-need-these-6-skills

41 North Business School