The Number One Barrier to Effective Talent Management

The Number One Barrier to Effective Talent Management
from the Turning Good People Into Top Talent blog series

alignment graphic

Talent Management is a management responsibility and not just a new name for HR.  I have cited a number of Gallup surveys that exposes the primary barrier that prevents high levels of employee engagement.

Mark Allen, a business management professor at Pepperdine University and author, says, “The single biggest problem in management is creating a class of managers who are ill-suited for the job.”

He validates the long held belief that bad bosses are the No. 1 reason employees leave their jobs.  Bad (ineffective managers) create stressed employees who are anxious, unhappy, disengaged and don’t properly do their jobs. Allen suggests that the issue of bad bosses stems from the fact that managers are often successful workers who are just being promoted into a position they have no right to hold.

“A big mistake we all have is that we promote people to be managers because they’re really good at whatever job they had before,” Allen said. “So what you’re doing is taking a top performer away from a job they’re really good at and giving them a new job they’re not good at, and then they become a crappy manager.”  Further, in an ideal world, 70 to 80 percent of a manager’s job should be to hire, develop, engage and retain talented people. We need to not only tell them it’s important; we need to show them it’s important.

In my book, Turning Good People Into Top Talent, I make the case that the title “manager” needs to be replaced with “coach/team leader.”  Ideally, all employees would work for a coach-based manager.  Coach-based managers are good communicators with highly developed, inspiring, people skills and have mastered emotional intelligence which Daniel Goleman calls a core competency.

Organizations that claim that their people (talent) are their most valuable asset must become more strategic in how they manage them.  How are you preparing your managers and team leaders to be effective coach-based managers who can create the alignment required to achieve higher levels of employee engagement?

Click here to get a free copy of the special report, Talent Alignment:  The Key to Optimizing Worker Engagement.

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®
CEO of Effectiveness, Inc and
The Talent Management Institute
“Turning Good People Into Top Talent”
www.talentmanagementinstitute.com

 

 

Previous Post

Improving Employee Engagement

Next Post

Multitasking Versus Effective Listening