.MANAGEMENT & SUPERVISORY TRAINING

In previous sections of Installing Change we saw how the Installation Checklist related to sales training, a very common focus for skill training in industry. Another area of training equally as important is management training, especially "people management", or "human resource management", or "supervisory" training. This has to be one of the most significant investments that organizations consistently waste, with only rare instances of successful installation and maintenance. The norm seems to be "it's time for another dose of supervisory training". Each year supervisors are religiously subjected to refresher courses in supervision. I regularly get calls from organizations with requests to "fill up three or four days" with supervisory or management training, because it's "that time again". And even though the content and design of supervisory and human resource training programs have improved in the last three decades (now skills are taught rather than just knowledge) lasting results are still negligible.

Mis-diagnosis

Part of this problem is mis-diagnosis. Poor supervision by your front line supervisors may be related more to the performance of the organization's executives and its culture than to the skills of the supervisors. When this is so, all the supervisory training in the world won't improve supervisors. It's often forgotten that executive behavior is frequently perceived by employees to be a consequence of the employees' behavior. For example, what executives do, their actions and how they respond to the activities of lower level managers and supervisors, will encourage or discourage the employees' future actions and give strong messages on how to behave.

Recently, a police force conducted a survey of non-performing police officers -- patrolmen who wouldn't do their jobs, and who resisted all attempts to raise their performance to an acceptable level. Senior police executives considered that the problem was caused by weak corporals and sergeants who didn't care! According to the police executive, the solution was to increase supervisory training for these front line officers.

But the facts were quite different. Historically, and consistently, senior officers rarely supported the attempts of corporals and sergeants to exert discipline or enforce standards.

Lower level supervisors were given no authority to enforce performance and senior management avoided making enforcement decisions. As a consequence, non-performing, and at times potentially dangerous members of the police force were shuffled around, appeased, and their refusal to do the job was condoned. Bureaucratic red tape, indecision and political expediency stonewalled attempts to keep members of the force in line. This indecision and refusal to act by the executive taught the corporals and sergeants that they must live with non-performance and that they shouldn't make waves. The content of the supervisory training ran counter to their organization's culture.

Because the senior officers refused to manage, the lower level officers worked under great personal stress, torn between an intense loyalty to an organization they loved and the realization that they were powerless to preserve the organization's reputation of excellence. Their senior officers taught them to be helpless.

Control Over Training

Another part of the problem is the lack of control over training content. For example, as an executive or senior manager, do you abdicate control of your organization to someone who is not held accountable? Many executives do when they let company trainers or college instructors teach their employees. This may sound extreme but it's true.

To direct your organization successfully you've got to have control over how all your employees do their jobs -- from managing their employees to greeting or providing service to clients. You may set long range goals and invent financial strategies, but what counts in the end is making sure your work force performs the way you want them to.

With this in mind, when you send supervisors, managers or other employees to training programs, are you aware of exactly what they are being taught? Are they being taught to do their jobs the way you want them to? Most C.E.O.'s have little idea what is taught by their company trainers or especially by campus lecturers. It's almost inconceivable, but often true, that a C.E.O. lets a "trainer" with little management experience and no accountability determine how the executive's organization is to be run. That's not what I'd call control.

For example, your managers (or would be managers) whom you enroll in a college's management course, typically study leadership and compare your way of managing with idealistic theoretical models of the way it should be done. But since you have to manage your way in an imperfect world, you always come out the bad guy. The more your employees learn about "ideal" management, the worse you look and the lower your credibility goes.

Maybe the way you want your organization managed isn't the best, but that's your decision, not the instructor's. And it's confusing and demoralizing for your staff to be hearing mixed or contradictory messages.

When your receptionist/secretary isn't handling customer calls or correspondence (or you!) correctly, why do you send that person to a seminar to learn techniques which you may or may not want, from someone who doesn't know you, your style, your company or your clients? Why do you let strangers determine how you want your organization to run?

What you must do is determine how you want your receptionist to greet clients, or how you want your supervisors to handle employee performance problems. Then have your company trainer or private training organization teach your employees what you want employees of your organization to do. If you really want to lead and direct your organization, make sure your control over how the organization behaves doesn't inadvertently slip through your fingers.

From: Robert H. Kent, Installing Change: an executive guide for implementing and maintaining organizational change, Winnipeg: Pragma Press, Inc., 1989, pp. 126-128.

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