3 Management Skills Most Leaders Lack–and How to Develop Them
Because the most effective leaders never stop growing
Source | www.inc.com | KATIE BURKE
The saying goes that employees join companies but leave managers. There are of course exceptions to that rule, but for many employees, managers determine their happiness or frustration on the job. Gallup’s State of the American Manager report found that a manager accounts for at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement, and half of Americans have left a job to get away from their manager at some point in their career.
Why is that? Sometimes it’s because of poor communication on a team. Other times it’s because of one-way feedback that’s deemed destructive rather than constructive.
But I’d argue that there’s one underlying cause of ineffective management that’s often overlooked, and it’s an important one to acknowledge on the path to becoming a more effective leader. It’s the need to grow your own practice as a leader.
Managers who are serious about growth are constantly raising the bar for both themselves and those on their team. As Lolly Daskal, an executive leadership coach and founder of Lead From Within says, “Growth in leadership is mandatory, not optional. If we fail to grow it’s not a matter of just staying where we are–we become stagnant and fall further and further behind.”
By narrowing in on three specific skills that managers most commonly lack, you can help to build a future of strong effective leaders that will help to create a more inclusive workplace for all.
