Fear of the Unknown

People don’t like surprises.

No matter what you hear, outside of a surprise birthday party, you’d rather know what to expect.

It’s human nature to prefer knowing (in fact, look up neophobia).

Pop quizzes, last minute change of plans, pivoting to a new business idea, etc.

This same fear translates over to leadership.

But it’s not so visible.

• Insecurity masks itself as control

• Controlling others masks itself as feeling out of control

• Being critical of others comes from thinking bad about yourself

You may not feel sympathetic towards a boss who is micromanaging you…

Yet it’s important to know WHY someone is acting the way they do.

Take for instance a new manager.

• Most likely they got promoted for being a strong individual contributor.

• It’s great they were recognized for performance, but not a great reason to take them out of their “sweet spot” and promote them.

Here’s what I mean: the skills that got you promoted will NOT serve you well as a manager.

Try closing your office door, being the high achiever and most knowledgable on the team.

It works well as an individual contributor.

Not so much as a leader.

The transition that most new leaders or managers miss is: going from an all-star to a MVP.

Let me explain with a sports, more specifically a basketball analogy.

• An all-star player gets selected because of their individual stats, or contributions.

• But an MVP makes their team better, increases their chances of winning.

• When all-stars are promoted to supervisors, they are expected to perform like MVP’s.

Guess what’s lacking?

The skills needed to lead, aka a lack of training.

From an organizational standpoint, most employers are aware of this skills gap, but internally (it usually falls under HR) new manager training is not at the top of the priority list.

I may be biased (because I provide this service), but unless you hire an external specialist (like yours truly) it never gets fixed.

The result: managers keep chasing talent out of the door/your top talent keeps quitting.

Understand that the most crucial relationship in the workplace is with your direct manager.

Executives tend to oversee and a lot of them have assistants to delegate tasks to.

But if you’re in middle management (see new managers) you have a team you’re in contact with daily/weekly.

According to Gallup’s Q12 survey on employee engagement, at least 7 of the 12 questions rely directly on the manager-employee partnership (or lack thereof).

That further supports the importance of managers having the right skills to lead their team effectively.

• The last time I checked companies spend on recruiting, interviewing, hiring and onboarding.

• Yet not on manager training.

But if managers impact the turnover/retention rate at your company (aka ROI) the most, why not invest in it?!

I’m not here to tell you what to do…ownership and the c-suite have tough enough jobs.

If you’re reading this as an employee, HR or middle management you can sound the alarm by passing this article to a decision maker at your company.🚨

Let me end with another sports analogy, but this time we’ll choose football.

If employee health (call it mental health or work-life balance if you like) is a priority, why wait until sudden death or overtime when you can address this in the first or second quarter?

The best offense can be a good defense and in this case implementing monthly manager training will prevent the talent churn from leaving to your competitors.

Micromanagers are a result of a lack of training.

The unknown is NOW the known.

Once you know, its your responsibility to do something about it.

Contact me about this program.

God Bless,

Scott

If you found this helpful and you’re looking to improve your soft skills as a leader, here are ways to work with me directly:

• 🗣 Hire me to speak at your company or next event (watch my speaking reel here)

• 🎤 Invite me to lead an interactive training workshop, remotely or in-person (depending on location)

• 🤝 Start 1:1 coaching with me as a new manager, current leader or executive (I once managed 30 people 1:1 weekly❗️)

Also, you can help me out by forwarding this to friends whom would benefit from it! Thank you!