Why Does Your Manager Stink?

Its a common, almost natural condition that the more effective someone is in their job, the more likely they are to be moved away from that job.

Are you really good at customer service?  Well, conventional wisdom dictates that you should move deeper into your organization and further away from the customer, in hopes that your talent will permeate those below you through some magical osmosis-based process.

Are you a quota killing sales rep?  If so,  many companies will get you out of the field and into HQ where you can manage some people who may not be as talented or have your drive, but will still be expected to deliver the same amount of revenue.  Again, that whole “talent osmosis” thing.

Here within lies the reason that a majority of business managers fail to live up to expectations.  The skills needed to do a job well vs. the skills needed to effectively manage a team of people barely overlap. In some cases, skills that made one successful in one discipline can actually be counterproductive in a management role.

For example, Ive known numerous top performing sales reps that failed miserably at managing teams.  The primary reason was that their drive, ambition, and “take no prisoners” attitude served them well in the field but limited their listening skills and empathy with their direct reports.

To make matters worse, most under-performing managers will see the problem in context of their people not “getting with the plan” instead of seeing the need to enhance their own skill set in the areas of management and leadership.

One of the kindest things ever written about me in an employee evaluation was “Sasser is a leader because our people want to follow him”. Trust me, it took a lot of work to make that statement a reality.  Having been raised by Marine Drill Sergeant, early in my career my first attempt at management was based on the military-style “its my way or the highway” principle.  I failed miserably.

Motivating people to follow you takes a combination of the following:

• Competency
• Empathy
• Vision
• Productivity

If you want to delve deeper into this topic, I just finished the book below and I recommend it to anyone who has to motivate people to want to follow your lead.

Hunter, observing our post-9/11 environment, recent corporate scandals, and the large number of managers who are not leaders, offers his thoughts on what he calls a servant leader, “a person of character who is skilled in influencing and inspiring others to enthusiastically contribute their hearts, minds and other resources toward goals identified as being for the common good.” With a reference to his religious faith and prayer, the author sees leadership’s spiritual underpinnings. We learn that leadership is an acquired skill and is synonymous with influence, while character is moral maturity in action: doing the right thing regardless of the cost. Hunter offers important lessons, which he has learned from successful organizations, including selecting workers very carefully, finding ways to make work more challenging, compensating people fairly, demanding excellence and accountability, training people well, and building community. The need for effective leadership has never been greater in our twenty-first-century society, and particularly in our workplaces. Mary Whaley

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Find This Book and Review on Amazon.com

Sasser

P.S.  Join me in welcoming William Xavier Carpentier to the world, all 9.8lbs of him.

Lapses in Leadership

A friend was doing some “spring cleaning” on his hard drive and came across a file related to an event that we had in common.

The event occurred when our SVP of Sales hired an outside marketing firm to run our lead generation, marketing, and PR campaigns. While I am sure the firm had it’s strengths, it lacked any talent or skill in the areas of lead generation, marketing, and PR.

Coincidently, the principles in the firm just happened to be neighbors and close personal friends of our SVP’s.

You know something is wrong when your marketing firm delivers you a press release that has to be re-written by your staff due to a significant lack of accuracy, relevance, and basic grammatical structure.

For lead generation, they had contracted with a telemarketing firm to execute a cold calling campaign across 5,000 prospects. Based on the quantity and quality of the leads we received, the qualification criteria they outlined for determining who was deemed a lead had to be something close to “must have a pulse”.

During our annual sales meeting, the marketing firm was invited to speak on their past accomplishments and future projects. However, our team took the opportunity to express our dissatisfaction in clear, unarguable terms by challenging every point. For example:

“We delivered 1,000 leads to you”

was met with the response

“No, you provided us with 50 leads, and 950 wasted meetings. Thanks.”

We’re we wrong to deliver our message in such a brute force manner? Having studied Jack Welch for years, I think not. However, our passionate view point may have inspired some of our team to move past the professional realm in communicating their dissatisfaction. “My retarded cousin writes better press releases” should have not been shared in this forum.

The pdf I received this week was a letter to our SVP penned by the President of the marketing firm, in which he expressed his shock and frustration at our response to their work. He explained that for our team to criticize his firm showed our ignorance for good marketing and that we should be replaced immediately. The letter continues with an explanation of why the only chance our company had to make the annual sales goal was to fire everyone and start over.

Then at the conclusion, there’s the obligatory “Here’s to a great year (after you fire everyone who knows my work is crap) and lets hope we get our golf handicaps down to 10.”

This letter was written on 1/1/97 (that’s 11 years for those too lazy for math). Through numerous job changes and PC upgrades, my former teammate has held on to to this as a momento of the time.

So why do I call this post “Lapses in Leadership”?

• Our SVP entrusted a personal friend to take over mission critical functions with no thought to the actual quality of the work delivered.

• When we spoke on an individual basis in expressing our concerns over the quality of the deliverables, we were ignored.

• Finally, our SVP shared the letter with us, thinking it would inspire and motivate. Yep, that didn’t work. While our SVP taught me, and a good many others, a great deal about being a sales professional, his legacy is closely aligned with this event.

Effective leadership occurs when your people want to follow you.

Want to share a lapse in leadership? Email us at sales.wars@gmail.com. No real names please.