The Question of Fit

For seven years, I was in charge of training an international sales force. Now, I wish I could go back and apologize to half of the people we were attempting to train. Why? Because they didn’t possess the behavior traits of great salespeople. After that experience, I became a certified behavior analyst and learned that great sales people are usually, with some exceptions, extraverted people who are motivated by the deal. They love the challenge of closing someone on a product, service or concept. They are driven by return on investment and love to know how things work. They are obsessed with winning at any cost. These attributes cannot be effectively taught.

Attributes of Great Managers

Great managers are synonymous with coaches. They’re “manacoaches.” Manacoaches are charged with getting things done efficiently and effectively through others. A critical consideration lacking in most businesses is that being great at engineering, sales or accounting is by no means a prerequisite to being a manacoach.

Manacoaches can exude very different styles. They can be extraverts or introverts, process-oriented or people-oriented. Therefore, a standard behavior assessment is not going to be enough to identify a suitable candidate to train as a manager.

Think back to a great manager or coach you had. What were their outstanding characteristics? I venture to guess they were:

• Humble with low ego, putting the needs of the team before their own needs. They passed the credit on to you and took the hit when things went wrong. They had your back.
• “Curious,” not simply about the product or the service but about each of their team members and what made them tick – what motivated them
• Organized, so when they assigned a task to you, there was no question in your mind that they would follow up
• Good at teaching using simple analogies you related to so you “got” what they wanted right away
• Confident and resourceful in reaching out to subject matter experts to contribute and provide guidance
• Not afraid to “enter the danger” or “lean in” to the discomfort when it came to having tough conversations about your performance, behavior or attitude

A Leader’s Talent Does Not Equate to Management Ability

Before we invest in training an employee to be a manager, we need to determine the underlying attributes of that person. Otherwise, we may waste significant time and resources. My team’s research is conclusive: Make a top salesperson a manager, and there’s only a 20 percent chance that he or she will be successful in this new role.

Leaders, by definition, are good at looking to the future (predicting or anticipating) and doing/sticking to what they feel is right. Period, full stop. To be leaders in their field, it’s not essential that they are organized, humble, curious about their teammates and what motivates them, or great teachers. Ask a top salesperson, engineer or accountant for help, and he or she will probably respond by saying, “Watch me.” You can watch all the top players in golf all you want, but unless you are truly gifted, it’s not going to help you develop your perfect stroke.

First Things First

When advising clients on hiring managers or moving employees into management roles, I tell them to put the candidate through an assessment that measures the individual’s empathy toward others, comfort with processes, ability to think practically, self-awareness and openness to learning. Both salespeople and managers are continually looking for new ways to harness human energy. However, the combination of required attributes of an effective manager, such as being process-driven, are rare in true salespeople.

So, before you spend a whole lot of time and resources worrying on how to train a person to be a better manager, be sure that you have selected the right person for that seat. You could have the best and most effective training program in the world, but if you attempt to make an eagle swim as efficiently and effectively as a duck, you are going to be disappointed.

The Implications

This concept may seem simple and obvious, but it is not a consideration in most businesses. In fact, while you read this blog post, there were thousands of people who were being trained to become managers, or better managers, who have no hope of excelling in the role. This epidemic of placing the wrong people in management roles is destructive to the organization, the person, and the employees he or she is charged with managing.