At XLRI, Fr McGrath’s Basic Managerial Skills or BMS was the most popular course – completely experiential, creatively designed and facilitated by the senior batch.
It taught us in the very first few months that becoming a good manager was very important.
Cut back to 2026.
As someone who has been leading a coaching led leader development company, I must admit to a huge fallacy about leader development.
L&D professionals, Talent managers, Leadership development firms, consultants and coaches tend to call everything they do leadership development. Developing someone to be or become an effective manager somehow does not seem glamorous.
While we do a lot of work to develop leaders, I must admit that a lot is also to help leaders develop not leadership but basic managerial abilities.
Unfortunately, a very large number of professionals make a very poor transition from being an individual contributor to a manager.
At the heart of that poor transition is their inability to manage all forms of boundaries – task boundaries, time boundaries and relationship boundaries.
They are unable to say what they will do and what others will do and therefore they can’t delegate. They are unable to set clear expectations or priorities. They fail to give feedback, be honest, draw the line, and define an adult to adult relationship.
But they do grow into leadership roles and at that stage these missed developmental milestones become troublesome and development is to solve problems.
No wonder, survey after survey will tell us that manager scores are poor.
While real leader development does take place and it must carry on, we must recognise the real issues and use responsible semantics.
Years ago, when managers had more time and tenure in the relationship and worked face to face, some handholding, some mentoring, some guidance, some skill development, some role modelling took place. With hierarchy collapsing and a lot of work becoming remote and managers becoming virtual managers, I think we have descended on what appears to be a managerial crisis.
I think it will serve us well to go back to the basics and invest significantly on making people good managers before we start to make them great leaders.
What this will translate into is investment in manager development early in the employees careers (unmindful of fears that they will learn and leave), designing learning solutions that are appropriate for that level and then continuing to reinforce the lessons all through the life of the manager and leader.
Developing good managers is as important as developing great leaders.
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/o2QDrofXJ3g
