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Make yourself a better manager

 
Date: 06-Dec-07  
 
Ever wanted to know what your team members really thought about your management style? Or felt the need to spout off on exactly why your boss is rubbish, without risking your job in the process? Well now you can, with the launch of a new online tool designed to help managers improve their skills ahead of their next performance review.

Make Me a Better Manager is an attempt by talent management company ETS to bring 360-degree feedback to the masses – according to managing director John Southwell, only 10% of the UK’s 4m managers currently get access to it. Managers pay £20 to sign up to the service, and then a number of nominated colleagues are asked to feed back on the manager’s skills. Two weeks later, the subject gets a report summarising the findings.

‘It allows team members to feed back in a structured, confidential way,’ Southwell told MT today. ‘So managers get incredibly powerful, objective feedback on their strengths and weaknesses’.

ETS has already started trialling the service – with surprising results. ‘The most interesting point was the disparity between managers’ perceptions of themselves and other people’s perception of them – often there’s a big gap between the two,’ Southwell said. This proves that you shouldn’t be focusing your training on the areas that you think are the most important, he suggests.

This kind of 360-degree feedback has its drawbacks, of course. ETS was at pains to suggest that the tool produced constructive guidance – but there’s always the chance that a disgruntled member of staff might take the opportunity to put the boot in. And if a manager is left wondering exactly who it was who compared his people skills to those of Attila the Hun, it probably won’t do wonders for the team dynamic.

Still, judging by the success of the endless stream of self-help books for managers, there are plenty of people out there who are keen to improve their skills and try new approaches. And if MMABM becomes your ticket to promotion, it’ll be 20 quid well spent... Perhaps Gordon Brown should put his name down?

 
 
 

Comments

Jonty Faulkner - 13-Dec-07

I was interested to read about “Make me a better manager”. I can’t help feeling that there are few words missing, and it should be called “Make me a better manager – behind my back”, because that’s what so many on-line systems of anonymous feedback offer organisations.

Why do we have to assume that if people have problems with their manager, they can’t tell them to their face? Our experience in 2WayTrust is that many people WOULD be willing to do so, if only there were some sort of framework in place for having a discussion about some of the difficult issues that we all have to contend with in relation to our own behaviour in the workplace.

We have spent more than two years discussing these issues with CEOs at 2WayTrust Masterclasses at Windsor Castle and elsewhere, and one of the things they have told us time and again is that anonymous 360 feedback so often undermines trust and lowers performance instead of raising it. It’s no surprise, really - if you do not know who has made comments on your behaviour, you’re bound to end up suspecting everyone of having criticised you behind your back.

We are in the early stages of using our new 2WayTrust Feedback system with organisations, and we’re not saying that it’s perfect or problem-free. What we do believe, however, is that where difficult things can be said face-to-face that must be the best way of moving forward. Hence the need to try and develop a safe framework for this to happen, rather than always acting as if people can’t be trusted to say anything difficult about someone else other than via an intermediary.

Using bar graph results from behaviour that is rated on a scale of one to five simply does not provide the depth that is needed. Nor does it provide the opportunity for fuller explanation or open dialogue. Surely the best way of changing bad behaviour among managers and other members of teams is to have open, two-way discussions that can identify problems and then leave them behind. This is what we believe teams most need, and too often it is a sad fact that anonymous 360 gets in the way of achieving that goal.

Jonty Faulkner

http://www.2WayTrust.com

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