Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People

Drive higher IT results through practical communication tactics.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

Managers are the connective fiber of your department. How are you supporting them?

Jane Kouptsova,
Senior Consulting Analyst, CIO Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For.

• CIOs, department leads, and senior managers in charge of overseeing the training of first-time IT managers.

This Research Will Help You:

• Equip first-time IT managers with the fundamental skills necessary to tackle their new responsibilities.
• Easily apply a consistent training program throughout your department, increasing compliance

This Research

• First-time IT managers

This Research Will Help Them

• Acquire essential management skills and tactics for addressing the expectations of their new role.
• Develop a foundation of competencies on which to build more advanced leadership skills.

Executive Summary

Situation

• IT departments often promote staff based on technical skill, resulting in new managers feeling unprepared for their new responsibilities in leading people.
• The success of your organization hinges on managers’ ability to lead their staff; by failing to equip new managers adequately, you are risking the productivity of your entire department.

Complication

• Despite the fact that $14 billion is spent annually on leadership training in the US alone (Freedman, 2016), only one in ten CIOs believe their department is very effective at leadership, culture, and values (Info-Tech, 2019).
• Training programs do not deliver results due to trainee overwhelm, ineffective skill development, and a lack of business alignment.

Resolution

Use Info-Tech’s tactical, practical approach to management training to deliver training that:

1. Is specifically tailored to first-time IT managers.
2. Is designed around practical application of new skills.
3. Is aligned with your department’s business goals.
4. Equips your new managers with essential skills in the following key competencies:
• Team management
• People development
• Self governance
5. This blueprint is part of a three-part series and specifically focuses on team management.

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, more is not more.

• Attending training is not equal to being trained. Even good information is useless when it doesn’t get applied.
• If your role hasn’t required you to use your training within 48 hours, you were not trained on the most relevant skills.
• Good intentions don’t make a good manager. Will needs to be backed up by skill.

Effective managers drive effective departments by engaging their teams

(1 McLean & Company; N=3,395; 2 McLean & Company; N=5,902; 3 Gallup, 2018)

Despite the criticality of their role, IT organizations are failing at supporting new managers

87% of middle managers wish they had more training when they were first promoted

98%of managers say they need more training (source: Grovo, 2016)

IT must take notice:

IT as an industry tends to promote staff on the basis of technical skill. As a result, new managers find themselves suddenly out of their comfort zone, tasked with leading teams using management skills they have not been trained in, and more often than not, having to learn on the job. This is further complicated because many new IT managers must go from a position of team member to leader, which can be a very complex transition.

The truth is, many organizations do try and provide some degree of manager training, it just is not effective

99% of companies offer management training (1)	Fewer than one in ten CIOs believe their IT department is highly effective at leadership, culture, and values. (1)Grovo, 2016; 2Chief Executive, 2016 (2)Info-Tech’s Management & Governance Diagnostic, N=337 CIOs
93% of managers attend it (1)
$14 billion spent annually in the US on leadership training (2)

There are three key reasons why manager training fails

1. Information Overload

Seventy-five percent of managers report that their training was too long to remember or to apply in their day to day (Grovo, 2016). Trying to cover too much useful information results in overwhelm and does not deliver on key training objectives.

2. Limited Implementation

Thirty-three percent of managers find that their training had insufficient follow-up to help them apply it on the job (Grovo, 2016). Learning is only the beginning. The real results are obtained when learning is followed by practice, which turns new knowledge into reliable habits.

Lack of departmental alignment

Implementing training without a clear link to departmental and organizational objectives leaves you unable to clearly communicate its value, undermines your ability to secure buy-in from attendees and executives, and leaves you unable to verify that the training is actually improving departmental effectiveness.

Overcome those common training pitfalls with tactical solutions

This research combats common training challenges by focusing on building habits, not just learning ideas

Manager training is only useful if the skills it builds are implemented in the day-to-day.
Research supports three drivers of successful skill building from training:

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, stop thinking about learning, and start thinking about practice. In difficult situations, we fall back on habits, not theoretical knowledge. If a manager is only as good as their habits, we need to support them in translating knowledge into practice.

This research focuses on building good management habits in in order to drive enterprise success

Set up your first-time managers for success by leveraging Info-Tech’s training to focus on three key areas of management:

• Managing people as a team
• Managing people as individuals
• Managing yourself as a developing leader

Each of these areas:

• Is immediately important for a first-time manager
• Includes practical, tactical skills that can be implemented quickly
• Translates to departmental and organizational benefits

Info-Tech Insight

There is no such thing as “effective management training.” Various topics will be effective at different times for different roles. Delivering only the highest-impact learning at strategic points in your leadership development program will ensure the learning is retained and translates to results.

This blueprint is part three of a three-part series, and will focus on the foundations of successful team management

This blueprint focuses on the essential skills necessary to lead a team.

This blueprint can be used alone to kick-start your first-time managers’ team leadership skills, or in conjunction with the people- and self-development modules for a well-rounded management primer.

This blueprint covers three key skills:

• How to set and track realistic goals and metrics as part of successful performance management.
• Tactical approaches to clear and effective communication in meetings and 1:1s.
• The fundamentals of giving feedback and coaching to employees for development.

Info-Tech Best Practice

This blueprint is not a replacement for formal leadership or management certification. It is designed as a practical, tactical, and foundational introduction to key management capabilities.

Info-Tech’s training tools guide participants through successful skill building

Practical facilitation guides equip you with the information, activities, and speaker’s notes necessary to deliver focused, tactical training to your management team.

The participant’s workbook guides trainees through applying the three drivers of skill building to solidify their training into habits.

Measure the effectiveness of your manager training with outcomes-focused metrics

Linking manager training with measurable outcomes allows you to verify that the program is achieving the intended benefits, course-correct as needed, and secure buy-in from stakeholders and participants by articulating and documenting value.

Use the metrics suggested below to monitor your training program’s effectiveness at three key stages:

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Build a Better Manager – Team Development

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Build a better manager workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

These modules can be mixed and matched to create a customized experience for your team.

Works cited

• Freedman, Erica. “How to Build an Internal Leadership Development Program.” Chief Executive, 2016. Web. Oct. 2016.
• Gandhi, Vipula. “Want to Improve Productivity? Hire Better Managers.” Gallup, 3 Aug. 2018. Web.
• Good Manager, Bad Manager. Grovo, 2016. Web.

PHASE 1

Train Managers in Effective Communication

Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People