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How to Get Engaged
3 Simple Steps Every Manager Can Take
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”
― Lisa Kirk (American Actress, Singer & Comic, 1925–1990)
A whole industry has been built on staff engagement, cultural surveys and action plans.
One of the reasons is technical experts have been promoted into people management roles. And technical experts are not always “people people”. They are great at what they do, so promotion seems to be the obvious course of action. The reasoning goes: “They are great at this so they’ll teach their team to be great at this.”
What could go wrong?
Before you switch off, technical experts aren’t the issue here. The issue is one of engaged support and development. New managers, technical or not, are often left to their own devices when it comes to people skills. I refer to it as the “competency catastrophe”.
Promoted people often feel they have the skills to manage people built in. They don’t. But they’ve just been promoted, slapped on the back with a “Go get ’em, tiger!” They get the sense they are competent in this often brand new arena of managing people. And then comes the catastrophe!
