Miick brings you the “How to” of inspired leadership in every team member!
A short list of Challenges we face with managers and managers as leaders:
- Being a cop instead of a coach
- Feedback
- Lack of Energy
- Lack of Engagement
- Lack of Fiscal knowledge
- Accountability
- Culture = brand: inconsistency
- Conflict, lack of respect
- Meeting management
- Skills of work
- Raises/promotion
- Harassment/hostile
- Marketing clarity
- Technology
- Decision making
- Communication: CC, SS
- Managers are leaders by default!
Managers have it tough, and management challenges abound. The list of management challenges/issues is long. Worse, for the most part, issues with managers are really issues with how managers are trained, or not.
At the top of the list is an ongoing habit of promoting a great team member to “manager” tending to think, “They’re the best performer in a given role or department” translates to automatic excellence as a manager. Time and again, this theory shows up “less true” as often as it is true.
Of equal import and far less obvious is the issue of the manager’s role in change. No doubt as owners and leaders in C-suites we want growth and change to be effective. Staff members want to be inspired with and during change! We want an inspired work force. More often than not, managers are stuck in the middle, trained to be more cop than coach, taught to uphold systems rather than lead innovation or free flowing thought on how changes could be made.
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Take your business to new heights. Send us a message to schedule a complementary consultation with our culture and growth experts.Next, managers are leaders by default. Sadly, it is typical that managers are barely trained to manage, let alone lead. Watch out here! There’s much to learn about training managers, AND training them to be leaders with equal skill!
When you find yourself challenged with management training and more so, execution, it’s easy to forget that managers are leaders by default. Watch any shift performance. Employees imitate managers in attitude and action. No smile, no smile. No celebration of team work, there’s little team work.
Whatever managers model in attitude and
action is imitated by staff.
Want your staff to smile more? Want your staff to reach out to customers more? To be more engaged? Take a look at the manager on duty. Sadly, managers are taught more by default, more by reality TV and movies than they are mentored about building a high performing team.
ISSUE: BEING A COP INSTEAD OF A COACH
More often than not, managers are positioned to be cops, catching staff doing things wrong, literally bending or breaking policies. Sadly, the more top brass relies on common sense or what’s “obvious” about performance, the more the picture of a cop is necessary. The habit for managers is to catch people doing stuff wrong, more than celebrating what’s done well. Outcome: Lack of engagement, lack of energy, missed production, sales and loyalty, more errors, more waste and turnover.
ISSUE: Criticism, sarcasm as feedback
Feedback is seen as a quarterly event, or worse, an annual event. During any given shift, criticism or compliments take the place of data-based feedback. If you or I do get feedback, it’s in the form of what we did wrong, or comes across as some sort of sideways, sarcastic comment followed by, “I’m just kidding” or “toughen up, you can take it.” Outcome: turnover goes up, A+ players depart, we’re left with “average” performance at best. Sales go down, retention goes down/turnover goes up; inefficiency, waste and theft increase.
Issue: lack of energy
Management challenges create low energy in your staff, customers, sales, up to and including, staff even “ducking their heads” or “staying out of line of sight.” Lack of energy or worse, negative energy undercuts all things “engagement.” This lack of positive energy can happen even in high volume locations. At Miick we call this “colander” performance. That is, instead of business being a bowl where sales drop into a bowl and are captured, with a colander, money, sales, people, fall through the holes in the colander. You look and feel busy. At the same time, there’s not as much performance or sales as could be there and you’re too busy to notice or care. Outcome: sales stay flat or worse, go down. Turnover goes up, A+ players leave.
ISSUE: LACK OF ENGAGEMENT
The manager says yes to your face and seems less than engaged during a shift? The manager is too busy to smile, so the team doesn’t. The manager’s too busy in the back to come on the floor. The manager’s late in getting “stuff” done on deadline. And the list continues…
Issue: lack of fiscal knowledge
You’ve got managers that can fill in a blank, however don’t know where the number comes from or what it means. Your partner blames the managers for not hitting “their numbers” but we haven’t trained them to find misses. Or worse, the managers don’t see the numbers, but are expected to hit target goals! Managers that don’t hit fiscal targets, but your p&l comes out 8 weeks after close.
ISSUE: ACCOUNTABILITY
Got accountability? Is excellence defined? Or are managers, like most owners, relying on common sense more than defined behaviors that equate to performance excellence? The concept of excellence is easy to hold and reverts back to most managers as an issue of being a cop more than being a coach!
Issue: culture = brand™ inconsistency
This issue is an outcome of most of the issues listed above, that is, the manager doesn’t actually model the brand experience you as the leader/founder want or envisioned. This issue is often times the result of not teaching a manager how to manage or how to provide feedback or even sharing the awareness of what modeling the brand experience even means at core. Outcome: Investment is made in staff training, advertising/marketing to the community and regardless of investment the brand experience doesn’t match your brand promise to staff or guests, at worst your company loses sales and best case, sales exist, however the company misses ultimate income and profitability due to a lack of engagement by either the staff or guests. Sadly, the excuse we hear most in this type issue is how hard it is to get good staff or to engage the staff. The real issue is the managers’ behavior, attitude and actions when owners are not onsite.
Issue: conflict, lack of respect
It may be easier for you to see this issue in other companies, than your own… the staff doesn’t really respect the manager, and vice versa. This issue is typically an issue of communication style, lack of feedback to the positive, and policing instead of coaching. Even closer to core issue is the culture of the company isn’t as definitive as it could be, so the managers are left to “create” the dynamic of teams, employees, gossip or worse, rivalry, favoritism, and more. The staff and your customers pay the price for this issue. Sales slip through the cracks as does profitable performance. This issue is so fixable, all the more painful to experience.
ISSUE: MEETING MANAGEMENT
Meetings get a bad name, largely due to those responsible for leading them, more than the concept of a meeting itself. Meetings done right build energy, build trust, build esprit de corp! Most managers are not taught how to gauge or manage energy, they’re not taught how to inspire. Meetings are a core example of a business culture in action. When managers are left to their own intuitive skills or lack thereof, meetings more often than not fall short. Outcome: Performance misses, boredom, gossip/drama, mixed messaging, lower efficiency, sales and profit than they could be.
Issue: skills of work
What is it managers do? Regardless of the answer, unless your manager’s been trained HOW to do whatever you’re asking them to do, they’re likely going to disappoint. All the more because your managers have all eyes watching them, looking for any reason to discount, undercut and challenge the manager themselves. Worse, you rely on the common sense of the person managing. Mentioned earlier, your expectation is that the manager came from department “x” and they knew that job so well, of course they’ll be a great manager “here.” Sadly, this outcome of presumed results by default just doesn’t work very well. Why? The skills of a manager are different than the skills of a great team member doing a great job. Skills need to be defined AND taught, then reinforced with consistent feedback.
Issue: raises/promotions
How are raises or promotions created in your company? Merit? How is merit defined? Or are raises based on enough begging for said raise? Promotions made by default more than defined excellence and merit?
Imagine offering people raises and promotion through certified training completion! Want a raise? Get your next staff certification! Want to be a manager or trainer, get through our certification process. This sort of certified outcome is doable and is an outcome of Organizational structure that supports definitive business Culture and then directly impacts brand performance, brand experience and engagement of staff AND guests. Outcome? Begging for a raise stops, certification goes up along with sales, retention and engagement!
ISSUE: harassment/hostile
This challenge is one of the big three issues that will bring your company to its knees. Handbooks can say all you want about no harassment and harassment shows up by default through poor communication skills, lack of being awake, conscious or choiceful attitude and action. Again, Culture = Brand™. Managers lead the way in modeling, coaching and guiding a safe, healthy work environment or not.
ISSUE: MARKETING CLARITY
The Brand Experience of your customers/guests AND your team internally is a direct result of brand translated into behaviors. The managers and leadership team of your company lead the charge on this topic. When Gallup says there’s only 34% engagement in staff on average and at best, messaging is more about what you and your managers DO than what you say to do. This is all the more the case with millennial and Gen Z aged workers on your staff. Walk your talk or don’t. Either IS the brand.
Issue: technology
The double-edged sword of tech: Managers are taught to rely on technology and when it breaks or stops, decisions cannot be made. Equally as troublesome, without technology decisions can’t be made because base knowledge of prime costs, purchasing, receiving and more isn’t defined as part of management behavior and performance expectation. There’s opportunity here!
ISSUE: DECISION MAKING
Far more often than not, decisions are opinion based in the moment, in “reaction to” instead of “anticipation of”. Decision making is a skill that can be trained, all the more potently when performance excellence is defined instead of led by opinion, and values based, on purpose, set to support the vision of the brand. There’s so much opportunity with this challenge!
ISSUE: MANAGERS ARE LEADERS BY DEFAULT
And, above all else, easy to forget, managers are leaders by default! Have you trained them to lead?
Issue: Communication
The primary how to accomplish any goal is the communication that gets us to that goal. Far too often, you’re stuck with policy, with fear instead of inspired work, criticism instead of behavior based feedback. There’s so much opportunity here!
The Miick Solution and support
Miick has been leading inspired change, performance improvement and exponential profitability at the same time, for over 40 years. What started out intuitively, evolved into a methodology that works time and again, regardless of company size, industry segment, check average or number of staff. Miick works with mindset, breaking down barriers to change with positive behavioral alternatives and communication/values-based decision-making tools that provide a different pathway, unique to each individual. The goal being consistent, positive behavior, engaged dialogue and open inquiry into any needed definition of excellence regarding performance, system, process. This behavior/science-based approach is ongoing and again, unique to each team member in any given department. Outcome? Very diverse approach with consistent performance with very little drama.
Miick’s translated the world of business with brain physiology, psychology, and performance choices into a six-step formula that works:
- We know who we are as a company, as a team, as leaders. We know what excellence means in this company, with this team, for each person in each role.
- We have fiscal acuity. Our fiscal systems are anticipatory, simple and used daily in decision making.
- We communicate in present tense, with accountability and without drama.
- With steps 1 – 3 in place, we hire with purpose and clarity! We know how to let great people find us, no matter the location, size of company or production we create.
- Training is behavior based, nothing is left to common sense; common sense expands thanks to our training.
- We commit to ongoing growth, innovation and change. And we use each and all tools we have in our toolbox to accommodate any change that comes at us. We’re clear from all six steps that one thing is certain, change is coming still and we have the tools, knowledge and psychological depth to anticipate, adapt and evolve at speed, profitably.
Our consistent Miick process provides each client a unique client road map and solution!
