An ineffective manager is a drain on his or her team’s energy level and when a team is drained, it becomes empty. Empty team members have no energy on which to draw, to deliver great experiences that excite customers. I have discovered, over many years of working with many clients, in diverse business sectors, that many managers are ineffective. They do not understand, nor do they possess the skills needed to manage their teams effectively. The effect of team ineffectiveness? Lack of cohesion, inefficiency, ball dropping and customer experience failures.
Let me make a point here about managers. A manager is successful just by having attained the title. He or she would have done well to have been elevated to that status. Being an effective manager is an entirely different story. I say to managerial teams all the time that I am not impressed with titles. Show me the evidence of the expertise and achievements behind the title.
A manager is successful just by having attained the title. He or she would have done well to have been elevated to that status. Being an effective manager is an entirely different story.
Case in point. Some years ago, I was about to meet for the first time, with a new head of a department that was the epicentre of a service transformation intervention that I was spearheading. He walked into the room and announced that it was the first time that he didn’t have to read a report to discover what the consultant and project team had accomplished. The evidence was noticeable.
Such is the case with effective management. The signs of competence are everywhere. In the people, the processes and the outcomes. An effective manager is a huge boon to a business that is intent on becoming customer centric. He or she becomes the driver of service momentum, from the inside out, by creating a space where team members feel safe from emotional and psychological harm. This is a liberating space for employees because it represents a climate that allows individuals to feel that they do not have to “watch their backs” all the time. Nothing builds a sense of belonging faster than the sustained ability to trust not only one’s team mates, but also one’s manager.
An effective manager has the magic touch for building team chemistry and converting team members into team mates who function as a well-oiled team.
An effective manager has the magic touch for building team chemistry and converting team members into team mates who function as a well-oiled team. Team chemistry is so high that there is the absence of negative energy, toxicity and ill will. Team mates like each other, want each other to win and want the team as a unit, to succeed. Does this nirvana happen overnight? Absolutely not. It happens through huge infusions of leadership and employee engagement, by the managerial team.
There’s another piece of magic that the effective manager weaves, which ineffective managers never seem to master. That’s the ability to drive the collective intelligence of the team. When collective intelligence of a team is high, members of the team feel excited to contribute ideas, without having to ensure that those ideas pass the sniff, the microscope and the scrutiny tests. Brave effort is valued over brilliance.
An effective manager ensures that team members navigate choppy interactions skillfully, as a sort of continuous dress rehearsal for interacting with customers.
So what’s the lesson to be learned from these comparisons? Earlier this week, we celebrated International Women’s Day and “Breaking the bias” against injustice, inequality and discriminatory practices against women. Effective managers, unlike ineffective managers, have an instinct for embracing diversity, inclusion and equity as part of the law of natural justice. To these managers, all employees deserve respectful treatment, thereby erasing the need for activism or advocacy for something that should occur naturally.
We know that in reality, workspaces become collision-rich at times. With the ineffective manager, this can escalate into a conflict-ridden, war zone. By contrast, an effective manager ensures that team members navigate choppy interactions skillfully, as a sort of continuous dress rehearsal for interacting with customers.
Ineffective managers and effective managers have different operating systems. A team exposed to the former style can experience stagnation, whilst exposure to the latter, can liberate and uplift the team to, as we say, “higher heights.”
Ineffective managers and effective managers have different operating systems. A team exposed to the former style can experience stagnation, whilst exposure to the latter, can liberate and uplift the team to, as we say, “higher heights.”
How does all of this effectiveness impact customer experience? An effective team, fortified with a strong internal operating system, will be wired, naturally, to provide strong customer support and what would this mean? Customer excitement and increased customer spending.
A winning combination.