MAN AGeING PEOPLE

MAN AGeING PEOPLE

You are highly satisfied with the job of face-to-face field selling. But not with the pay and the incentives. You are too happy to be promoted to the next higher grade with a better status of a Manager and supposedly higher responsibility to manage a band of salesmen. You are now satisfied with the compensation but not the job.

They have converted a Specialist in his own trade to a Disaster of a glorified clerk lost in administrative jungle of paper work. Simply because the proletarian grade system will not permit to pay the Specialist he deserves more, whatever the role, than the manager who will manage him.

Just because someone is fantastic at doing something. simply doesn't mean he is equally as good at managing others to do that same thing. After all, the skill set required to practice a specific profession -- whether it's plumbing, hairdressing, engineering, selling, teaching, accounting or whatever -- is entirely different from the skill set required to manage people. Yet many a businesses persist in promoting "Doers" into management roles with promotions that come with better-sounding titles, more money, more perquisites, more prestige and... more responsibility on the assumption that a good doer will automatically make a good manager!

Logically it's a good assumption that a manager who used to do the work himself or herself should understand what his staff need to do the work now. And yes, there are many managers who are just as good, if not better, at managing others as they are performing the actual work. In a pyramidal organizational structure -- where the many are managed by the few – as a delegation or management structure, it works fine for many companies. But it's illogical that people will try to get, and will get, promoted into management roles -- regardless of whether they have the talent or passion to manage just because in such an organization, getting more pay and other rewards is contingent on becoming a manager only.

And should it happen more as a rule rather than an exception, the organization will have plenty of unhappy and ineffective managers. And plenty of frustrated people working for ineffective managers; An organization that will never perform at its optimum.

Doesn't it make more sense for people to do the work they enjoy and are good at? To reward them for getting better and better at that work, rather than only paying them more if they step "up" to management... where they may generate less value for the organization?

Isn't a top salesman better off staying in the field selling... than floundering in the office, struggling to organize and motivate his staff?

Fortunately, some organizations do tie greater rewards to greater responsibilities and greater performances, whatever the role, which generate more value for better productivity and better bottom line. The trend-setting needs to be more revolutionary than just evolutionary!

People do not like to be managed.

They like to be led.

NATURE OR NURTURE

Nature or Nurture is a question often asked about leadership. The combination of innate natural leadership skills and nurture through leadership development defines one's leadership style.

Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right things."

How do leaders emerge?

1) Some personality traits may lead people naturally into leadership roles.

2) A crisis or important event may cause a person to rise to the occasion, which brings out extraordinary leadership qualities in an ordinary person.

3) People choose to become leaders, learning leadership skills through a transformational attitude/approach.

The first and the most important characteristic of a leader is the decision to become a leader - the decision to provide others with vision, direct the course of future events and inspire others to success.

Leadership requires the individual to practice dominance and take charge, formulating the appropriate mix of traits, skills and ambition. Exhibiting a unique blend of charisma, vision and character traits that attract people to follow them.

The power of an organization's leaders in creating the organization's values, environment, culture and actions is immeasurable.

As an organization leader, manager or supervisor, you are responsible for creating a work environment that enables people to thrive.