Do your Managers need people-management or personal effectiveness training? The following questions will help you consider what's needed - Let's play 20 questions!:
1) Do they have two or three current written ‘live’ objectives for each team member or do they avoid setting written goals or perhaps not always sure which ones to come up with?
2) Do they find themselves putting up with poor habits/behaviours in their team and/or that addressing issues isn't leading to progress?!
3) Do you think they find one-to-ones with staff to be quite time consuming and/or that these meetings are not really achieving anything worthwhile or are they productive?
4) Do they worry that their best people may leave?
5) Do you find that they want to extend probationary periods a lot rather than confirming someone's permanent employment as soon as probation ends?
6) Do you or others often get confused by how they communicate/ Do you find yourself having to ask them lots of questions?
7) Do they find it difficult to get their people on board with changes the organisation or you propose?
8) Do you often observe that difficult conversations they have end badly or tend to get too heated?
9) Do you think they have a happy/motivated team or is there room for a lot of improvement?
10) Would you say the manager’s team do more than is expected and put in 'goodwill' rather than doing 'just enough'?
1) Would you say that they ‘achieve’ a lot each week and move the business/things proactively forwards or that they just do a lot of 'stuff' and are very busy as if on a ‘hamster wheel’?
12) Do you observe them getting distracted a lot by others demands and finding that they like to ‘please others'?
13) Are they clear around the ‘legacy’ they want to leave behind when they move on from the company/role in terms of their ‘achievements’?
14) Do you think they recognise good work publicly in the team and generally motivate well?
15) Are there people performance issues in the team that they are putting off dealing with?
16) Do they lack impact in meetings and their dealings with others and/or that the team often 'go over their head' to you when they want something?
17) Do they avoid difficult conversations or difficult people in their team?
18) Do you think they often feel resentful about changes that have been proposed/implemented by the business?
19) Do you/others have to chase your manager a lot for answers/updates/emails not responded to etc?
20) Do they spend dedicated time each day or week with people in terms of training/coaching them?