I’ve lost count of how many times I have had the ‘too busy to manage people’ conversation with clients. Sometimes it’s with business owners who are trying to grow their team and free themselves from being in the weeds. Other times it’s with business owners who are complaining that they have promoted their great technical people in to management roles and those managers aren’t managing the people; they are too busy doing everything else except the number 1 most important part of their role.
I get it. Managing people is hard work. Having feedback conversations can be daunting (or downright terrifying!), it feels like it’s easier and quicker to do it ourselves, and sometimes we just don’t even know how to manage that team member. Maybe we’ve gone from being their peer and their mate to being their manager and now telling them what to do doesn’t feel right. Maybe we just don’t have the confidence to manage the team because yesterday or last week or last month we were one of the team and now all of a sudden we are supposed to be the Manager that has all the answers. I’ve had all these thoughts many times over throughout my career.
Why do we say we don’t have time to manage people?
There are many reasons, however in most cases when we get down to the nitty gritty of it, these are the most common reasons I hear from the businesses I’ve worked with:
Lack of role clarity and expectations
Being promoted in to a management role sounds great in theory right? The opportunity to take the next step in your career. The opportunity to earn more money (in most cases). The opportunity for a new challenge / growth / to get off the tools etc. After all, it’s what we have been conditioned to do career wise; climbing the career ladder is more often than not associated with moving in to a people manager role.
So, we promote our great technical team member, or maybe it’s the team member who has had the longest tenure with us, in to a manager role. Or we go external and recruit a new employee to our team. What we fail to explain to them is what’s required – what good looks like – what our expectations are when we promote or hire to a manager role. We might give them the position description and assume they get the people management element but all too often we miss the valuable conversation that goes with it; setting the expectations. The conversations like, as a manger you are expected to have coaching conversations and provide feedback, you’ll have to address when team members are late for work, you’ll have to provide feedback when their standard of work isn’t up to scratch or their behaviour doesn’t align with the company values. Sometimes you’ll have to make the hard and unpopular decisions.
We also need to let them know the people management element of their role is the #1 most important part of what success looks like in their role. It’s not what they do when they have time or when they get around to it. It’s the thing that always needs to be prioritised.
Lack of people management skills and experience
When we lack the skill or experience in how to do something we often procrastinate on it. It’s easier to do all the other tasks that come naturally to us instead of actually just ‘eating the frog.’
When we don’t have the skills and experience, we get ‘too busy’ with everything else. When we don’t know how to handle a people management issue we often don’t do anything about it. We don’t know what to say or how to say it (provide feedback) so we say nothing at all. Then what happens is the situation actually gets worse and is harder to address because we have let it go for so long.
If we want our people managers to actually manage our people and not get stuck being busy doing everything else, we need to train them, coach them, mentor them and develop them in what good looks like. If we wanted to upskill out team members from a technical skill perspective we would send them on a course or to training. Yet I see so many people put into people manager roles without any training or support. The best people management training is facilitated over a period of time, it’s not a one day course where you go and learn how to be a people manager and then the next day you come back to work and you suddenly know how to manage your team. It’s learning different techniques, going back in to the workplace, applying those learnings, honing them in to your individual style and the approach that works for you, it’s having a feedback conversation then reflecting on ‘gee I could have handled that a lot differently’ – it sounded better in my head but when I opened my mouth and the words came out it landed a lot differently. Hence a training program spread over a period of time allows for debriefing, reflection and honing of skills.
Lack of systems, processes and frameworks
When we don’t have the right systems, processes and frameworks in place to support our people managers to manage their teams it makes life pretty difficult for them and it’s no wonder they get busy doing everything else. This is where employment contracts, up to date position descriptions, current policies and procedures, agreed behaviours and values become business critical. These are the essential tools for managing people. They can’t just be documents saved somewhere on a computer drive, they need to be living breathing documents that are used and referred to frequently. The other key component of systems, processes and frameworks is the structures to allow for coaching, mentoring and feedback conversations. How, and when can and will these conversations take place. Depending on the operating rhythm of your business, these might be through 1:1 check ins / meetings, team meetings, tool box meetings, in the moment on the floor. Finding what works for your workplace and team is key; it sets expectations for team members on how they can raise concerns, share their feedback and how they can expect to receive feedback.
Being too busy to manage people is rarely about time; it’s about priorities, capability and culture. When we let our people managers neglect the people management element of their role ultimately our business suffers for it; we spend more time reacting and firefighting, culture is diminished, turnover increases and we don’t get the business results we are striving for.
If you are accepting ‘too busy’ as an excuse maybe it’s time create a culture where people management is the #1 responsibility of management.
