Helping Newly Promoted Managers Succeed – Good for Them, Good for Your Company, says Impact Achievement Group

Article series on new manager development discusses how to effectively establish a leadership role

SEATTLE – January 27, 2010 – New management training is often overlooked or underemphasized, negatively affecting the new managers and their companies, according to Impact Achievement Group.

After a promotion, employees are required to use different skills than those that made them shine as an independent contributor to the company. Yet companies and those newly promoted stars often overlook this and leave their success to luck. Research shows that a majority of frontline managers underperform during their first two years in the seat, driving performance gaps, employee turnover and customer service problems.

In "Helping Individual Contributors and Seasoned, but Untrained Supervisors, Transition to Effective Leaders," the first article in a 12-part series, Impact Achievement explains that training new managers in appropriate people skills and performance management skills can do much to encourage high-performing team members. The twelve-part series is derived from Supervisory Basics, 12 individual yet linked two-hour training modules, delivered in leader-led or eLearning formats that helps managers understand the management behaviors and tactics required to ensure their and their company’s success. “While a manager may need certain technical skills, leadership is established by creating a clear, consistent pattern of challenge and support," said Lee Klepinger, chief executive officer. "In this series we develop the skills that accelerate a new supervisor’s leadership competency and provide them with established techniques for avoiding the common traps that they will most often encounter.”

To encourage best efforts, new managers must also understand their group’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowing who excels at what tasks is critical to getting work done.

Effective new managers are visible and accessible. New managers must be out of their office and very visible, fostering more interaction with their employees and communication interest in the work being performed, thereby promoting productivity.

New leaders must also recognize common pitfalls, for example, within friendships. They shouldn’t assume others share their excitement about the promotion or will approach the friendship the same. They should avoid apologizing for the promotion or showing favoritism. They shouldn’t emphasize outside friendships at work, nor pretend they don’t exist.

"Helping Individual Contributors and Seasoned, but Untrained Supervisors, Transition to Effective Leaders," is available here. Article two will discuss the importance of creating long-term customer value by incorporating the customer’s point of view into performance results.

About Impact Achievement Group

Impact Achievement Group provides assessment, coaching, customer loyalty and leadership development training that focuses on employee selection, retention, employee engagement and customer engagement. By integrating and blending the world's best assessment and recruiting processes, workshops and eLearning training, coaching and measurement programs, Impact Achievement Group helps organizations improve human performance to achieve bottom line results.