Core manager skills: Skills that make the biggest difference in the shortest time
3-minute read
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many companies operate under the assumption that people can develop manager skills “on the job.” But just as we wouldn’t throw an engineer into a job without requiring them to know the right programming stack, we can’t responsibly throw a manager into their role without equipping them with the right manager skill stack.
Experience is simply not enough. In fact, there is no apparent correlation between years of management experience and manager effectiveness. Often, having more time to practice bad habits just leads those habits to be more ingrained! And even if it were possible to learn through experience, experience is an extraordinarily costly teacher when the risks are underperformance and attrition. Companies need skillful managers now more than ever.
The good news is that LifeLabs Learning has done the research to identify the manager skills that make the biggest difference in the shortest time, based on our experience studying and teaching over 400,000 managers around the world. Best of all, we’ve found that not all skills are created equal. There is a small set of ‘tipping point skills’ that tip over into a wide range of situations, quickly unlocking overall manager competence. Think of these skills as primary colors. While there is a small number of them, they mix together to create an infinite array of other skills — helping managers tackle any challenges they face. We call them core manager skills.
The core skills we’ve identified in our research include:
Coaching: Ask questions, help people think clearly, and build people’s capacity to solve problems independently.
Feedback: Give praise to build on strengths, articulate and help close skill, performance, and collaboration gaps.
Productivity: Help people set and track goals, identify and stick to priorities, and improve their efficiency.
Effective one-on-ones: Develop trusting relationships, diagnose engagement issues early, address individual needs, help people feel heard and valued, and build belonging.
Strategic thinking: Create strategic alignment, anticipate and mitigate risks, involve the right people at the right times, and clarify how tasks link up to organizational goals.
Meetings: Ensure all voices are heard, catalyze creative thinking, facilitate high-quality decision-making, run engaging and productive meetings, and eliminate time wasters.
Leading change: Earn trust, ensure adoption, and help people stay nimble and resilient.
People development: Anticipate skill gaps on the team, co-create individual development plans, support job crafting, and build a team of complementary strengths.
Increasingly, we’ve also found that managers need support applying these skills through the lenses of adaptivity, deliberate inclusion, and remote or distributed work.
What you can do right away
Given our extensive research and meta analyses of other peer-reviewed studies, we feel confident recommending these skills as the core competencies of the manager role. That said, it pays to pause and consider whether some skills are irrelevant or missing given the nature of your managers’ work. Just avoid the temptation of listing every skill you can think of. We’ve found that a long list of competencies tends to result in overwhelm when it comes to both learning and assessment. A strategy of depth over breadth yields better results and higher manager engagement.
Once you’ve landed on a short list of core skills, make them visible and accessible to all managers and employees who might be interested in the manager path. One easy way to do this is to link the skills list to your manager job description. These skills will serve to set expectations as well as inform your selection, development, and assessment strategies.
Want to help your managers develop these core skills faster? Contact LifeLabs Learning!
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