Why the people manager role is so important

There is a growing group of people who dismiss the importance of line management – here’s why the people manager role is the key to not just surviving, but thriving as a business

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Management Today

An emerging heretic view has developed in the leadership and management space. It’s the idea that companies don’t need people managers. The theory is that because the work gets done well enough by individual contributors, the quality of managers makes no difference.

People of this view also argue the best way to develop people is on the job, so they promote those with a people-orientation and let them get on with it. If you end up as a people manager, some believe it is because you have displayed leadership skills over technical ability. Like flat-earth-beliefs, they are mistaken.

Not only are people leaders critical, but they also make a material commercial difference. More importantly, we have been promoting the wrong skill. Those making leadership or management selection decisions need to re-think the relevance of a people leader, the commercial imperative to invest in their development and why we might have previously promoted the wrong types.

Why do we need people leaders?

Douglas Adams’ view, in ‘Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy’ (1979) was that periodically you need to get rid of a third of your population; the middle managers. These middle managers are sent by spaceship to crash land on the Planet Golgafrincham, with the useful workers, leaders and scientists remaining behind.

But when line managers manage and leaders lead, businesses take off. Assuming businesses want survival, growth and sustainability, there are a plethora of studies showing well-managed businesses do better. For example, studies by McKinsey, Bersin, Indiggo, Meta-Lucid and Harvard all show good management makes a positive difference to the commercial performance of a company – such as a five-fold increase in profits, an increase in earnings per share or higher EBITDA.

Good management also reduces turnover, lowers sickness absence levels but critically improves overall engagement and belonging. Line management capability makes a difference with returns often exponential. We need people managers.

Does managing individual contributors well make an impact?

In most regular commercial environments, the individual contributor remains key to business performance.

A well-known CEO said, “I need to retain client skills to maintain my teams’ credibility and show that I can still produce”. (Equally, I am sure institutional clients liked to know that the CEO was dealing with their transaction.) In the mind of the leader, this example negates the need to properly invest in modern management and leadership functions.

A people leader can have a huge impact on the quality of the work and the commercial performance of a business. Companies can create ‘player-manager’ or ‘leader-producer’ models of roles to help those fearful of giving up client contact, but who understand the value of being a good manager and a good technician.

The key is to learn ‘people skills’ as soon as possible to increase the likelihood of success as a people leader. Learn how to harness brilliance from individual contributors. And that starts with learning the leadership discipline of self-awareness and what strengths and development areas you bring to a role.

How do we develop management skills?

Most companies cut managers loose and hope they learn on the job in what will be the biggest transition most will make in their professional careers.

In 2012, Jack Zenger, the CEO of Zenger/Folkman, published research in Harvard Business Review that people leaders are typically in a role for nine years before they are given training as a people leader. This is a full nine years of learning bad habits, practising and reinforcing incorrect behaviours, although at least they are experimenting. In other professions, this would be total madness.

Since we don’t do this for other occupations, why do we do it when building capability for people leaders? Does doing it poorly lack consequence? Is it difficult to train? Are senior leaders unaware of the ROI? It might be all of these things and more, but at its heart, do we under-recognise the group and over-reward the individual?

Perhaps the lack of both attention and investment lies in the fact that getting the work done is critical, and technical performance is supremely valued. Followers, though, want to believe their manager largely knows what they are doing and can help, coach, and jump in as needed. To do this properly the supervisor must understand intimately what challenges their people are facing.

The people manager is critical

To conclude, modern work is getting crazier with disruption, uncertainty and technology changes accelerating. But one role is critical to direct the workplace team towards both survival and success and that is the people manager (first line supervisor/team leader/people enabler etc.)

They might not have all the solutions, but their role can bring together the full capabilities of the team and inspire the collective to find answers better than any one individual.

Since they impact more of the businesses’ resources than you imagine, companies must invest in their development early, make the role attractive and incentivise experts to move up from the ranks. Then they can sit back and watch the bottom-line grow.