Leadership Training for Managers: What Supervisors Need to Know

Anyone can be a manager but not everyone can be a leader. Nevertheless, leaders are not hard to come by because they are made, not born. A few people have that natural charisma to win people over, but for the most of us, leadership is a skill to be acquired, developed and nurtured.

Unfortunately, many companies don't seem to realize that. They think that if someone is good at performing their job as an individual contributor, then they'll be just as good or maybe even better as a manager. As a result, employers promote employees to managerial positions without preparing them for the hardest part of this new role, which is handling people. It's no wonder why incompetent bosses are a common gripe at the workplace.

But it goes more than water cooler talk. Inefficient leadership have far-reaching negative effects, like eating away at employee morale until the employees decide to jump ship because they can't handle a toxic workplace anymore. It is indeed true that people don't quit jobs -- they quit managers, particularly the following:

Micromanagers

They breathe down people's necks to have things done exactly their way. They can't seem to trust their employees well enough to give them autonomy. Employees feel hounded, and their professional growth is stunted.

Pushovers

They don't have the backbone to stand up for (and to) their employees. As a consequence, employees find it hard to respect them, and end up with low morale over being led by someone they see as weak.

Credit grabbers

They don't acknowledge their employees' hard work. Sometimes, they straight up steal their employees' ideas and present them as their own. Employees rightfully feel anger of the injustice of the situation

Slackers

They don't do their job, period. They don't just delegate; they hand over their tasks to their employees and coast through the workplace. Employees end up doing work above their pay grade.

Power trippers

They act as if their position gave them the right to be rude and disrespectful. They abuse their authority, so they earn the fear and resentment of their employees, instead of respect.

Task masters

They push their employees too hard with their unreasonable demands and expectations. They're most likely to be workaholics and believe everyone else has to be the same way. Employees lose their work-life balance in the process.

Gas lighters

They're psychologically and emotionally manipulative, capable of making their employees question their doubts and feel bad about themselves. Employees think they're going mad, when in reality, their gas lighting managers are behind the sabotage.

Terrors

They conflate fear with respect. They think that if they're aloof and unapproachable, there's no danger for their employees to undermine them. However, employees find this type of manager not only unpleasant, but sometimes even traumatizing.

What Can Be Done About Bad Managers?

These are only eight of many types of horrible bosses that can make employees want to pack up and leave. But although some managers are bad by nature, other managers may not realize they're ineffective because they were never trained to be a good leader.

For example, a micromanager probably thinks they're being helpful, not realizing they're actually stifling. Or maybe a pushover just needs a confidence boost, or a slave driver just needs to realize that people have different working and communicating styles.

Thus, leadership training is important for any manager, especially a new one. Such training will weed out managers with malicious intentions from managers who simply didn't know any better. With leadership training, managers learn how to:

  • Make the workplace a positive environment
  • Motivate employees through inspiration, not fear
  • Cultivate solid professional relationships
  • Improve employee satisfaction and morale
  • Boost team and individual productivity
  • Develop employees with potential
  • Encourage open communication
  • Give constructive criticism
  • Handle difficult employees

Effective managers lead, not boss around. And most of the time, the difference between leaders and bosses is a leadership training program, much like the ones we offer at Infotec. We have various leadership training programs for managers in different industries to ensure they're well-prepared for their new journey in their professional lives. Because we know managers have busy schedules, we've ensured our leadership training programs are all delivered in an e-learning format. Interested in enrolling your company's managers? Connect with us today to learn more.

Contact Infotec Today!

For more information about Infotec or any of our programs click here: http://www.infotectraining.com/ or https://ops.infotecpro.com/course_schedule/course_schedule.cfm.

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