These common behaviors can be a drag on performance, but change is possible.
KEY POINTS
High achievers do not necessarily make effective managers. Poor management skills can have a negative impact on productivity, employee turnover, and morale. Managers can learn to avoid counterproductive habits and to motivate, influence, and lead through positive behaviors.
Investment professionals who excel in non-managerial roles are often meritoriously elevated to the management level. But the common practice of trying to turn star players into coaches has a high failure rate.
“We take them away from what they are good at and say ‘You’re so good, we are going to make you the boss,’” says Michael Woodward, an author and organizational psychologist who is the founder of management consulting firm Human Capital Integrated and also serves on the faculty of the Florida International University Center for Leadership.
The problem is that being the boss requires a different mindset and skill set for a very different job. Managers must be balanced between achieving corporate objectives and being a mentor and guiding force for employees. “Managing staff is not the hardest job in an organization, but motivating, engaging, and retaining staff is,” says Nancy Ahlrichs, a management consultant, author, and strategic account manager at FlashPoint HR in Indianapolis.
For a manager, reforming one’s own behavioral foibles requires self-awareness and honest self-evaluation. Are you a less than perfect but well-intentioned manager with flaws that are likely to drive good employees right out the door? If so, what can be done? To help answer such questions, career experts were asked to identify the most common counterproductive habits of people who manage investment professionals and recommend ways to correct these tendencies. The good news is that improvement is possible because managers are made, not born.