PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS

Dashboard

Published October 2008

Why Most Managers Are Stuck

John L. Davis

Consider the following factually based scenario: A team in the company needs a new manager. The most competent individual contributor on the team is promoted. After several years in the position, he still hasn't fully transitioned into the manager role. People on the team lament, "We lost a great individual contributor and gained an awful manager." This scenario plays itself out thousands of times a year in companies throughout the United States and Canada.

Research-based training firm ConceptReserve recently released findings from "The Transition to Manager: Why Most are Stuck," a study that included data from 2,600 managers from 149 companies and based on assessments by more than 19,000 people during a five-year period.

The data revealed 9 percent of these managers were still acting as individual contributors; 66 percent were stuck somewhere in the transition; and 25 percent were fully functioning and effective in their manager role.

Tracking these managers over a 12- to 18-month period after the initial assessment, it became clear most managers underestimated the complexity, difficulty, time and effort involved in making the transition to manager.
The study exposes a problem of epidemic proportions.

According to the data, many managers have not completed this critical transition five, 10, 15 and even 20 years after being promoted. The vast majority of managers today appear to be stuck somewhere in the middle of the transition, and only a small minority make significant progress in the five-year period after being promoted.

Part of the problem lies in how talent managers think about this important transition in the first place. Most see it as stepping out of one role — that of an individual contributor — and into a new one. The implication is this transition takes place fairly quickly. But the research shows this often does not happen.

Making the transition from individual contributor to manager is like traveling a long mountain path that winds back and forth, and up steep grades with abrupt drop-offs. It takes great effort to keep moving forward, and there are many challenges, hazards, detours and distractions.

Research shows:

• High performance as an individual contributor is a poor indicator of success in completing this transition.
  
• Age, experience, tenure and the promotion itself have little positive impact.
  
• Transitions are nonlinear and messy.
  

To better understand this journey from the manager's perspective, the study asked more than 1,200 managers to describe the most difficult challenges they faced making the transition to manager.

Anyone who has struggled with managerial responsibilities knows these challenges are very real. But early in discussions with the study pool, it became obvious most of the challenges are symptoms of more fundamental issues. This led to an examination of the roots of those challenges, which then revealed many underlying assumptions managers make about their role.