Do people who want to be managers really want to manage?

What motivates people to want to be a manager? Consider two possibilities. Is it largely because a person believes that they can help the organisation as a result of their abilities; that they have values and ideas that will help the organisation achieve great success? Or is it because it is the done thing and for many staff in the past it is has been an aspiration? My experience in the English public services was that for many staff it was for the wrong reasons. And there was a fundamental underlying cause: there was a poor appreciation of what management really is. To many people, management is administration: it is keeping things going, providing a steady hand, modelled on what has gone before. There is a widespread belief that management roles are a reward for long service. Management roles are perceived to confer status. They often have a staff appraisal function – judgements that may bear on remuneration and advancement. This is a special sort of power. Personal competition may be a factor: the thought might develop, possibly with some apprehension: ‘if I don’t occupy the role it will go to a rival with influence over me’. Access to information is another attraction; it confers a real sense of importance. Cultures of open communication to staff are not universal in public services. English public services are no less subject to staff gossip and speculation than other organisations. Self-regard may also play a part, often in terms of a false belief that management is mainly about making judgements about people and new organisational situations, for which a University of Life degree is the only qualification required. In this view, the possession of a professional management skill set is nerdy and unnecessary. Management as a discipline in itself, a set of specific developed competences, a responsibility demanding particular personal characteristics, a function centred on change and improvement, are not ideas that occur readily to most people.

The situation would be helped if organisations make clear that management involves specific personal attributes and a set of developed competences. A culture that values management needs to exist, one in which it is not necessary to depart from a technical specialism to gain advancement and which says it’s fine to decide that being a manager is not for you. A major feature of human resource planning should be management development programmes that seek to identify management potential amongst employees and put development programmes in place through a variety of training and development opportunities. These programmes should have a wide range that addresses systems and processes, the culture of the organisation, and managing people.

Read more in the book Targets and Terror by William Barclay. Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Targets-Terror-Englands-Management-Revolution/dp/1916035388