Reimagine Your Managerial Pipeline

There’s little doubt that managers are struggling. Between increasing digitization and disruptions sparked by the pandemic, among other things, they have more and more-varied responsibilities than ever before. A recent survey showed that 54% suffer from work-induced fatigue and stress; meanwhile, only 50% of employees believe that their manager can help their team succeed in the coming two years. A common organizational response is to double down on skills and development programs (although some leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, want to scale back the managerial role or eliminate it altogether). But increasing skills proficiency boosts managerial effectiveness, on average, by only about 4%. Although any solution will need multiple facets, a new study from the research and advisory firm Gartner—the source of the statistics just cited—points to an essential first step: Companies need to put the right people in the role. Promoting—and sometimes pushing—employees into it on the basis of their performance as individual contributors is not a viable tack. “Too many managers are experiencing buyer’s remorse,” says Brent Cassell, a vice president in Gartner’s HR group and one of the study’s authors. He and his team surveyed more than 9,000 employees and managers in a variety of industries around the world and surveyed and interviewed almost 100 HR leaders. Nearly two of every three employees said they would like to become a people manager now or in the future—but one in five actual managers said that given a choice, they would rather not have that position. And only 19% of HR leaders believe that their organization’s selection process yields the right people for the role. Addressing these disconnects requires a radically different approach to filling the managerial pipeline, Cassell and his colleagues say. A Better Selection Process The researchers offer the following recommendations and describe how one innovative organization they have worked with, WPS Health Solutions, has reinvented its pipeline. Ask people to nominate themselves for managerial roles. Success as an individual contributor isn’t a reliable predictor of skill as a manager. In the first year of WPS’s program, which recently concluded, managers still put forward promising candidates, but employees were invited to toss their hats into the ring as well. “This gives individuals ownership of the decision about whether they’re correctly positioned for the role and if it aligns with their long-term goals,” says Gartner senior director Swagatam Basu, who led the study. It also prevents those making promotion decisions from defaulting to unconscious biases, thus helping to diversify the pipeline. Ensure a rigorous application process. Companies should encourage applicants to think hard about why they believe they’re suited to the role. Many firms have created a leadership competency model or otherwise defined the managerial qualities they want to see, which might include empathy, adaptability, and authenticity. They should ask applicants to reflect on whether and how they embody those traits. Some organizations conduct interviews to that end. Others, including WPS, ask applicants to write essays describing how they’ve demonstrated the desired qualities at or outside work. To further mitigate unconscious biases, applications should be anonymized for evaluation. Reviewers should look not primarily at technical or writing ability but at people’s potential and aspirations. What do applicants want to become? Are they willing to go above and beyond, and are they likely to stay with the company over time? Input from managers and other colleagues, often available from 360-degree reviews, can be considered as well. Those whose applications are rejected should be given detailed feedback to boost their chances of success should they reapply later on. At WPS, they can participate in a training program to help them in future attempts. Because the written applications are blinded, repeat applicants face no prejudice or disadvantage. Equip aspiring managers for the hardest parts of the role. Once organizations make their selections, they need to help the individuals discover whether management is really right for them. The focus at this stage should be less on the mechanics of the job, such as the performance review process, and more on the tough issues that increasingly arise, about topics such as pay equity, support for social justice, remote work, and layoffs. They should encourage candidates to consider, for example, what they should do if they’re asked a question and they don’t know the answer, or how they can help an employee who’s going through a difficult time if they’re going through one themselves. At WPS, the training is a mix of online modules, peer-to-peer discussions, and interactive, non-work-related exercises. Candidates are asked to think about experiences that tested their resilience, such as meeting with a sibling to divide a parent’s estate. “Lots of management skills are really life skills,” Basu explains. “People need to realize that they won’t be starting from scratch.” Normalize opting out. In the course of an effective training program, some participants will probably recognize that management isn’t for them, or at least not at present. At WPS, candidates devote a week to self-reflection, considering ways in which the role differs from what they’d expected, what they find hardest about it, and whether they still want to pursue it. Instead of stigmatizing the decision to opt out, the company celebrates it. There’s no penalty for taking oneself out of consideration, and—like applicants who weren’t chosen for the training to begin with—those who opt out can reapply and have the same odds as everyone else. This points to an area where many organizations have work to do, the researchers say. Only half the managers surveyed said that people can return to individual contributor positions in their organization without a loss in pay and respect. “There needs to be a mindset shift in HR and among senior leaders,” Basu says. “Individual contributor experts are just as important to a company’s success as top managers are.” At WPS, the new approach has yielded both quantitative and qualitative results. There is twice as much racial and ethnic diversity among the first-year program participants as in the existing management ranks. And according to Sara Siekierski, the director of talent development at the time of the training, the program has not only increased empathy among aspiring leaders but also sparked employees’ empathy for managers, creating “a new appreciation for what they have to understand and balance.” For managers and their employees to thrive, Gartner’s study shows, organizations will have to take other actions as well. They need to reduce burdensome processes, reset expectations for the position, and help managers build habits—not just skills—to drive long-term, sustained behavioral change. But such steps are unlikely to yield meaningful improvement without a rethinking of who is best suited for the job to begin with. “When managers are allowed to self-discover their fit for the role, they’re more than twice as likely to find the job more manageable,” Cassell says. “They’re also twice as likely to lead high-performing teams.” By making the application process employee-driven, rigorous, and unbiased, he concludes, organizations can build a strong, diverse pipeline of future leaders who are ready to excel in management positions whenever the need arises. About the research: “ CHRO Guide: Managers Are Cracking, and More Training Won’t Help ,” by Gartner (white paper, 2023) “People Pressure-Tested Themselves for Managerial Roles” Moira Klos is the chief people officer at WPS Health Solutions, a Wisconsin-based health insurance company with 2,500 employees. In early 2023 the company launched Aspiring Leaders, a training program for individual contributors who think they might want to become managers. Klos spoke with HBR about what employees gained and what the company will do differently in the future. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow. Narayan Mahon Why did WPS Health offer the training? Sometimes people believe that the only way to advance is to become a manager. The program helps them understand what that really looks like and decide whether it’s right for them. In the process, we built a more robust and diverse pipeline of people who are truly interested in the role. How did the program work? We accepted self-nominations along with nominations from managers. Managers and employees wrote short essays describing each person’s interest and potential, and a panel of leaders scored and ranked the blinded applications. Altogether 66 people applied; we chose 30. We gave detailed feedback to those who weren’t selected and encouraged them to reapply next year. Those who were selected participated in a six-month program with weekly sessions—a blend of self-paced modules and live discussions. After nine weeks of building foundational skills, we held what we called Decision Week, where we asked people to either commit or opt out. Two of the 30 had dropped out because of the time commitment, and one had left the company; one more opted out during Decision Week. We were OK with all that. We want people to really understand that managing people isn’t for everyone. Do many prospective managers really not understand what they’ll be getting into? It’s one of the open secrets of organizational life: Some people get promoted to a managerial position and immediately regret it. But their old position has been filled, so they worry that if they admit they don’t like the new role, they’ll be out of a job. We want to give people time to try out the role a bit. How will you change the program for next year? We’ll rely exclusively on self-nominations to simplify the process. If a manager thinks an employee should apply, we’ll tell them to encourage that person to do so. To make the time commitment more manageable, we’ll increase the length of the program and reduce the intensity—holding meetings every two weeks over a longer period of time, say. And we’ll have more guest speakers, to enrich the content and heighten the relevance. Did the remaining 26 trainees become managers when the program ended? Three have been promoted, and our recruiters source from this pool to fill open positions. WPS has fewer than 400 managers, so not everyone can be promoted right away. But the feedback on the program has been overwhelmingly positive. More than 75% of participants say they’re already using the skills they’ve gained to have crucial conversations, build trust, inspire others, and influence people. Some are using those skills in their nonwork lives as well, as parents, coaches, or even elected officials. The participants gained the mindsets and skill sets they’ll need in the future, and they pressure-tested themselves to see whether they really want a people leader role. That’s huge.

Reimagine Your Managerial Pipeline

Summary.

Partner Center