7 signs candidate will be a bad manager
September 24, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Assessing the right candidate, Executive recruiting, Special Report
Whether you’re hiring from outside or promoting from within, companies have a lot riding on putting the right people in supervisory positions. How can HR help identify the best leaders for the organization?
When interviewing managerial candidates, it’s important to make sure they have these key qualities:
- Adaptability — It’s a fact of the workplace: No two employees are exactly alike. Managers need to be able to adjust their approaches and figure out how to get the most out of different types of workers.
- Problem-solving skills — Managers deal with countless issues over the course of their careers. Often, the best managers don’t come in with a wealth of technical experience but know how to learn on the fly and come up with solutions to new problems.
- Comfort during conflict — One thing’s sure about being a supervisor — there’s never a shortage of unpleasant situations. If it sounds like a candidate has always run away from conflict rather than dealing with it head-on, that’s a bad sign.
- Confidence — Managing also frequently involves making risky choices. Good supervisors are comfortable with that and have confidence in themselves and their decisions.
- People skills — Communication is essential. Of course, managers need to give useful feedback, but they should also be able to get input from employees and listen and respond to criticism.
Promoting from within
When you’re promoting a current employee, there’s one rule to keep in mind: The best employees don’t always make the best supervisors.
So how do you know who should be put into a leadership position? Here are two important skills to look for and how you can verify that employees have them:
- Ability to take on extra work — Sure, employees may be successful with their current workloads, but the extra responsibilities required of a manager are a whole different ballgame. When your organization is considering promoting employees, give them some more to do and see how they handle it.
- Training skills — Another good test is to let the potential manager train new employees. That will speak volumes about how he or she would perform in a leadership role.
Tags: Hiring, interview, promotions, supervisor
September 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Good points. The biggest problems I have in my current work environment (and it’s one I’ve experienced everywhere I’ve ever worked) is that managers won’t work together for the overall good of the organization. They are so busy building their own empires, satisfying their own agenda and trying to become powerful, they wind up hurting the company and preventing us from accomplishing the things we could otherwise accomplish. Instead of focusing on problem-solving, departments expend (waste) energy on CYA activities. They spend a great deal of time trying to make another area look bad or to “blame” them, so none of the issues underlying the problem are ever corrected. For this reason, I would add that the ability to collaborate, to put aside one’s ego and see beyond their own little area of responsibility is critical to being a truly successful manager. If they can’t do this, they will be more of a hindrance and hurt to the organization than a positive contributor.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more R.B. I am the HR manager at our clinic and the hardest thing I have tried to overcome is the lack of cooperation and the ability to collaborate. The other problem is having to prove with documentation that what I say is necessary and my area of expertise. I keep hearing, well I have always done it before. It is very frustrating. How do you get these people to breathe, relax and understand, I don’t want to do thier job, just mine? Working together as managers, shows employees the benefits of a positive working environment. What better way to get everyone on the same page for the good of the company than leading by example.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Good points in the article and in the replies. Where I work now it’s so small that there is no empire building and the Management Team is really a team. They meet at least once a month formally to discuss issues and formulate polices and this shows in how things are handled in a consistent manner.
Where I used to work it was quite the opposite – with many small empires. In some weird way things were done and business was accomplished but it was very, very divided. In contrast this was a huge international company.