Cape Town - Forget a lack of leadership at the top, a new survey shows there is a huge demand for good entry-level managers in South Africa.
The level of unemployment in the country is one of the highest in the world, and yet it is getting more difficult to fill the vacancies that do exist.
According to the most recent Manpower Talent Shortage survey, 31 percent of South African employers found it hard to hire the right person for their positions last year (up by 8 percent from the previous year), with management-level staff being cited in the top three most difficult positions to fill.
This contradiction suggests a lack of adequate skills training at key levels. Most significantly, training of first-time managers is often neglected, says Jenny Boxall, course convenor for the New Manager short course at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB).
“Being a manager doesn’t come naturally to most people. Often, individuals are promoted to management positions without training, and this can be an overwhelming experience,” Boxall says.
The New Manager is a short course offered by the GSB and teaches the core principles of management, as well as helping first-time managers to develop their own leadership style.
The course focuses on key business skills such as strategy, finance, operations and the management of complex projects, as well as the basics of good business communication. Extensive time is spent on understanding how to develop, manage and motivate a team.
There is also a strong emphasis on personal mastery, which is increasingly becoming a core aspect of leading and managing effectively.
Fatima Hamdulay, senior lecturer at the GSB, says that one of the reasons new managers struggle is because the management landscape is changing.
“The old way of managing was being in power, exercising control and domination. But this is old-school and destroys value in the long term. The new way entails really listening, collaborating and providing feedback in a constructive way. In this sense, the manager is really a coach who enables others to create value,” Hamdulay says.
Numerous studies have shown that managers who are more caring and less authoritarian in their approach have more successful teams working for them and higher productivity levels.
A survey at a hospital in Cardiff, Wales, last year found that authoritarian managers resulted in stressed and unhappy staff, and in conditions where patients were actually at a greater risk of being hurt due to the way the hospital was functioning.
Scholar and coach Nancy Kline, who developed the concept of the Thinking Environment, stresses the importance of managers listening when people talk, not only hearing them.
This means allowing people to finish their thoughts, not interrupting others and allowing everyone an opportunity to speak.
Boxall agrees and says organisations should consider exposing new managers to such ideas and strategies to ensure that these key employees are able to live up to their potential and add value.
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