A human resources specialist, Petronilla Serebwa, expressed concern that some employers promote some of their staff to managerial and leadership positions based on their technical performance when they ought not to.
“Such promotions take place even though the competencies of such employees are based on their technical prowess, not on their ability to lead and manage others,” the writer noted in an article.
She attributed the phenomenon to the Peter Principle—a situation where a competent person is moved to a higher position in an organisation and suddenly finds himself or herself unable to effectively perform the duties in that position.
There is a big distinction between technical skills and managerial or leadership competence.
The lower and middle ranks in an organisation mainly require technical skills or abilities. Recruitment into these ranks is based on basic or technical skills people—often young people possess—thanks to their education and or training.
In general, therefore, technical abilities are more important at these levels. Employees at these levels work under the supervision or guidance of a person, more often, who previously worked at that level before elevation.
Positions higher than these may require either more depth or breadth of the technical skills and a little more of managerial and leadership skills. It, therefore, means that to qualify for these higher levels, an employee must have not just technical, but managerial skills.
Supervisory positions require technical competence and managerial skills. Hence the role of training employees for promotions on leadership levels, the writer rightly specified in the article.
However, with the greatest possible respect for the writer, training in itself doesn’t mean that the people an employer is elevating are fit to manage or lead others.
Real preparation for management and leadership depends on several things.
Firstly, the basic education experiences the employees had before higher education and training sufficiently developed their minds and character. Quality education successfully develops in the learners the mental and character orientation that provides the basis for training in a given technical field.
Secondly, the post-secondary studies the employees had were rigorous, coherent and practical. Whatever the studies each of them had, they helped them gain important qualities of mind that lay the foundations needed for productive and innovative lives. These qualities are rigour, critical reasoning, problem-solving, efficacy, imagination, creativity and communication skills.
Additionally, the studies should have helped the employees gain some ethical capacities, respect for, and, in the final analysis, understanding of, and appreciation for human diversity.
Thirdly, the employers or its leadership should have nurtured a strong organisational culture. The culture should have a clear vision, purpose and values, which celebrate individuality, originality, risk-taking, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Fourthly, the organisations should be those that allow people in management or leadership positions to exercise roles appropriate to those positions. Some organisations promote people to management and leadership positions but expect them to undertake substantially similar work they did one or two ranks below.
Fifthly, the institution must have a strong induction programme to methodically and seamlessly socialise new staff, whether they join the organisation at the lower, middle or top ranks of the organisation.
The newly recruited employees should be inducted first before they start working. For the young from college or school, the induction will exorcise the undesirable habits they might have developed during their student years.
The induction will reorient employees entering the organisation to its culture and shed off whatever habits they had internalised from previous employers. This is important for nurturing and creating synergy between old employees and incoming employees.
Sixthly, the training programmes aimed at preparing employees for supervisory, management and leadership positions should be rigorous and coherent.
It should have depth and breadth. Poorly designed programmes don’t nurture the high-level thinking, visioning, and organisational skills that leaders require.
Strategic thinking must guide what to include or exclude particularly for programmes aimed at preparing middle-level staff for leadership positions five or six hence.
