1. Everybody agrees with you. All the time.
2. Nobody ever has questions.
3. At the company Christmas party, your 42 employees chipped in to buy you a paperweight engraved with your initials. (Retail value: $8.99)
4. People are afraid to, or aren’t empowered to make decisions, so they seek your approval on every little detail.
5. Your employees compliment you on one of your articles of clothing on the 15th and 30th of every month.
6. Somebody ate your lunch.
7. The coffee mysteriously tastes like topsoil, and the person who makes it always has a Starbucks in his or her hand.
8. You received great feedback on your 122-page, 7,000 word PowerPoint.
9. Whenever someone hears you coming, they pick up the phone and pretend they’re talking.
10. Most of your employees run out of sick days for the year by January 8th.
11. If you look through the web histories on your employees’ computers, it’s 60% monster.com, 39% Facebook.com and 1% “other.”
12. People are always whispering.
13. Your office smells funny today.
14. At 4:45, you hear keys jingling, cases zippering and purses snapping shut.
15. At 5:01, everyone is out of the building, including the spiders.
16. At 5:02 you can hear people squealing their tires as they exit the parking lot.
17. Your employees take an inordinate amount of bathroom breaks.
18. Nothing ever seems to get done. (see #4)
19. People don’t talk to you – they email you.
20. It took you three hours to alphabetize the box of resignation letters from 2010.
Many people are thrust into leadership positions based on their technical aptitudes and/or because of time served on the job. Upon hearing the news that they’ve been anointed with a management position, most will celebrate because a promotion into management usually comes with a nice little bump in pay.
Just like technical skills must be taught to succeed, managers must be taught “people” skills as well. Managers who lead without the benefits of having active listening, empathy, or team-building skills will never get the most out of their employees. This can have a measurable impact on productivity and profitability.
So, what’s the ROI in leadership training? I think the answer is obvious.