How HR can build manager capability without creating dependency
Recent research reported by People Management found that employers are placing considerable value on ‘soft skills’, in some cases above technical ability.
That doesn’t surprise me.
There are roles where technical ability is paramount. If somebody doesn’t have a particular qualification, knowledge or skillset, that can quite reasonably be a deal-breaker. But we’re also seeing hiring managers in highly technical areas, such as software engineering, paying more attention to communication, collaboration and how somebody thinks.
From an HR perspective, I think there’s an important lesson in that for how we recruit and develop managers too.
A manager can know an absence, disciplinary or performance process inside out. But if they aren’t equipped to have a difficult conversation with confidence, give useful feedback or make a sensible judgement when things become challenging, knowing the process only gets them so far.
A process can be taught. Judgement takes longer.
There’s nothing ‘soft’ about soft skills
I’ve always thought the description can be slightly misleading.
There’s nothing particularly soft about dealing with poor performance, resolving conflict or handling a sensitive people issue well.
Done badly, those situations can quickly become more disruptive, more time-consuming and more expensive.
Tact can be one of the hardest skills for a people manager to master. So can the ability to continually review how they’re positioning something – what to say, when to say it, when to listen, when to push and when new information means they need to reconsider their initial view.
A policy can’t teach you all of that.
Managers need to understand the processes they’re responsible for. But they also need to appreciate why a process exists, how to apply it to the circumstances in front of them and when discretion may or may not be appropriate.
That often comes with experience and an awareness of people dynamics.
Recruit for how somebody thinks, not just what they know
If those skills are important for a role, I think the selection process should give candidates an opportunity to evidence them.
Can somebody talk openly about a mistake and what they learnt from it? Can they communicate a difficult message with tact? Can they explain the thought process they used to reach a decision? What do they do when the information in front of them is incomplete?
The answer somebody eventually reaches matters, but how they got there can tell you just as much.
That becomes more relevant when recruiting people managers. Knowing the stages of a performance management process is useful. Being able to sit down with somebody and have a clear, fair and constructive conversation about their performance is a different skill altogether.
Can you teach managers better judgement?
Yes, to an extent.
Training certainly has a place as a starter for ten. But a course on difficult conversations doesn’t suddenly make somebody good at having them.
That’s why I’m a big believer in scenario-based discussion and case studies as part of manager training.
Give a group of managers the same set of circumstances and ask them how they would respond. Someone will usually raise a consideration another person hadn’t thought about.
Some of the most useful feedback I’ve heard following training has been along the lines of, “I would never have considered that” or “I can think of a situation where I can apply that different perspective immediately.”
For me, that’s when the training has started to do something more useful than transfer knowledge.
It’s developing self-awareness. It’s encouraging managers to pause before reaching a conclusion and consider whether there’s another perspective they’ve missed.
But training only takes you so far.
Managers get better by managing
Managers need to deal with real situations.
They need clear guidance to work from, support to prepare when they need it and the opportunity to handle appropriate issues themselves.
That doesn’t mean leaving them to get on with it and hoping for the best. Nor does it mean trying to turn line managers into HR professionals.
Managers don’t need to know everything. They need to know what they can handle, where the boundaries are and when it’s time to ask for help.
I think that’s an important distinction when HR teams are considering manager capability.
There will always be situations where HR should be closely involved. A matter might be particularly sensitive, unusual, legally complex or high risk.
But if HR takes over every time a people issue becomes uncomfortable, the immediate problem may be dealt with while the manager is left no better equipped to deal with the next one.
The model I prefer is one where HR helps managers prepare, provides clear guardrails and challenges their thinking where necessary, then trusts them to manage the issues they reasonably should be able to manage.
Specialist support remains there when they reach the limits of that capability.
Creating strong people leaders starts with the right tools, support and guidance.
Some of the best manager development happens afterwards
There’s also a big role for experienced managers in developing capability in others.
Give somebody an opportunity to handle a challenging conversation and then talk it through afterwards.
What worked? What didn’t? Was there a point where the conversation changed? Did they pick up on it? Was there something they might approach differently next time?
That reflection can be far more valuable than simply putting somebody on another course.
It also takes some of the pressure off the idea that managers should leave training suddenly equipped for every difficult people situation they’re ever going to encounter.
They won’t.
Good judgement develops through experience, feedback, reflection and having the right support around you.
How should HR measure manager capability?
This is where I think organisations can sometimes focus on the wrong thing.
It can be useful to ask managers to rate their confidence at the beginning and end of a training session. Completion rates have a purpose too.
But neither really tells you whether your managers are managing better.
Training completion measures whether somebody completed the training. It doesn’t measure capability.
I’d be much more interested in what happens afterwards.
For employee relations, that means looking at questions such as:
- What percentage of cases are being dealt with appropriately at manager level?
- What is still being escalated to HR?
- Are managers intervening earlier?
- What proportion of issues are being successfully resolved informally?
- Are records and decision-making becoming clearer and more consistent?
- What proportion of formal decisions result in appeals?
- Are the same types of issue repeatedly landing with HR?
The patterns in those escalations can tell you quite a lot.
If HR keeps receiving the same types of issue, there may be a gap in manager confidence, guidance or capability.
Likewise, if the same themes keep appearing in retention data, exit interviews or employee feedback, it may be worth looking at what’s happening at management level rather than immediately reaching for another training course.
Longer term, I’d want to look more broadly too – customer feedback, peer-to-peer recognition, the quality of record keeping, ER data and employee opinion surveys around culture and climate.
There isn’t going to be one neat number that tells you whether your managers have developed better judgement.
But there should be evidence that something is changing.
Better manager capability gives HR something back
There’s another reason I’d pay attention to this.
If HR is regularly stepping into routine people issues that managers could reasonably handle themselves, that inevitably reduces the time available for workforce planning, organisational change and the more complex employee relations work where HR expertise is genuinely needed.
For me, developing manager capability isn’t about HR withdrawing from employee relations or pushing risk onto managers.
It’s about being clearer on where management responsibility ends and where HR expertise begins.
Managers should be confident enough to own the people issues that reasonably sit with them. They should have good guidance to work from, access to support and enough self-awareness to recognise when they need to stop and ask for help.
And HR should be able to spend more of its time adding expertise, rather than doing the managing on a manager’s behalf.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve never particularly liked the term ‘soft skills’.
The process is often the easy bit. Applying it well is where the skill comes in.
How can we help?
Across Empowering People Group, we work with organisations to build manager capability alongside the HR, employment law and employee relations support needed around it.
That includes practical manager training built around realistic scenarios and decision-making, clear guidance managers can actually use, and specialist support when an issue becomes more complicated or higher risk.
The objective isn’t to turn managers into HR professionals.
It’s to give them the confidence, judgement and support to become better managers.