managers

20% of managers want out. This is how to handle the rise of the accidental manager.

A question for you, managers: Do you want to do this job? Or are you an accidental manager?

In a recent survey, Gartner found that one in five managers “would prefer not being people managers, given a choice.” 

Since I’m an executive coach and learning platform creator, you might expect me to declare that these unhappy managers just need more training and leadership development. 

However, it’s not that simple. 

Yes, additional development can help managers who don’t really want to be in that role. Some might even come to embrace being a manager. But others simply should not be managers

So how did we get so many accidental managers? And what can your organization do to ensure that employees who move into management actually want to make the leap and are prepared for it? 

Rise of the Accidental Manager 

You might wonder how 20% of managers have ended up in roles they don’t want. Based on my work with companies across a variety of industries, I believe many of them are accidental managers: They were promoted based on organizational needs, not because of their own desire or readiness for management. 

Other unhappy managers seek these roles but quickly realize they aren’t prepared. Then, once faced with the often overwhelming demands of the job, they find themselves treading water with no time to catch up on their development. Is it any surprise that people want to escape jobs like this? 

Opting Out Is a Win, Too 

As I thought about Gartner’s findings, I realized we already have a solution: opening up leadership development to more employees earlier in their careers. I’m already a big proponent of this strategy. But Gartner has given us more evidence that it’s an idea whose time has come. 

Expanding access to development fills leadership pipelines and, over time, can even diversify your senior leadership. However, leadership development training can also help employees realize they don’t want to be managers before they end up leading a team. If an employee decides they don’t want to move “up the ladder,” that’s just as much of a win as an overlooked employee realizing they have leadership potential. 

My thinking is in line with Gartner’s. They recommend that companies “encourage aspiring managers to self-discover if management is right for them by exposing them to the toughest parts of the role early.” When managers have the space to self-discover their fit for the role, they’re more than twice as likely to feel up to the demands of their job, Gartner reports. 

Training Doesn’t Go to Waste  

Some would argue that it’s useless to provide leadership development training to employees who don’t eventually become managers. But this investment does not go to waste. 

That’s because power and influence are not necessarily tied to job title. I bet you can quickly name the “informal leaders” in your team or organization. They’re not officially managers, but they hold great credibility because they’ve been at your company a long time, or they’re phenomenally good at their jobs, or they seem to know everyone. Even if they didn’t want a managerial title, they’re still doing a lot of leading—whether they realize it or not. Investing in these employees can pay off just as much as investing in your managers with titles. 

Also, consider the human and financial toll of an ineffective manager. When a manager is disengaged, so is their team. Retention suffers because employees feel less committed to the company. A bad boss can even affect employees’ mental health. If worse comes to worse and you need to replace the manager, that could cost your company from 1.25 to 4 times the manager’s salary. 

Companies flourish when all employees are empowered to contribute to their full potential, whether that means being a manager or not. By offering leadership development opportunities earlier and more broadly, you can create a culture of self-awareness and intentional career growth throughout your organization.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

3 ways to fix the ‘broken rung’ on the career ladder

I was disappointed, but not surprised when I opened the most recent Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org. Why? Well, just read this: 

For every 100 men promoted to manager in 2018, 79 women were promoted. And this year, just 81 women were. As a result of this “broken rung,” men significantly outnumber women at the manager level, which makes it nearly impossible for companies to support sustained progress at more senior levels. 

Image by geir fløde from Pixabay

What’s stopping us from fixing the broken rung? I often think about this question since my company focuses on high-performing women leaders. Based on our experiences, here are some recommendations for companies to get more women moving up over the broken rung on the leadership ladder. 

Rethink What a Leader Looks Like 

In organizations that have always had predominantly male leaders, a bias against women (whether conscious or subconscious) can emerge. It’s easy to see how this might happen: We base our ideas about what a leader should be based on the leaders we know. So, we may be predisposed to identify men as high performers who should receive leadership development.

You might think that the solution here is redefining what high performance is at your organization. But I’m advocating an even bigger shift: What if we dropped the whole idea that leadership development is reserved only for “stars”? That approach simply wasn’t feasible in the past due to budgetary concerns. However, the tech revolution in learning and development has created scalable solutions that open opportunities up to more potential leaders. 

Choose Development Options That Fit Packed Schedules 

Do you know a woman who isn’t busy? On average, women in the U.S. actually spend a few hours less per week on their jobs than men do. However, they spend more time than men do on household tasks, parenting, and caregiving for older family members.

Fitting leadership development into the middle of all of this isn’t easy. That’s why I believe that micro-learning opportunities are especially important for women. At my company, we’ve seen women embrace the quick lessons (think two to seven minutes) that our learning platform provides. 

Give More (and More Useful) Feedback 

Researchers have found that women receive less actionable feedback than men do. Additionally, feedback given to men encourages them to focus on big-picture, strategic issues while women get more guidance to focus on details and delivery. It’s not hard to see how the feedback that men get does more to shape them into future leaders. This is an issue to address both collectively and individually.

As an organization, what is your feedback culture like? Do you need to change policies to ensure that all employees get feedback that prepares them to lead? If you deliver feedback yourself, pay attention to whether you treat men and women differently. You have an opportunity to really help women own their abilities as leaders and demonstrate them to others. For example, after a meeting, give your report positive feedback for voicing her ideas, plus some strategies on what to do the next time she gets interrupted.  

I want to leave you with another sobering fact from the Women in the Workplace report: 

At the current pace of progress, it will take 22 years to reach parity for white women—and more than twice as long for women of color. Put another way, it will take 48 years for the representation of white women and women of color in senior leadership to reflect their share of the U.S. population. 

That’s hard to read, but it also motivates me to do even more to help women reach parity faster. I hope you’ll join me, both by taking action yourself and by pushing for discussions about leadership parity at your organization. Let’s make sure the next Women in the Workplace report has better news to share.       

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Fast Company.

3 Ways Cohort Learning Can Drive Business Goals

Are your organization’s learning programs in sync with your business goals? Creating this alignment is the highest priority of L&D professionals, according to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report 2024. But ensuring that training drives business results should also be top of mind for executives, department heads and even individual contributors looking to advance their careers.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

As a longtime leader, leadership coach, facilitator and now a learning platform creator, I’ve found that one tool gets overlooked when it comes to using L&D to advance business priorities: cohort learning.

And what a versatile tool it is. No matter what you want your organization to achieve, empowering your employees to learn with and from each other will help you get there faster. Here are three areas where I’ve seen cohort learning deliver big payoffs.

1. Breaking Down Silos

It’s all too easy to get so focused on the success of your own department or function area that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Silos can pop quickly, bringing a passel of problems with them. They hamper innovation, reduce efficiency and damage morale and engagement.

Once silos have appeared, they can be quite challenging to remove. Perhaps you’ve seen this for yourself at cross-functional meetings, where it can feel like different teams are speaking different languages. If one of your organization’s goals is breaking down silos, you’ll need to take things a step further than just having different departments meet together.

That step could be creating a cohort of leaders or rising leaders from across the organization to go through a development program together. This is a very different setting than a meeting where key decisions are being made.

When they’re learning together, participants from different departments feel safer dropping their guard. They stop focusing on who’s "winning" and start actually hearing each other and understanding others’ viewpoints. They learn from each other—not just from the content of the development program. And when that happens, all sorts of positive change can flower. They may identify inefficiencies, share best practices and build on one another’s ideas.

2. Advancing Underrepresented Groups

Despite some high-profile backlash to DEI programs, most companies are maintaining their commitment. No matter what the climate is at your own organization, creating opportunities for cohort learning can be a powerful way to support and increase diversity.

To understand why this is the case, we need to back up for a moment and talk about discrepancies in promotion rates. Women make up less than one-third of C-Suite positions, according to the Women in the Workplace 2024 report from McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org. But the problems start far below the executive level. The report also found that men outnumber women at every stage of the leadership pipeline. Racial or ethnic minorities have even less representation in the C-Suites, holding just over 12% of those positions.

But analysis by speaker, educator and consultant Rob Cross found that a focus on building relationships early in an employee’s tenure at a company can close the gap in promotion rates. With this in mind, you can shape your organization’s cohort learning programs to encourage relationship building. This is another reason it’s valuable to combine employees from different departments into the same learning cohort.

You can also look for ways to bring employees together with their more senior colleagues for learning. For example, members of an ERG could use a learning platform together, with veteran employees adding context and insight for newer employees.

3. Addressing Manager Burnout

If protecting your managers’ well-being isn’t a corporate priority right now, it should be. After the past few turbulent years, managers are burning out at alarming rates. More than two-thirds said they’re overwhelmed by their workloads. This may be because most new managers are not prepared for the challenges of their new roles.

A cohort learning program for managers can be a much-needed place for them to give and receive support, as well as a chance to share experiences and advice without the pressure of deadlines. It can even foster a sense of shared purpose, which is one of the best remedies for burnout.

Final Thoughts

Cohort learning is one of the most effective ways to ensure that learning and development programs align with business priorities and deliver the ROI your organization is looking for. By bringing employees together to learn, grow and reflect, you create opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas, relationship building and better understanding across departments. This approach doesn't just impart knowledge; it fosters the kind of collaborative problem-solving and innovation that can transform your organization.

This article was originally published by Neena Newberry in Forbes.

3 Key Challenges Managers At Top Organizations Are Facing: White Paper

At Newberry Solutions, we collaborate with some of the world's most successful companies. Our work gives us a firsthand perspective on the challenges that organizations are currently grappling with and how effectively they are tackling these challenges.

Across diverse industries, a clear trend has come to the forefront. The role of managers has become more pivotal than ever in guiding organizations through issues like workplace disruptions, the transition to hybrid work, and the cumulative impact of years of change and stress.

If you think that sounds like a lot of pressure on managers, you are absolutely right. Amid all of these new expectations, managers are more susceptible to burnout compared with both higher-level leaders and individual contributors. The stark truth is that the very people your company relies on right now are at a heightened risk of disengagement or even departure.

These trends prompted the creation of our special report, "3 Key Challenges for Managers." Our goals are to provide insight into the demands placed on managers, along with advice on giving managers the support they need to navigate these challenges. Here’s just a sampling of what this white paper covers:

  • How the 305,000+ layoffs that happened in 2023 have affected teams and managers.

  • The emerging gap between organizations and employees in their support for DEI initiatives.

  • How hybrid work is changing managers’ jobs.

  • The burnout crisis among managers.

  • Proven strategies to help your managers thrive.

We are eager to hear your thoughts and questions, so feel free to tag me in your LinkedIn posts about this report or reach out via email at info@newlensleadership.com. At the core of everything we do lies the passionate belief that leaders can change the world when their full potential is nurtured. This white paper is designed to empower you to do just that.

Get access to  "3 Key Challenges for Managers."

Newberry Solutions Turns 15

Whaaaat?! Newberry Solutions has been in business for 15 YEARS!!! This huge milestone crept up on us. These 15 lessons have made the biggest difference on this unexpected journey into entrepreneurship (yes, I had no idea I was going to start a business when I left my executive role at Deloitte), and I hope they help you as you continue to navigate your path.

To help me celebrate, please pay it forward by sharing this list with others. Giving people the tools and resources they need to be successful is what has meaning and heart for me.

  1. “I’ll see it when I believe it” - Wayne Dyer. It all starts by taking a leap of faith. I started my company three months before the economy tanked in 2008. If I didn’t believe that what I wanted to achieve was possible, how could anyone else? (My commencement speech at Texas Woman’s University was inspired by this too.)

  2. Keep passion and purpose at the forefront. In times of fear, self-doubt, and fatigue, reconnect to your passion and purpose to get yourself back on track. Your “why” is powerful.

  3. Keep your eye on the big picture. It will keep you from sweating the small stuff and will help you keep things in perspective.

  4. Focus on the “right” work: those areas where you can have the biggest impact on the business given your role and strengths. There’s only one of you – invest your precious time, energy and strengths wisely.

  5. Pause. Exhale. Repeat. Never underestimate the power of breath to ground you. In a few seconds, you can bring your stress level down.

  6. Small steps lead to big results. To keep from getting overwhelmed, don’t worry about solving everything; start by defining the first two steps. Learn from each step and iterate. This helped me immensely in 2008 and again when I battled cancer during the pandemic.

  7. Trust that things will unfold as they should, especially when you’ve already taken proactive steps. Get out of your own way and don’t overthink it.

  8. Keep generating options (aim for at least three). You always have more options than you think, even when things seem impossible.

  9. Take care of yourself. Self-care is not a nice-to-have strategy. It’s your oxygen mask. You can’t be there for anyone else, let alone yourself, if you run out of gas.

  10. Make it easy for people to help you. Arm them with the information and tools they need to help. And, most importantly, accept help.

  11. Surround yourself with people who energize you, raise the bar and challenge you to think differently.

  12. Trust your intuition or gut. Remember that it’s not just a feeling in your body; it’s wisdom developed from years of experiences, challenges, painful lessons and resilience.

  13. Know when to walk away. When emotions run high, take a break. When you are fried, take time off. Keep Maslow’s hierarchy in mind.

  14. Pay it forward without worrying if anything will come back to you. It always does—tenfold.

  15. Use your body to change your mind. Blast that favorite song and dance it out, walk in nature, and do those power poses (Amy Cuddy).

I want to challenge you to identify one or two lessons to keep at the forefront for yourself. These lessons apply whether you are an entrepreneur, in the corporate world or not in the workforce at all.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude to you for being part of this 15-year journey. We wouldn’t be here without you. As always, our top priority is your success. If we can help your organization through the New Lens® app, executive coaching, leadership development programs or speaking, please reach out to us.

Our New White Paper: Managers Under Pressure

At Newberry Solutions, we work with some of the world’s top companies. That means we get a firsthand look at the latest challenges organizations are facing, as well as how they are doing in meeting those challenges.

Across all fields, we’ve seen a clear trend emerge. Managers are more important than ever in helping organizations navigate key issues. But, at the same time, managers are more likely to suffer from burnout than either higher-level leaders or individual contributors are. In other words, the very people your company likely needs most right now are at high risk of disengaging or even leaving.

That’s why we created our new special report, “Managers Under Pressure: Why these key employees are feeling squeezed in 2023 — and what you can do to support them.” In it, you will learn:

  • The current state of both layoffs and resignations, and all the ways that this turbulent employment environment places additional burdens on managers.

  • What the “new normal” of remote and hybrid work looks like, and how managers are dealing with it.

  • The cumulative effects of three change-filled years on a stressed-out workforce.

  • How to support your managers’ wellbeing and productivity so that they can support your organization’s success.

Take a moment now to download your own copy of “Managers Under Pressure.” We hope that it will become a valuable resource for you and that you’ll share it with other forward-thinking leaders. After you read it, we’d love to hear your feedback and questions. So please tag me in your LinkedIn posts about our white paper, or contact us directly at info@newlensleadership.com