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Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People

Drive higher IT results through practical communication tactics.

  • Management skills training is needed, but organizations are struggling to provide training that makes a long-term difference in the skills managers actually use in their day to day.
  • Many training programs are ineffective because they offer the wrong content, deliver it in a way that is not memorable, and are not aligned with the IT department’s business objectives.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • More of the typical manager training is not enough to solve the problem of underprepared first-time IT managers.
  • You must overcome the key pitfalls of ineffective training to deliver training that is better than the norm.
  • Offer tailored training that focuses on skill building and is aligned with measurable business goals to make your manager training a tangible success.

Impact and Result

Use Info-Tech’s tactical, practical training materials to deliver training that is:

  • Specifically tailored to first-time IT managers.
  • Designed around practical application of new skills.
  • Aligned with your department’s business goals.

Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why and how you should best support new IT managers’ transition into leadership, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People – Executive Brief
Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People – Phases 1-3

1. Train managers to communicate effectively

Understand the importance of effective communication for first-time managers, and deliver practical training in communicating with a variety of people and settings relevant to first-time managers.

Build a Better Manager: Team Essentials – Phase 1: Communicate Effectively
Communicate Effectively Facilitation Guide
Communicate Effectively Participant Workbook

2. Train managers in performance management

Give your first-time managers a solid foundation in setting meaningful goals and metrics for their teams and employees.

Build a Better Manager: Team Essentials – Phase 2: Performance Management
Performance Management Facilitation Guide
Performance Management Participant Workbook

3. Train managers to give coaching and feedback

Understand the difference between coaching and feedback, and give your first-time managers the skills to use both tactics as appropriate to assist their staff in meeting their performance and development goals.

Build a Better Manager: Team Essentials – Phase 3: Coaching and Feedback
Coaching and Feedback Facilitation Guide
Coaching and Feedback Participant Workbook
Effective Feedback Training Role Play Scenarios

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

10.0/10

Overall Impact

$2,599

Average $ Saved

110

Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

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Central University of Technology

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,599

110

the discussions and coaching for various tools are very helpful.

Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People

Drive higher IT results through practical communication tactics.

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

Managers are the connective fiber of your department. How are you supporting them?

"Ninety-eight percent of managers say they need more training, but 93% of managers already receive some level of manager training. Unfortunately, the training typically provided, although copious, is not working. More of the same will never get you better outcomes.

How many times have you sat through training that was so long, you had no hope of implementing half of it?

How many timed have you been taught best practices, with zero guidance on how to apply them?

To truly support our managers, we need to rethink manager training. Move from fulfilling an HR mandate to providing truly trainee-centric instruction. Teach only the right skills – no fluff – and encourage and enable their application in the day to day. "

Jane Kouptsova,
Senior Consulting Analyst, CIO Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For.

  • CIOs, department leads, and senior managers in charge of overseeing the training of first-time IT managers.

This Research Will Help You:

  • Equip first-time IT managers with the fundamental skills necessary to tackle their new responsibilities.
  • Easily apply a consistent training program throughout your department, increasing compliance

This Research

  • First-time IT managers

This Research Will Help Them

  • Acquire essential management skills and tactics for addressing the expectations of their new role.
  • Develop a foundation of competencies on which to build more advanced leadership skills.

Executive Summary

Situation

  • IT departments often promote staff based on technical skill, resulting in new managers feeling unprepared for their new responsibilities in leading people.
  • The success of your organization hinges on managers’ ability to lead their staff; by failing to equip new managers adequately, you are risking the productivity of your entire department.

Complication

  • Despite the fact that $14 billion is spent annually on leadership training in the US alone (Freedman, 2016), only one in ten CIOs believe their department is very effective at leadership, culture, and values (Info-Tech, 2019).
  • Training programs do not deliver results due to trainee overwhelm, ineffective skill development, and a lack of business alignment.

Resolution

Use Info-Tech’s tactical, practical approach to management training to deliver training that:

  1. Is specifically tailored to first-time IT managers.
  2. Is designed around practical application of new skills.
  3. Is aligned with your department’s business goals.
  4. Equips your new managers with essential skills in the following key competencies:
    • Team management
    • People development
    • Self governance
  5. This blueprint is part of a three-part series and specifically focuses on team management.

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, more is not more.

  • Attending training is not equal to being trained. Even good information is useless when it doesn’t get applied.
  • If your role hasn’t required you to use your training within 48 hours, you were not trained on the most relevant skills.
  • Good intentions don’t make a good manager. Will needs to be backed up by skill.

Effective managers drive effective departments by engaging their teams

This image contains three circles. In the outermost circle are the words Enterprise Effectiveness. In the next circle are the words Department Effectiveness. In the middle circle are the words Effective Managers. There is a legend to the right of the image which reads: Engaged teams are: 52% more willing to innovate; 70% more likely to be at the organization a year from now; 57% more likely to exceed their role's expectations. Engaged teams are driven by managers: 70% of team-level engagement is accounted for by managers.

(1 McLean & Company; N=3,395; 2 McLean & Company; N=5,902; 3 Gallup, 2018)

Despite the criticality of their role, IT organizations are failing at supporting new managers

87% of middle managers wish they had more training when they were first promoted

98%of managers say they need more training (source: Grovo, 2016)

IT must take notice:

IT as an industry tends to promote staff on the basis of technical skill. As a result, new managers find themselves suddenly out of their comfort zone, tasked with leading teams using management skills they have not been trained in, and more often than not, having to learn on the job. This is further complicated because many new IT managers must go from a position of team member to leader, which can be a very complex transition.

The truth is, many organizations do try and provide some degree of manager training, it just is not effective

99% of companies offer management training (1) Fewer than one in ten CIOs believe their IT department is highly effective at leadership, culture, and values. A circle is depicted, showing that 14% of CIOs believe that their IT department have Very Low Effectiveness, 33% believe that it is moderately effective, 45% believe that it is moderately effective, and only 9% believe that it has high effectiveness.

(1)Grovo, 2016; 2Chief Executive, 2016
(2)Info-Tech’s Management & Governance Diagnostic, N=337 CIOs
93% of managers attend it (1)
$14 billion spent annually in the US on leadership training (2)

There are three key reasons why manager training fails

1. Information Overload

Seventy-five percent of managers report that their training was too long to remember or to apply in their day to day (Grovo, 2016). Trying to cover too much useful information results in overwhelm and does not deliver on key training objectives.

2. Limited Implementation

Thirty-three percent of managers find that their training had insufficient follow-up to help them apply it on the job (Grovo, 2016). Learning is only the beginning. The real results are obtained when learning is followed by practice, which turns new knowledge into reliable habits.

Lack of departmental alignment

Implementing training without a clear link to departmental and organizational objectives leaves you unable to clearly communicate its value, undermines your ability to secure buy-in from attendees and executives, and leaves you unable to verify that the training is actually improving departmental effectiveness.

Overcome those common training pitfalls with tactical solutions

Move From TO
1. Information Overload Timely, tailored topics
The more training managers attend, the less likely they are to apply any particular element of it. Combat trainee overwhelm by offering highly tactical, practical training that presents only the essential skills needed at the managers’ current stage of development.
2. Limited Implementation Skills-focused framework
Many training programs end when the last manager walks out of the last training session. Ensure managers apply their new knowledge in the months and years after the training by relying on a research-based framework that supports long-term skill building.
3. Lack of Departmental Alignment Outcome-based measurement
Setting organizational goals and accompanying metrics ahead of time enables you to communicate the value of the training to attendees and stakeholders, track whether the training is delivering a return on your investment, and course-correct if necessary.

This research combats common training challenges by focusing on building habits, not just learning ideas

Manager training is only useful if the skills it builds are implemented in the day-to-day.
Research supports three drivers of successful skill building from training:

Three concentric circles are depicted. In the innermost circle are the words Personal commitment. In a text box the same color as the inner circle, are the words Info-Tech's methodology builds in activities that foster accountability and an attitude of continuous improvement. In the next circle are the words Learning Structure. In the textbox are the words Training activities are customizable, flexible, and accompanied by continuous learning self-evaluation. In the outer circle, are the words Organizational Support. In the text box, are the words The training modules include committing to implementing new skills on the job and scheduling opportunities for feedback.

Info-Tech Insight

When it comes to manager training, stop thinking about learning, and start thinking about practice. In difficult situations, we fall back on habits, not theoretical knowledge. If a manager is only as good as their habits, we need to support them in translating knowledge into practice.

This research focuses on building good management habits in in order to drive enterprise success

This image contains three circles. In the outermost circle are the words Enterprise Effectiveness. In the next circle are the words Department Effectiveness. Inside this circle, surrounding the inner circle with the words Effective Managers are the words: People; Self; and Team.

Set up your first-time managers for success by leveraging Info-Tech’s training to focus on three key areas of management:

  • Managing people as a team
  • Managing people as individuals
  • Managing yourself as a developing leader

Each of these areas:

  • Is immediately important for a first-time manager
  • Includes practical, tactical skills that can be implemented quickly
  • Translates to departmental and organizational benefits

Info-Tech Insight

There is no such thing as “effective management training.” Various topics will be effective at different times for different roles. Delivering only the highest-impact learning at strategic points in your leadership development program will ensure the learning is retained and translates to results.

This blueprint is part three of a three-part series, and will focus on the foundations of successful team management

This blueprint focuses on the essential skills necessary to lead a team.

This blueprint can be used alone to kick-start your first-time managers’ team leadership skills, or in conjunction with the people- and self-development modules for a well-rounded management primer.

This blueprint covers three key skills:

  • How to set and track realistic goals and metrics as part of successful performance management.
  • Tactical approaches to clear and effective communication in meetings and 1:1s.
  • The fundamentals of giving feedback and coaching to employees for development.

Info-Tech Best Practice

This blueprint is not a replacement for formal leadership or management certification. It is designed as a practical, tactical, and foundational introduction to key management capabilities.

This image contains a breakdown of the features of an effective manager, the People, the Self, and the Team. Under People are the words: Master Time; Delegate; and Accountability. Under Self, are the words Conflict & Difficult Conversation; Your Role in the Organization; and Your role in Decisions. Under Team are the words Communication; Feedback & Coaching; and Performance Management.

Info-Tech’s training tools guide participants through successful skill building

Practical facilitation guides equip you with the information, activities, and speaker’s notes necessary to deliver focused, tactical training to your management team.

This image contains three screenshots from Info-Tech's Practical Facilitation Guides.

The participant’s workbook guides trainees through applying the three drivers of skill building to solidify their training into habits.

This image contains a screenshot of Info-Tech's participant's workbook.

Measure the effectiveness of your manager training with outcomes-focused metrics

Linking manager training with measurable outcomes allows you to verify that the program is achieving the intended benefits, course-correct as needed, and secure buy-in from stakeholders and participants by articulating and documenting value.

Use the metrics suggested below to monitor your training program’s effectiveness at three key stages:

Program Music Calculation

Program enrolment and attendance

First-time manager (FTM) turnover rate

FTM turnover cost

Attendance at each session / Total number enrolled in session

Turnover rate: Number of FTM departures / Total number of FTMs

Number of departing FTMs this year * Cost of replacing an employee
Manager Effectiveness Metric

Engagement scores of FTM's direct reports

Departures as a result of poor management

Cost of departures due to poor management

Use Info-Tech's Employee Engagement surveys to monitor scores

Number of times "manager relationships" is selected as a reason for leaving on an exit survey / Total number of departures

Number of times "manager relationships" is selected as a reason for leaving on an exit survey * Cost associated with replacing an employee

Organizational Outcome Metric

On-target delivery

Business stakeholder satisfaction with IT

High-performer turnover rate

% projects completed on-target = (Projects successfully completed on time and on budget / Total number of projects started) * 100

Use Info-Tech’s business satisfaction surveys to monitor scores

Number of permanent, high-performing employee departures / Average number of permanent, high-performing employees

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Build a Better Manager – Team Development

1. Communicate Effectively 2. Performance Management 3. Coaching & Feedback
Best-Practice Toolkit

1.1 Prepare to deliver training

1.2 Deliver training

1.3 Review action plan

2.1 Prepare to deliver training

2.2 Deliver training

2.3 Review action plan

3.1 Prepare to deliver training

3.2 Deliver training

3.3 Review action plan

Guided Implementations

Discuss need for training and training structure.

Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.

Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Discuss need for training and training structure.

Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.

Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Discuss need for training and training structure.

Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.

Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Onsite Workshop Module 1:
Communicate Effectively		 Module 2:
Performance Management		 Module 3:
Coaching & Feedback
Phase 1 Outcome:
Effective Communication training delivered 		Phase 2 Outcome:
Performance Management training delivered		 Phase 3 Outcome:
Coaching & Feedback training delivered

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Session 1 (half-day) Session 2 (half-day) Session 3 (half-day)
Deliver Communication Training Deliver Performance Management Training Deliver Coaching & Feedback Training
Activities

1.1 Effective Communication manager training module:

  • Understand Communication Styles
  • Tailor Communication Methods to Activities
  • Make Meetings Matter

2.1 Performance Management manager training module

  • Develop Meaningful Goals
  • Set Meaningful Metrics

3.1 Coaching & Feedback manager training module

  • The 4 A’s of Coaching
  • Effective Feedback
  1. Completed Communicate Effectively Participant Workbook and action plan
  1. Completed Performance Management Participant Workbook and action plan
  1. Completed Communicate Effectively Participant Workbook and action plan

Build a better manager workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Session 1 (full day) Session 2 (full-day) Session 3 (full-day) Session 4 (full-day)
Deliver Self-Governance Training Deliver People Development Training Deliver People Development & Team Essentials Training Deliver Team Essentials Training
Activities

1.1 Master Time manager training module

1.2 Accountability manager training module

2.1 Your Role in the Organization manager training module

2.2 Your Role in Decision Making manager training module

2.3 Manage Conflict Constructively manager training module

3.1 Effective Communication manager training module

3.2 Performance Management manager training module 3.3 Coaching & Feedback manager training module
Deliverables
  1. Customized Master Time Facilitation Guide
  2. Completed Master Time Participant Workbook and action plan
  3. Customized Accountability Facilitation Guide
  4. Completed Accountability Participant Workbook and action plan
  1. Customized Your Role in the Organization Facilitation Guide
  2. Completed Your Role in the Organization Participant Workbook and action plan
  3. Customized Your Role in Decision Making Facilitation Guide
  4. Completed Your Role in Decision Making Participant Workbook and action plan
  1. Customized Your Role in the Organization Facilitation Guide
  2. Completed Your Role in the Organization Participant Workbook and action plan
  3. Customized Your Role in Decision Making Facilitation Guide
  4. Completed Your Role in Decision Making Participant Workbook and action plan
  1. Customized Manage Conflict Constructively Facilitation Guide
  2. Completed Manage Conflict Constructively Participant Workbook and action plan
  3. Customized Effective Communication Facilitation Guide
  4. Completed Effective Communication Participant Workbook and action plan

These modules can be mixed and matched to create a customized experience for your team.

Works cited

  • Freedman, Erica. “How to Build an Internal Leadership Development Program.” Chief Executive, 2016. Web. Oct. 2016.
  • Gandhi, Vipula. “Want to Improve Productivity? Hire Better Managers.” Gallup, 3 Aug. 2018. Web.
  • Good Manager, Bad Manager. Grovo, 2016. Web.

PHASE 1

Train Managers in Effective Communication

Build a Better Manager: Manage Your People

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

MEMBER RATING

10.0/10
Overall Impact

$2,599
Average $ Saved

110
Average Days Saved

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Read what our members are saying

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 9 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Train managers to communicate effectively
  • Call 1: Discuss need for training and training structure.
  • Call 2: Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.
  • Call 3: Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Guided Implementation 2: Train managers in performance management
  • Call 1: Discuss need for training and training structure.
  • Call 2: Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.
  • Call 3: Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Guided Implementation 3: Train managers to give coaching and feedback
  • Call 1: Discuss need for training and training structure.
  • Call 2: Discuss facilitation plan and tackle challenges.
  • Call 3: Discuss long-term skill-building strategies.

Authors

Jane Kouptsova

Carlene McCubbin

Lindsay Ellis

Contributors

  • Brad Armstrong, Senior Engineering Manager, Code42 Software
  • One anonymous contributor

Related Content: Train & Develop

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