Whilst researching statistics regarding employees promoted to Supervisor or Team Leaders who have not been trained for the role, I came across the phrase, ‘The Accidental Manager’.
The reason for my research was because I only have one source that says over 50% of supervisors had not been trained resulting in overwhelm and many leaving.
Now, as we all know, one swallow doesn’t make a summer & as there wasn’t a reference to the source of that figure, I wanted to find something more reliable to support it.
Finding information specific to supervisory and team leading roles is almost impossible but during this quest (N.B. not the ‘J’ word-ugh) I came across a press release (16 October 2023) that caught my eye.
YouGov and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) who I actually worked for at their head office as Food and Beverage Manager back in the day, spoke to 4500 workers and managers & found that 82%, yes, EIGHTY TWO PERCENT consider themselves to be an ‘Accidental Manager’. In other words, they haven’t been trained in management or leadership skills.
According to the findings, over a quarter of employees leave “because of negative experiences with their manager’” and a third were “less motivated to do their work because of ineffective management”.
This article by The Chartered Management Institute goes into more detail.
Shocking as the statistics are, it suddenly occurred to me that when I worked in a large Hotel chain, I wasn’t trained either! So I shouldn’t be THAT shocked. To be clear, I have been on a fair few courses since (rarely offered to me though) and facilitated a fair few too.
I do consider myself a successful manager, I had great team retention, excellent customer feedback and provided excellent service, not just in Hospitality either.
But other outcomes of an accidental manager could lead to:
I think my style has much to do with being around my father from a very young age at his factory subconsciously seeing (and hearing) how he managed his workers. I also had some very good managers (and vice versa) who became ‘Accidental mentors’.
I’m still looking for firm statistics relating to Supervisors and Team Leaders. It’s really frustrating as they are the meat in the sandwich between frontline employees and managers, our hidden/unspoken heroes.
Training should really be put in place as part of their personal development & a stepping stone towards preparing them for their new responsibilities Not promoted just because they are hardworking, reliable and very nice indeed.
In fact, accidental or not, why are businesses not training people to be great leaders?
Have you ever been the accidental manager, or an accidental anything?