Bad employees vs. bad managers

Despite all leadership and management theories, books and materials, in real life there are still many managers who have learned how to lead from one of their bosses, added a bit of their personal touch and just went with the flow. 

How many people, before coordinating a team, read something about it or go to training? How many managers question their leading style and try to improve it?

 In my opinion, all of them should do that. There should be a mandatory course for all of those who want or already coordinate people. Before influencing someone’s career, professional performances and life they should know what the role means, what are the responsibilities that come along with it.

One of them is the responsibility for the performance of the team and of each member of the team. When an employee is not performing, the first who is evaluated should be his manager. Has the manager properly trained that employee? Did the manager offered right induction, clear assignments, feedback and advice on improving his performance or any guidance at all? Has the manager done his job in providing for the employee the right environment to perform?

Only after all these questions have been answered, should be questioned the capability of the employee to perform on his position and in that specific organization.

Often, employees are evaluated and considered weak performers or even fired because of the incompetency of their managers. For the higher management it's most of the times more comfortable to believe what the team managers say rather than questioning how things were done. After all it’s harder to replace a manager than an operational employee.

This is one of the reasons why multinational companies are preferred by employees. There you have a training system put in place, an induction procedure and a performance appraisals process which at least offers the minimum premises for the employees to perform on their positions.