Instead of training team leaders, send entire team for management courses

WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested that instead of wasting money on expensive courses for team leaders, companies should send the entire team for training to achieve better results.

Johan Bertlett at Lund University, Sweden, studied almost 200 employees at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm.

The results of the study showed that the manager is only able to influence the working climate to a limited extent. Instead, it is the interaction between the manager and the staff that is crucial.

“Of course you need a good manager if the interaction between the manager and the staff is to work,” Bertlett said.

“But it is important to understand that the manager’s situation is also influenced by the staff. Simply focusing on the manager means turning a blind eye to the contributions of the staff, and in doing so you exclude a lot of the potential that exists within the company,” he added.

“A good manager should train his or her staff and encourage informal leadership by delegating to those who are willing to take greater responsibility,” he said.

Solving problems at operational level makes the communication and decision-making paths and help managers can focus more on strategic management, Berlett said.

And although managers are happy to do more work, they want financial compensation too, and fairly so.

“It is not only a matter of the manager being able to delegate, it is also a matter of how much commitment the employee is willing to show. And the company management must also create the general conditions for this to work,” he said.

“The management of a company should think again before they send their team leaders on management training courses. It would probably be more beneficial to send an entire team instead,” he concluded. (ANI)