G’Day Ben,
First things first: congratulations for the twins. I have twin girls aged 7 among my grandchildren and they’re a real joy. Trust that you derive great joy from yours.

Now, to manager development….

One thing I learnt as a Training Manager was to never ask anybody, including managers, what training they needed. You simply end up with wish lists which may or may not-usually not- improve performance.

Another was to realize that training was not usually a good way to improve performance. That’s not to say that people don’t need to be well trained. They do. But performance problems usually arise because people don’t or wont do what they are supposed to do not because they can’t.

Your “biggest frustration” approach has merit. It’s non-threatening and helpful. May I suggest that you try to link it to performance standards and systems.

I came to the conclusion some years ago that there were two major reasons for poor performance.
*lack of clear performance standards
*lack of adequate performance support systems.
I’m a firm believer in that old adage; “if your systems are poor your people will fail.” That applies to managers as well as other employees.

One final thing. It’s very easy to unwittingly create a self fulfilling prophecy when considering management development. For example, trainers often see training as the solution to performance problems. They devise training “solutions” regardless of what “solution” the problem really requires.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Leon
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