Leslie has Left?

Brampton - Leslie abruptly resigned from the company a month ago after working there for 6 years.  Just after New Years, Leslie was promoted to Manager of a medium sized department in head office.  Everyone in the department was in favour of the promotion, felt it was deserved and was ready to fully support their new manager.

Let's take a look at how Leslie got the promotion.  One key element was attitude.  Talk about a "can do" attitude.  Over the years, anytime there was a challenge put forward, there was Les, front and centre.  "I can handle that" was a common phrase heard from this positive employee.  In fact, many times there was not even a second thought given to offering the challenge to another employee.

What about Les's aptitude for leadership.  Again, nothing wrong there!Profile after profile showed nothing but positive scores on all aspects of the skills on the company leadership matrix.

An additional consideration for promotion was the individual's performance over the past 24 months.Again, based on the corporate rating system of 1 – 6, Les was right there with a 5.45 average rating.

So, was it a motivation issue?  Was Leslie perhaps not motivated to perform in the new role of Manager?  Far from it?  Nobody gave it more of an effort.  Here was a Manager who came in early every day; worked through lunch then stayed late.  Definitely, these were not the actions of an individual who was not motivated to succeed. So what happened?

An exit interview, conducted by the HR Manager after the resignation had been accepted gave some clues to the reason for the departure.

The job of Manager required Leslie to perform tasks that had not been done in the past.  Sure, the mechanics of how the work of the department was done were mastered over the previous five years.  However, there had been no opportunity to fulfill the role of Manager on an interim basis during absences of the previous Manager.  In fact there was no formal training program for managers in place at all.

The company had always assumed that if you could do the job yourself, you be a manager.  Unfortunately, this was not the case with this individual.  The desire and motivation, the attitude and aptitude were all present.  What was not present was a catalyst to put that all together.In other words, a formal leadership development program.

So, where is Leslie now?  Well, at last check this highly motivated and knowledgeable employee was engaged in a Management Trainee program with the competition.In fact, it is rumored that Les is one of the best trainees they have had in years.

Do you have a Leslie working for you?  What are you doing to ensure that you do not have a resignation within months of a promotion to Manager?

© 2008 The Newman Learning Group Inc.