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Line managers must be among the group most concerned with being good at their jobs. In the competitive business world they are continuously looking for methods to enhance the effectiveness of their employees in both problem solving and goal achievement. They are also looking for methods to enhance their own effectiveness in doing so. Juggling many roles and relationships with employees leaves managers open to the possibility of serious role conflicts and/or the crossing of professional boundaries. Being an effective line manager is being able to combine a number of different roles, whether these are planning, team development, decision making, understanding the market, helping the troubled or "difficult" individual, or marketing. Egan (1993) has recently pointed out how little like the model manager's day is the reality of what happens:
The average manager's day is quite chaotic and looks little like the planning, organising, staffing, directing, and controlling sequence found in textbooks. As one writer put it, the new role of the manager is more about making sense out of chaos rather than ensuring control (p. 34).
Which puts even further burdens on line managers who, unsure initially of their role, now find that the role has to be made up as they move along. Learning the skills of living with and managing chaos rather than controlling the environment may be the last straw for many overstressed and confused managers.
Of course part of the problem is learning what it means to be a manager and ensuring that those chosen to be so have the necessary skills. Egan (1993) again makes the point somewhat firmly, if not sarcastically, about this issue:
Most companies choose people to be managers because they are good at something else. They are good accountants, good engineers, good lathe operators, good whatever. Then they give them no training in distinct managerial skills. Would you like to be operated on by someone who was chosen to be a brain surgeon because he or she showed excellence in the maintenance department? (p. 34).
Egan is making the point that people skills do not automatically arrive with promotion to managerial positions. Communication skills, relationship-building skills, interpersonal skills, and counselling skills are all bedrocks of managerial expertise. In many ways they are nonnegotiables; without them,...