Beyond Mentorship: The Hidden Flaws in Financial and Professional Services' Management Training
How relying on proximity and osmosis creates accidental managers
"The correlation between years of experience and effectiveness as a manager is virtually zero."
F.E Fiedler (Leadership Experience and Leader Performance)
Imagine diving headfirst into the deep end of managing other people, armed only with having been managed yourself and have watched the other managers do it. How difficult can it be? You'll just make it up as you go along.
Yesterday, you were a member of the team. You were no doubt really good at it, so your employer thought you should be promoted to take over the team. As a trusted team member, you have proactively taken on additional informal responsibilities. So, the only more senior position was that of manager overseeing the whole team.
You won't have been trained in this new position. The hastily researched advice from so-called experts on LinkedIn and their leadership checklists and motivational quotes bear little resemblance to reality and the expectations of your new duties. This is a reality where the following is true:
First-time managers will still have to perform to a high level in their old day jobs while developing as people managers.
The additional expectations placed on you as a new manager must be reconciled with the rights and privileges you anticipated upon your elevation in seniority.
The work of a manager is never done. "There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done."
When you are in charge, most things that go wrong are not directly your fault, but they are always your responsibility.
Today's leaders face unprecedented challenges in a landscape transformed by rapid changes to business models, AI and automation. New managers must rapidly adapt and confront what getting work done through others means.
I have embarked on writing the management book I wish I'd read before beginning my managerial career because the 70-20-10 mentorship model widely relied upon in financial and professional services is adequate at best. The 70-20-10 framework is the classic guideline for developing managers, and it emerged from the Center for Creative Leadership and their research behind the book Lessons of Experience. Their research in the 1980s confirmed the long-held belief that experience is the best teacher. The study identified sixteen sources of learning, which they consolidated into four buckets for ease of teaching their findings:
Reporting sources of learning (ranked in order of importance):
Challenging job assignments and hands-on experience. (52%)
Personal hardships (getting fired, missing out on a promotion). (25%)
Learning from others. (16%)
Formal training and development and self-learning. (7%)
By first dropping the second largest reason—hardships (25% of the reported sources of learning)—because it couldn't be part of an individual development plan and then approximating the remaining three, we now have the 70-20-10 leadership development framework or meme, depending on how charitable one is.
In reality, professional and financial services firms rely almost entirely on the 70-20-10 framework working and being the best—from the employer's perspective, at least—method of developing managers and future leaders. Investment banks, law firms, and consulting firms rely on the long hours spent physically in the office or with clients for the on-the-job training and informal mentoring that derive from this proximity. Why do you think investment banks were amongst the first to mandate a return to the office for their front office teams after the 2020-21 COVID-19 lockdowns? Their training and development "mentorship" model falls apart without proximity to each other on the noisy, fast-paced trading floors. It's the same with law and consultancy firms.
However, this approach has a fundamental issue when it comes to management development.
The aspiration to work for a great manager and under great leadership is universal. Such managers are essential for one's career, but we can't rely on the lottery of working with a really good manager early in our career. The 70-20-10 framework assumes that the people you work for and with know what they are doing when it comes to the people management side.
This is a fine and valid assumption regarding learning technical skills and complying with policies and procedures. It is easily disproved regarding the ability to manage and lead. The next time you are with a more experienced manager, ask them to 1) count the number of people they have worked for throughout their career, and then 2) from that group, count the number they would willingly work for gain. Gordon Curphy calls it the "Dr Gordy Test", as the number of leaders failing the test is stable at 60-80%. As I have written in my previous article, I would willingly choose to work for only half of the sixteen managers I had during my corporate career. This suggests I got lucky, with only 50% of my managers failing this test.
The leadership at the investment banks, law firms, and consultancies is making a serious error—a bad choice that adversely impacts everyone involved. Relying on the mentorship model has serious consequences, including a mental health crisis in the workplace.
My latest book will help you develop into a great manager without relying upon you getting lucky and working for one.
So, if you are highly ambitious and curious about countering the proliferation of accidental managers and its impact on you, especially if you are a star producer within financial or professional services organisations recently rewarded with your first managerial role, you are in the sweet spot for my writing over the coming months. Make sure to subscribe to enjoy the ride.
📫 - A quote that I am currently pondering
"One of the main barriers to turning knowledge into action is the tendency to treat talking about something as equivalent to actually doing something about it."
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton (The Knowing-Doing Gap)
I have often said that I don't read new books, and The Knowing-Doing Gap is a powerful example of why. Although the book is 25 years old, it contains so many enduring insights that still apply to the modern workplace that my highlighter pen is working overtime as I read it.
🤔 - If you did have the answer to this question, what would it be?
What is the one piece of advice you would give to your younger self just starting in their first managerial role?
Go ahead and share that advice with someone on your team.