Why do Brits make such bad managers?

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘Why do Brits make such bad managers?’

Brooke Masters
In the UK there is also a cult of the amateur where they believe that people can just sort of waltz in and do a great job if they’re generally smart and well-educated. The US is more hung up on credentials and actual study.

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Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times. I’m Isabel Berwick. Today we’re talking about leadership and why the UK is so chronically bad at it. The voice you heard at the top of the show was Brooke Masters, the FT’s US financial editor. Brooke has written about business and managed people both in the UK and in the States. So she knows a thing or two about management. She’s going to give us the scoop on where British managers go wrong and what they can learn from their American counterparts. We’ll also hear from Lucy Fisher, the FT’s Whitehall editor and host of the Political Fix podcast on whether the UK’s political leaders set a good example. Spoiler alert: they don’t. First, though, I’m going to speak to Ann Francke. She’s the head of the Chartered Management Institute and Ann spoke out recently about the UK’s lack of skilled managers and she called on the government to make better leadership a priority. I started by asking her for some background on why the UK’s leaders lag their peers elsewhere.

Ann Francke
There’s evidence that suggests that actually, the UK does not invest enough in management and leadership training. And this has been a persistent issue for the last decade really. Over 10 years ago, we did some research that showed that four out of five managers, when they took their management responsibilities, were untrained. So we called them accidental managers. We’ve just repeated this research, and I’m so sorry to say that 82 per cent of people promoted into managerial positions in the UK get no training in how to manage and lead. So it’s a big problem.

Isabel Berwick
Does it come from the top? Does the fact that government isn’t investing in this signal something important to everyone else?

Ann Francke
It does set an example and an expectation. Management and leadership skills and capabilities don’t appear to be as valued or as respected as they should be. And you can hear this is reflected in policy statements, for example. When we hear about, well, we must invest more in technological skills, in the green economy, in infrastructure. Now, all of these things, of course, are true. But what we don’t hear is, and we must also invest in improving the management and leadership skills in order to unlock these benefits from investing in the other things.

Isabel Berwick
Is the problem that there’s no perceived political capital in the idea of better management?

Ann Francke
Well, I think that’s a misconception because obviously there’s huge benefit. And the irony is the government has itself undertaken studies which demonstrate this. For example, the ONS undertook a study that showed that if you have a 0.1 percentage point improvement in your management capability, you boost productivity by almost 10 per cent. That’s an outstanding return. So these facts are known in government, but they’re just, they don’t seem to be internalised in policy decisions. And indeed, our very recent survey showed that less than a third of MPs regard improving management and leadership as a top priority for the country.

Isabel Berwick
Is that because a lot of them haven’t had any management experience?

Ann Francke
(Laughter) Well, probably. I think that’s a fair assumption to make. But, you know, I think actually if they did make it more of a priority that they would find that that would resonate with many people. And we mustn’t forget, there are a lot of managers in this country. One out of every four people in the workforce is in some sort of managerial position. That’s a lot of people.

Isabel Berwick
Do you think there’s any particular cultural factors in this country that underpin our failure?

Ann Francke
I’d like to say at this point, you’ll notice from my accent I do have an American accent, but I do hold a British passport and I have lived here for decades and I’m very proud to live here. But I do in fact think there are a couple of cultural factors. One is the cult of the gifted amateur. Muddling your way through, somehow that’s to be admired. And I think that that’s not conducive with becoming and learning to become a good manager and leader. I think another point is, you know, some of the humorous portrayals of the archetypal managers are along the lines of the Ricky Gervais in the office, right? So it’s not a profession that enjoys universal respect. I think a third thing — which again I think has been particularly apparent in some of the recent higher profile issues — is that we are valuing technical expertise or functional capability over behaviours and good management and leadership itself, and that’s a problem too.

Isabel Berwick
You know, another cultural factor that comes to mind is the sort of self-deprecation, excellence or being loud about what you do is perhaps not seen as very British. That’s different from being amateurish, I think. But you know, is it just not cool to be a leader? Is it not desirable? What is the problem?

Ann Francke
You know, I mentioned I’m, I have an American upbringing. I’ve worked for several years in Germany. What you see in those countries where actually they are higher on the management and leadership scale and the productivity scale, is people are proud to be managers and leaders. They’re also proud of their own achievements. And you’re absolutely right, the self-deprecation does not help. And the way that manifests is not only are people not giving themselves credit, they’re not giving other people credit, but you really do need to do as a manager and leader is praise and thank the people who work for you. It’s free, by the way, and it works. It’s a very underutilised management tool. But that pride in a job well done, including managing and leading yourself and others and that positivity, we could use a bit more of that.

Isabel Berwick
We really could.

Ann Francke
Yeah. No, I really think it’s not respected and valued as a very legitimate and vitally important profession and it should be. And I think that’s what needs to change and that should change in government policy, and the government should make that a bigger part of its objectives and its policy statements. And the same is true for the public sector. If you look at high-performing companies, they’re known for producing a lot of very good senior leaders. If you look at their cultures, they absolutely value management and leadership and they start training people in it from a very young age and they continue to train them throughout their careers. And we could use a lot more of that.

Isabel Berwick
Is there any way of working out how much of a missed opportunity it is for the UK that we’re not investing in leadership? You know, how much good could better leadership do?

Ann Francke
Well, it’s absolutely worth billions to the economy. And we know on a micro level that, for example, people that do invest in becoming good managers and leaders, for example, by becoming chartered managers, deliver on average over £20,000 of value to the economy. And in the private sector, they deliver over £60,000 to their organisations each year. So the impact is enormous.

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Isabel Berwick
Hmm. That puts it in to fairly stark relief. Ann’s numbers suggest that better leaders could be a big, big boon to the UK. Improving the morale of the workforce and boosting productivity too. So what’s stopping us getting there? I asked Ann what common mistakes bad leaders make.

Ann Francke
They are things we’ve all experienced. So for example, you know, getting overly bogged down in target after target or administrative task after administrative task, not making time for people, not respecting people or valuing them, you know, never saying thank you, for example. Always criticising, micromanagement is another and so is unclear communication or indeed non-existent communication. So all of these things are very common bad practices. When you have poor managers and leaders, you get poor outcomes and we can absolutely demonstrate that. And when you have good and effective managers and leaders, you get much better outcomes for organisations. Senior managers and leaders must be aware of what is going on in their own organisations. They must take time to talk with, understand and be visible to the people on their front lines. And you’ll find that’s a very common characteristic of all good managers and leaders.

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Isabel Berwick
I’m fascinated by Ann’s views on where British leadership goes wrong. Better management doesn’t seem to be a priority for politicians, and British government has hardly set a great example in recent years. I sat down with Lucy Fisher, the FT’s Whitehall editor and host of the Political Fix podcast, to find out more about the government’s issues with management. We were joined from New York by Brooke Masters, the FT’s US financial editor. She started off by telling me about one particularly American fixation.

Brooke Masters
In the US there is a respect for this idea of an MBA. And, you know, lots of people get either full-on MBAs or they will do things like do mid-career ones where you can do them on weekends. And there is this thought that if you professionalise management that it does help.

Isabel Berwick
In your reporting, have you seen any evidence of companies that actually value good management? Are there people being trained for good management in companies or is it still quite haphazard?

Brooke Masters
I think it really varies by the company. I mean, there are some companies that genuinely spend a lot of time training their managers to do a better job. But, you know, I think in some ways that’s the exception rather than the rule. Management is still seen as something that people learn on the job. And even, you know, MBAs don’t really learn how to manage people a lot of them. They learn how to analyse finances. They learn how to do advertising campaigns. I don’t think they’re really taught how to be a good manager a lot of the time.

Isabel Berwick
OK, so MBAs might not be the answer. Lucy, Ann had some strong words for the UK government. She says they should be making better management, more of a core issue. Are they exhibiting that sort of good management themselves?

Lucy Fisher
It strikes me that potentially the prime minister himself doesn’t quite get how to make the machinery of government work best at the centre. And from that sort of perspective down, I think it’s just it’s not considered a priority. They like the idea that, you know, you have the minister in charge and just sort of sending out directives. So I don’t think they always think beyond that to how to sort of translate that into delivery further down the chain.

Isabel Berwick
But Rishi Sunak has actually got an MBA, has he not?

Lucy Fisher
Well, you’re right. And, you know, he’s the sort of, you know, former investment banker. He’s worked at Goldman Sachs, the Children’s Fund. So you’d have thought with his private sector experience, perhaps he’d be a little more on to this. I do think in parliament generally, you know, there has been attempts to try and professionalise what are essentially 650 managers. When you come, when it comes to MPs, you know they have an office in parliament, an office in their constituency. They have staff across both and they have over the past few years just been a series of really worrying allegations about bullying and harassment. And so the parliament has been forced to step in and set up its own sort of HR processes. But again, right at the heart of our democracy, we do have these issues. So if it filters up that far, I think that’s a sign of kind of how widespread bad management and toxic culture can be.

Isabel Berwick
Brooke, you lived in the UK for a long time, and in fact, you were my boss here for a long time. Have you noticed any differences in terms of management here in the UK and management in the US where you live now?

Brooke Masters
I think two in particular. Americans are much blunter, and that’s true of the managers. They, you know, I was having a chat with one of my American colleagues who’s discovered that if you propose an idea to a British manager and they don’t like it, you never hear back. Your American manager is much more likely to say, that’s a bad idea, go do something else. And it’s much more direct. And sometimes this can be nasty, but many times I think it’s quite efficient. And the other thing I think there is a sense in Britain of the sort of a cult of the amateur where they believe that people can just sort of waltz in and do a great job if they’re generally smart and well-educated. The US is more hung up on credentials and actual study. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes that’s a bad thing. But it is definitely a different approach. In general, I think there is more effort in the US to think about how to professionalise things and not have this assumption that, you know, any generals can pull it off.

Isabel Berwick
I think that’s a very pertinent point about the government of Boris Johnson, Lucy?

Lucy Fisher
Well, yes, quite. Look, I think when it comes to British government, the thing that will change attitudes is just the presentation of evidence that good management boosts design outcomes for companies, that it boosts revenues, profitability, that it boosts employee engagement and productivity. I think that’s the way to try and engage British politicians about it. Otherwise, I think the cults of the generalist, as Brooke highlighted, is something that will just continue.

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Isabel Berwick
I find it pretty depressing that the government is putting all this money into tech skills and development, but they’re not actually thinking about the management of people. So nobody’s gonna gain skills. Nobody’s gonna develop their career unless they have a great manager. Because people leave bad managers, they don’t leave jobs. It’s so important to get this right. And yet managers are maligned. They are derided. The government does not think it’s a priority. I am slightly in despair but we can learn from America where people are more direct and management is, perhaps taken a lot more seriously than it is in the UK. So I’m not optimistic but the solutions are pretty clear to see.

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Thanks to Lucy Fisher, Ann Francke and Brooke Masters for this episode. If you’ve enjoyed Working It, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We really appreciate it. And for a limited period, we’re making links to certain FT stories about work and careers free. Follow the links in the notes to this episode to read them.

This episode of Working It was produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval and mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for listening.