Managers still need to manage

I was interested to read a blog in the Harvard Business Review on the role of the manager in communicating to their staff. One of the points made is that social media will remove the power of the manager in communicating to their people as the latter learn and believe more from social media. This statement in particular caught my eye: “Managers will no longer be able to communicate with just a small circle of trusted advisers — they'll be expected to interact digitally with a much broader range of people both inside and outside the company.” Hmm. That’s some assertion. And possibly purposefully provocative.

I am a fan of social media  (this is a blog!) and there’s lots of stuff in previous posts below about social media. But managers will always need to manage their people and you don’t do that through social media, you do that by having a proper face-to-face conversation.

And I don’t buy that younger people only communicate through social media. I just think they make less of a distinction between written and spoken communications. My sons (20 and 17 now) carry on a conversation that they were having face-to-face by texting the people they just left. To begin with I thought this was weird – but then if you want to keep a good conversation going why not carry it on via your phone when it’s so easy?

Also it’s not just younger people. People in older age groups are increasingly getting involved in Facebook and Twitter – though possibly not quite to the same extent.

Managers know their people and the good managers have always worked out the best way of communicating with employees, depending on who they are – what they do and what kind of people they are. If you manage a department full of techies, you’ll probably manage them differently than if you have a department full of sales folk. If you know that Bertie likes to have things in writing then you’ll probably give it to him that way, to get the best out of him. If Julie’s always in a rush to get on with things you’ll probably be more succinct so she’s not clawing at the door to get away after 20 minutes.

Social media just adds another few ways of keeping in contact with people. But it’s not a replacement for speaking with people, gauging their mood and reacting accordingly.