Aren’t companies supposed to attract the best talent?

What you need to know:

  • A leader’s most important role is to remove barriers to performance and create enablers to get the best out of their people.

My organisation gives power to department heads to make decisions on promotions and vacancies. Unfortunately, for our department, we end up getting people with no leadership skills because promotions depend on friendships and loyalty. This deprives capable employees of the chance to lead, and also affects departmental growth. Many employees quit due to poor management style on the desk. Aren’t companies supposed to attract the best candidates from both internal and external applications? Leilah

Dear Leilah,
Your organisation is on the right track in its bid to empower leaders to make decisions concerning the people they lead. This is commendable, because, leaders must be held accountable for all the resources the organisations entrust with them to produce the demanded results.
However, before this delegation is done, preparation of these leaders to make credible and responsible decisions concerning people’s careers and the orgnaisation’s performance should have been done, before they are deployed. As you rightly observed, the people quitting are not resigning from the organisation. They are resigning from their managers!

This is a manifestation of leadership skills gaps in your organisation and specifically, the supervisors. They were not adequately prepared to take over leadership and management of people placed under their charge.

A leader’s most important role is to remove barriers to performance and create enablers to get the best out of their people. A good leader always strives to recruit people better than themselves, such that they can create winning teams for their organisations.

Contact your HR and point out the unethical practices the leaders are perpetrating, contrary to the HR manuals and laws. Depending on the HR investigations, this may lead to withdraw of the delegated responsibility as the worst case scenario, or re-tooling the leaders to manage their people better for the organisations success.

Moses Ssesanga, Head Human Resource, NMG - Uganda