Why do many managers waste the talent and creativity of employees? It's all down to a lack of vital people skills. Train the leaders properly and the rewards will follow

I had a bit of an epiphany a few weeks ago. As part of my research for an article, I went on a course to find out how one particular personality profiling tool works. It was fascinating. I've been writing about these sorts of instruments for years, but actually subjecting myself to an assessment and seeing the implications of my preferred way of working on what I do, how I do it and how I relate to work colleagues was a revelation to me.

It was such a surprise that I was in denial for most of the two-day course, convinced that the test was flawed, that I had been too tired when I did it, that my answers were biased by having just dealt with a particularly tiresome client.

I'm a self-employed journalist, so my strengths must be in the areas of innovating, promoting and producing? Not a bit of it: I came out as a control freak, who is most interested in inspecting and auditing, and in upholding and safeguarding standards and processes. But if I had such poor self-knowledge, how could I possibly understand others' motivations and, therefore, how to get the best out of them? What a lousy manager I must have been all those years ago when I was made an editor, and believed the way to treat people was the way I liked to be treated myself.

But I didn't know any better, because I was one of the thousands of people who are thrust into management positions and expected to understand intuitively how to manage others. And this vital part of the role is still neglected. "People management" is for human resources professionals, not line managers. The term management seems old-fashioned and redolent of organisational fat to be exercised off. Twenty-first century businesses want leaders, not managers.

Why do companies set such store by leadership skills? Could it be that if they call managers leaders, then it doesn't matter if they are without people management skills, because employees will follow them by dint of sheer force of personality? That model may work when times are good, and particularly during years of rapid acquisition-led growth. But during periods of consolidation, market contraction or economic downturn, exacerbated by intensifying competition and environmental challenges, innovation and creativity is the only way to stay competitive.

And generating innovative thinking throughout the organisation means encouraging ideas from the bottom up. But most managers have no idea how to exploit the talent and capability of their people because they've never been given the tools and training to do so.

I was talking recently to the HR director of a multinational food business, who, in a bid to foster innovation, is trying to shift its hierarchical management approach towards a democratic culture characterised by listening and coaching rather than telling. When embarking on this mammoth task, he was frustrated by the lack of guidance and benchmarks on people management for line managers from places such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

"Good people management practices may seem mundane and boring, but they are the 'heavy lifting' that sets good companies apart," he told me. 
The truth of his remark is borne out at Toyota, where people are grouped into fully self-directed work teams and given the responsibility, tools and processes to work out what the problems are and to resolve them themselves. It is, surely, no coincidence that Toyota is going from strength to strength, while competitors such as General Motors, which have trimmed management roles, are struggling to turn a profit.

But this "heavy lifting" can serve a double purpose in the downturn. Great managers are motivational, but they are also tough. When money is tight and pay rises thin on the ground, performance management becomes even more critical.

Line managers need the skills to differentiate performance and pay more effectively, and to make the kind of hard decisions that in the good times they were able to avoid. After all, why waste the redundancy budget on someone who ought to have been performance-managed out of the business years ago?

I'm just thankful (as, no doubt, are my former colleagues) that I've only got myself to manage now.